Blog Assignment #9

Mr. McClung is an assistant principal at Leverett Elementary School in Arkansas. He is also the author of the blog, Mr. Clung's World  which talks about the events in the elementary school and also presents many useful insights into education. I encourage everyone to check it out!

What I Learned This Year - Volume 4

In this post, Mr. McClung discusses what he learned from his fourth year as an educator. He stated that he hadn't learned as much as thought. Instead of a bunch of little lessons, he instead focused on two main themes: "You Gotta Dance With Who You Came to Dance With" and "Challenge Yourself".

The first theme emphasizes his hard-earned knowledge that you can't worry about what your fellow educators think about you and your teaching methods. The only thing that matters is that your students are having fun while learning. As long as your answer to that is "yes", then don't change yourself or your methods based on the thoughts of others.

The next theme is pretty self-explanatory. Don't get stuck in a rut with methods or lesson plans. As an educator, you must always allow for creativity and challenge yourself. If you get too comfortable with yourself, then your students suffer.

I, for one, couldn't agree more with these thoughts! I struggle with the preoccupation of what others may think, but that isn't the main goal of being an educator. My main focus HAS to be on my students and keeping them engaged. If I let myself become focused on other things then my students will ultimately suffer. As for challenging myself, I hope I never cease to do that. Over the course of my education I have had too many teachers that are all too content to use lesson plans and methods that haven't been updated since they started. In those classes I would struggle because I was of the mindset of why should I care if they don't? Like I've said before, keeping students engaged is key and I hope to always do that.

What I've Learned This Year 

This particular reflective post is from Mr. McClung's first year of teaching. He had many things that I would expect a first year teacher to learn such as how to read a crowd, be flexible, don't be afraid of technology, and lastly never stop learning. The main point I believe he is trying to convey with this post is that it's important as an educator to be able to roll with the punches. Most things won't work out how you want them to, no matter how perfectly you plan them.Constant learning and flexibility are crucial skills for an educator to have and I plans to always posses both.