Pondering about Teaching

Pondering is such a wonderful word, evoking an image of someone lost in thought, their mind turning a concept over and over in an attempt to make more sense out of it.

At least, that is what comes to my mind.

And teaching is such an interesting topic to ponder about.  People all have their own views on what, how, and when something should be taught.  It was fascinating to read the Wong's book The First Day of School as it presented such an interesting perspective.  Even the way the book was written indicates the authors' belief that repetition is important.  They repeated the title concept several times in each chapter, not to mention the different concepts for each chapter.  It happened so often that I am not sure I could even mention any examples.  They all run together in my head.  I still feel a little beaten, metaphorically, by the concept hammer.  "I've got it, already.  Can we move on now?"

Don't get me wrong, almost all of the concepts and thoughts in the book gave me a feeling of "Yeah!  That's the way to do it!" and "Why didn't most teachers I knew while I was growing up do things like this?

One that stuck out to me the most was the idea of procedures in classroom management, as opposed to rules.  I agree, and yet I disagree.  Maybe I'm getting too old, but the idea of changing all rules into things that are just done seems likely not to work.  At least not if you do away with rules entirely.  Used in moderation, I think it could be quite useful.

On a different subject, the last lecture was phenomenal.  It inspired me to try to find more joy in learning and to bleed this over into the rest of my life as well.

That, and now I want to learn how to speed read...