I read another educator’s great blog post about failure and risk taking in the teaching and learning process. You should read it, it was great. But one sentence in the post really caught my attention, and that was this sentence:
I, for one, am tired of reading about innovative instruction and not practicing it. It seems that many of these philosophies of curriculum and instruction exist only on paper written by academics who publish in journals that often go unread by the classroom instructors.
The best use of learning – in my opinion – is putting what’s learned into constructive action. This makes it real. It makes it tangible. It makes it meaningful. And this includes the learning about teaching and learning.
If all of us educators did what the quote above suggests on a regular basis – if we tried out just half of the new teaching ideas and practices we stumbled upon because we looked forward to learning from what didn’t work as much as from what did work – not only would we be modeling the best kind of learning to our students, but I think we would become much better teachers … much more quickly.
o.k. wow…. I commented before taking look at your website… you’ve got some great things going on. I thought (at first) that you had attended my workshop this afternoon… a group of student teachers at UNBC… sorry if my comment appears didactic. Thanks for sharing!