Enduring Understandings of Teachers

Things that teachers must understand??? Besides how to keep their sanity? Besides how to eat their lunch in under five minutes? Besides how to read 100 pages a week, keep up with their's and others' blogs, and work on your projects for graduate school, all while performing their normal teacher tasks? O.K., let's keep things a little more simple.

While looking at the six different facets of understanding, the idea of perspective jumped out at me. I have seen some of my own teachers, some of my colleagues and yes, myself, lose perspective on what was being taught. For so many teachers, especially veteran teachers, the lessons seem simple. Some teachers teach the same topics for years and they know the content inside-out. They lose perspective that what is being taught may probably seems foreign to most of the students.

This is where curriculum design can save many teachers from falling into this trap. If lessons were designed, implemented, and assessed so that students were posed with some essential questions to lead them to discovery of the material, teachers would not rush through topics and students would not feel lost and hopeless. Teachers must also understand that different students, different societies, different eras all learn differently. What worked today for one class may not work tomorrow for another, but it may work again next week for yet another class. The different ways some students can see and understand things need to be paid attention to.

Along the same idea as above, teachers need to be able to empathize with some students. All teachers must have had their day in school as a student where they just couldn't get "it". They need to remember those days and how they felt when one of their own student is having one of those days. Thinking back, what would have helped you get through those tough times? How can your experience help you to help this current student?

Again, trying to keep things simple, one last thought. We all know that there are so many understandings teachers grapple with, but I cannot blog all day- my twin kids are staring at me now, begging for some attention. But I digress; back to my final thought. The other facet of understanding that really jumped out at me when reading UbD was the idea of self-knowledge. We strive to produce students who will be lie-long learners so hopefully, we ourselves, strive to be life-long learners. We need to constantly be aware of our own ignorances, our own thought patterns, our own learning styles, and our own deficiencies. We need to constantly be aware of ourselves as both students and teachers in order to improve ourselves so that we can better prepare our students.