Blog Post 8

After discussion in class and reading chapter ten in Educational Foundations I realized there are more things that go into planning a lesson then just the things in my previous Blog. The biggest thing that I believe I had forgot in my early blog is the idea of creating a community within the classroom. Creating a community means that every child is involved in some way. This can be a difficult task for a teacher since many kids learn at different speeds and in different ways. Bills Ayers shows this in his comic by going back and making sure each kid understands subtraction. This can be a tiring task for the teacher because it may mean having to reteach the lesson many times and in different ways but I feel it is important task. No child left behind is a great phrase for a teacher to live by. A teacher also needs to be flexible in their teaching. Changing the lessons plans to fit your students is a skill that I feel all teachers should have. I have seen many teachers who continue to use the same lesson plan year after year and never take their students into consideration when planning their lessons. Providing good lessons may mean a teacher has to change within their selves in order to communicate their lessons in the best way possible to their students. Another technique I did not include in my previous blog is the ability for a teacher to grow and work with others. If a teacher can have the parents and the community of the students as allies it can only make them that much better of a teacher for their students. Parents and the community outside a classroom know a student on a different level than a teacher does inside a classroom. Understanding a student's outside life can give a teacher the opportunity to use a students previous knowledge and incorporate it into the lesson plan and build on it. This could not only save the teacher time from having to teach what the kids already have an understanding of but it also allows the teacher to get to know their students on a deeper level outside the classroom. There are many things that go into planning a lesson and I am sure I am still missing some but I am going to keep trying to learn and observe those around me.