50 Things I’ve Learned about Teaching

This post was originally published in January 2013.

I have been working in education for the past eight years, and I look back and see how I’ve developed my own (very strong) beliefs about teaching and learning.  Many of these have been inspired by things I’ve learned through ed-tech conferences, teaching my own classes, reading, and being surrounded by great teachers on Twitter.  I decided that I wanted to make a list of things I’ve learned and hold very dear to my heart:

1. If you can still do the same thing on a whiteboard/chalkboard, it’s not really technology integration.
2. The ones who I’d honor with the title of teacher love their students and put the students’ learning first.
3. Lessons that infuse critical thinking with student-led, student-centered learning DO take time and effort from the teacher in advance (in planning).
4. Critical thinking does not happen on a multiple-choice, fill-in-the blank worksheet.
5. The final product of a project is just that, a final product.
6. Just because you call it project-based learning doesn’t make it project-based learning.  It’s all about the process!!!
7. Great teachers inspire their students to find out more on their own.
8. Spitting back information word-for-word is NOT learning; it’s memorizing.
9. Googling a topic and printing the first article is NOT research.
10. The Google-print method above is NOT a good use of technology – we did the same thing with books, and it was called copying.
11. Just because you use a computer (or any other device) does not mean you integrated technology.
12. Not succeeding is almost better than succeeding because you can learn so much from failure.
13. Saying things louder when students don’t understand you the first time does not help students learn.
14. Flipped teaching is nothing until you infuse a methodology that incorporates strong pedagogy that supports student engagement, motivation, and learning.
15. EdCamp is the best professional development. Ever.
16. CUE conferences, local and state ones, are pretty darned good too.
17. iPads are not really made for multiple users.
18. Shiny new technology does not improve bad pedagogy.
19. Great leaders challenge you, inspire you, and support you.
20. If you don’t respect your students, they will never respect you.
21. Sarcasm with students is just another way of insulting them in a passive aggressive way.  Don’t do it.
22. Tell your students that you support them and that you believe in them. Often.
23. Don’t ask me to teach computer keyboarding/typing instead of teaching kids how to create using technology.
24. Begin every class session with the thought:  What will my students CREATE today?
25. End every class session with reflection about the positive and negative aspects, and then FIX IT for next time!
26. COLLABORATE with other teachers; let students COLLABORATE with each other.
27. Twitter is your friend. Twitter is your mentor.  Twitter is your PLN.  Twitter is your Pinterest.  Twitter is support.  Twitter is sharing.
28. Follow lots of people on Twitter.
29. Teacher-centric teaching only helps the teacher; that’s why it’s called teacher-centered.
30. Students need to know you’re human. You’re not a robot.
31. You need to know students are human.  They’re not robots.
32. If we continue to teach without infusing critical thinking and creativity, we’ll continue to build a low-skilled, manual labor workforce.
33. Attending professional development in-services does not improve teaching; acting upon what you’ve learned improves teaching.
34. Not sharing good ideas is purely selfish.
35. Change is hard, but you certainly couldn’t live in your mother’s womb forever, now, could you?
36. If you truly are a life-long learner, you will be able to overcome challenge and change more easily than one who is close-minded to new ideas.
37. The Borg were right:  Resistance is futile.  It’s so much easier to accept change when you aren’t running away from it.
38. Kindergarten kids know more about using technology than some 8th graders.  That’s how much technology has changed and become infused with daily life.
39. If you make learning meaningful, not only will students remember it, they will want to learn more and more.
40. Giving letter grades is a waste of time.
41. A mixture of flipped classroom, project-based learning, problem-based learning, and collaboration baked in 100% strong pedagogy is the recipe to a successful year.
42. Letting your students teach can be a powerful experience for you and your students.
43. It is a small world after all.
44. Complaining about that boring in-service/presentation?  Ask yourself if you are viewed that way by your own students.
45. Giving students a wider audience motivates students to shine.
46. If you’ve ever played Angry Birds, you’ll see that getting one star will take you to the next level.  If you get two or three stars, it takes you to the same level, but there will be an additional game or reward for getting all three stars.  Why not treat report cards, grades, standards, and school in general like that?  If you meet the standard, you get one star.  If you do a little more, you can get two stars.  If you exceed it, you get three stars.  The best part:  no stars means you didn’t meet the standard and you have to try a different way to earn that one star to move on. (I can thank @alicekeeler for opening my eyes to this one.)
47. What is the best thing about teaching?  If you answered summer break, you might be in the wrong field.
48. Interactive whiteboards are passe, expensive, and teacher-centric for most classrooms.  Try using something that allows collaboration between students, like a 1:1 laptop or a set of interactive tablets.
49. Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for one day.  Teach a man to fish, he will get sick of eating fish everyday.  Inspire, innovate, and collaborate, and the man will be able to do anything he puts his mind to.
50. These fifty things I’ve listed are sort of like technology, ever-changing and evolving. Don’t expect me to believe all 50 of these in 5 years, 5 months, or even 5 weeks…

What have you learned?