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Welcome to my teaching/learning site. I have created this site to help my students and their Parents to better understand
my philosophies and teaching methods. Also I have used this site to help students with questions or problems, so that they
can have a place to come to for answers about anything that they may need.
My Teaching Philosophy...
Although becoming a good teacher always involves learning new lessons, it is also the case that becoming a good teacher
often involves the relearning of old lessons. And one of the most important lessons that I find myself learning again and
again, learning it differently, in various contexts, is the importance of trust: trust in my own skills, trust in the learning
process, and, most importantly, trust in the abilities of my students.
Those of us who do a lot of writing for a living are familiar with that feeling of mild panic that sets in when we feel
we don’t have as much time to put into a piece as we feel the nature of the work demands. The same feeling is all too
familiar to dedicated teachers, whether K-12 or at the university level. We have a task that is valuable to us personally,
made even more so by the fact that we are entrusted with someone else’s understanding, and yet we often feel under-prepared;
we feel that there is something else that we could be doing in order to maximize the learning experience for our students.
However, in response to this feeling I’ve learned to trust the knowledge base and skills I have acquired through my
extensive teacher training, my years of experience, and the further learning opportunities that have been afforded to me through
training other teachers. I will probably never shake the feeling that I could be doing more for my students, just as I will
probably never be satisfied that I am the best teacher I could be, but this feeling is a positive thing. The occasions where
I have actually believed that I was completely in control of the situation and had this "teaching thing" all figured out have
in fact been the occasions where things have gone most drastically wrong! Always feeling that I could do more keeps me focused
on the needs of my students, sharpens my observations of what is working well and what could be improved, and encourages me
to be more creative. This trust in my own abilities won’t, of course, prevent me from making mistakes, but it does give
me the confidence that I can learn from them..
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