A Word of Advice

Just yesterday, I was pulled into the WM Social Studies Dept Supervisor's office and had one of the most encouraging conversions thus far in my time student teaching. At first, I was caught off guard and completely nervious as the supervisor showed me a seat at her desk. Quickly, my fears were subsided. Mrs. Brennan aske me how I was holding up so far in the highschool, to which I told her my dilema with regards to the lecturing and heavy content. "Actually," she said, "that's precisely why I wanted to talk to you."

Kate proceeded to tell me, which I had quickly learned from experience, that the middle school and the high school are two totally different animals when it comes to learning style, teaching methods and content. HOWEVER, she made it quite clear that just because a course requires more content, that does not mean that I should sacrifice student centered learning. Just because students need facts, does not mean I need to lecture from bell to bell. She encouraged me by saying, "I do not want to see this beautiful flower of teaching, that you were at the middle school, to simply wither and die because of old fashioned thoughts on lecturing that exist in this school."

Being new herself to the district supervisor position, Kate told me how shocked she was by the heavy lecturing and sermon-like teaching that she was seeing in classes. She told me to be myself, and teach the kids with them at the center, just like I did at the middle school.

I must say, this was a relief. I could not have thanked her enough as I left her office. It was so nice just to know that someone is on my side in this struggle of content vs teaching methods. And its even better to know that I'm doing something right.