I am overwhelmed with messages from my department about this or that event, this or that social need, this or that assembly coming up. Every faculty meeting brings up targeted content areas, or focii that, by next spring, will have drifted off like dandelion seeds.

Another way: You have one month to visit all of Europe. Where will you visit? What will you attend to? And the harder question: where won’t you visit? And why?

HELPING KIDS NOTICE PATTERNS IN EXAMPLES THEY CREATE.

This requires organizing “smart” example spaces out of wild&wonderful stuff kids make. The skill is topic-specific to some degree, maybe even problem-specific. For example, noticing patterns in river-crossing problems is different from noticing patterns in the decimal extension of 2/7. The skill also assumes active listening, and understanding children’s algorithms, definitions and theorems which aren’t standard OR expressed in standard notation.

When a student is looking at a water drop under a microscope and sees a paramecium, exclaim loudly “Wow– look at that! :-)” even when thinking “oh boy, another paramecium… :(”

Trying to show excitement on something you have done for years is very tough, but it will rub off.

Secondly- Humility is also required. The ability to ask a question, and wait 2-5 minutes for an answer. If you watch most teacher, they will wait 5-10 seconds, but feel they have waited 1-2 minutes.

–Dave

From the little experience that I have, I will try to put in my two cents. I would say it is hard to choose something specific. While I believe you learn a lot in teaching programs, I strongly believe that you learn the important ‘core skills’ while being a teacher. I think we can learn a lot from books and university classes, but the impacting lessons are learned through actual experiences and interaction with the kids and the other teachers. However, if I absolutely had to pick something, I would think one of the biggest skills you should have is to not walk into a classroom with preconceived notions of children and their culture. Classrooms are becoming more and more diverse and we have to be open-minded, understanding, and fair. As teachers and role models, if we want kids to learn to be open and inviting to other cultures, we need to be as well.

@Adam, not for nothing, I wrote my essay on “problem posing.”

I think every student teacher should learn how to do quality research in the classroom.

I’ve been reading “Honoring Diverse Teaching Styles”, by Edward Pajak and it turns out that I am the type of teacher who likes to experiment and use what works for me in my classroom. So perhaps this is just what is most important for me in the classroom. There is the distinct possibility that what I feel is most important is actually not what is most important for a person who has a different “dialect” or personality type.