Much of my effective teacher develop comes from books that I have read. So when someone I follow on Goodreads mentioned Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess I couldn't resist the title and I added it to my "to read" list for the summer. Of course as soon as I did I started seeing it mentioned in my Twitter feeds as well. After reading the book, it seemed like an appropriate impetus to get me to start blogging again.
Recently I encountered the parent of a former student and I told the parent how much I enjoyed her daughter as a student. The parent told me that her daughter's comment on my teaching was that I was "very passionate about what I taught." Maybe that is why the core idea of Teach Like a Pirate appealed to me. "Light yourself on fire with enthusiasm and people will come from miles around just to watch you burn!" I may not have entered the realm of showing up in costume like Mr. Burgess, but I am extremely passionate about teaching and my subject matter.
One of the most useful methods for me in Mr. Burgess' book was the questioning technique he presented. As I read I found myself responding to his questions in my head. Since I was reading on my kindle in a car on the way to the Oregon coast (absolutely gorgeous by the way), I didn't get a chance to write down my responses. To commit myself to this effort and to get myself back on my blog, I decided to make my process public by blogging my responses.
So on to question number 1: Within your subject matter, what are you passionate about teaching?
Some of the courses I teach or have taught include: English, Graphic Design, Journalism, Yearbook, and Debate. I am passionate about all of these - but I thought I'd focus in on a few. I am passionate about communication, argumentation, and critical thinking in my course subjects. I also love teaching drama and poetry. In Graphic Design and Yearbook I am most passionate about photography and typography as means of communication. If I can pull drama or poetry into a lesson I do. I make use of typography outside of my graphic design and yearbook classes by what I hand out or show my students in English. Everything we do is a form of communication and most communication has an element of persuasion or argumentation in it. I could wax poetic and dramatic about many subjects in English.
It might be easier to narrow the list on what I don't have a great deal of passion about and that would be the proper labeling of grammatical usage. I have always been a bit more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist when it comes to grammar (too bad the test makers are all prescriptivists). I am hard pressed to get passionate about the ability to label a gerundive or participial phrase, etc. - or to find a real-world application to this ability outside of the linguist field. Yes, I will admit to having told my students the answer to their question about why they were learning this was "it's on the test." I am open to suggestions for a better response. I have met English teachers who love the sentence tree and promise me that there are some students who are better able to write a correct sentence after diagramming many sentences. I cannot confirm or deny the veracity of this statement as I have not conducted any such experiment.
If you have any thoughts on what YOU are passionate about, or suggestions for how to answer my students on why they need to know the proper label of all things grammatical - please comment below.
--Debbie
Recently I encountered the parent of a former student and I told the parent how much I enjoyed her daughter as a student. The parent told me that her daughter's comment on my teaching was that I was "very passionate about what I taught." Maybe that is why the core idea of Teach Like a Pirate appealed to me. "Light yourself on fire with enthusiasm and people will come from miles around just to watch you burn!" I may not have entered the realm of showing up in costume like Mr. Burgess, but I am extremely passionate about teaching and my subject matter.
One of the most useful methods for me in Mr. Burgess' book was the questioning technique he presented. As I read I found myself responding to his questions in my head. Since I was reading on my kindle in a car on the way to the Oregon coast (absolutely gorgeous by the way), I didn't get a chance to write down my responses. To commit myself to this effort and to get myself back on my blog, I decided to make my process public by blogging my responses.
So on to question number 1: Within your subject matter, what are you passionate about teaching?
Some of the courses I teach or have taught include: English, Graphic Design, Journalism, Yearbook, and Debate. I am passionate about all of these - but I thought I'd focus in on a few. I am passionate about communication, argumentation, and critical thinking in my course subjects. I also love teaching drama and poetry. In Graphic Design and Yearbook I am most passionate about photography and typography as means of communication. If I can pull drama or poetry into a lesson I do. I make use of typography outside of my graphic design and yearbook classes by what I hand out or show my students in English. Everything we do is a form of communication and most communication has an element of persuasion or argumentation in it. I could wax poetic and dramatic about many subjects in English.
It might be easier to narrow the list on what I don't have a great deal of passion about and that would be the proper labeling of grammatical usage. I have always been a bit more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist when it comes to grammar (too bad the test makers are all prescriptivists). I am hard pressed to get passionate about the ability to label a gerundive or participial phrase, etc. - or to find a real-world application to this ability outside of the linguist field. Yes, I will admit to having told my students the answer to their question about why they were learning this was "it's on the test." I am open to suggestions for a better response. I have met English teachers who love the sentence tree and promise me that there are some students who are better able to write a correct sentence after diagramming many sentences. I cannot confirm or deny the veracity of this statement as I have not conducted any such experiment.
If you have any thoughts on what YOU are passionate about, or suggestions for how to answer my students on why they need to know the proper label of all things grammatical - please comment below.
--Debbie