Blog Post #9 (Due 3/24)

Posts By Mr. Joe McClung

Mr. Joe McClung has taken it upon himself to start a blog after his many years of teaching and is giving advice to future teachers. He writes a new post on the last day of school every year just to summarize what new things he has learned from that year. I chose to read the “What I Learned” posts from 2010-2012; this would be his third and fourth years.
In his third year post he told us it is important to remember what the reason we started teaching was; that reason was the children. He felt that the children were his main focus when it came to teaching and that this is how every teacher should work and feel about the children in their own classroom. He shares that children in the classroom will struggle and that we as teachers should guide them and not necessarily take over their problem that we should just help them to do better. Being on the outside with your coworkers isn’t a bad thing according to McClung; he says that he himself is an outsider at work but that he doesn’t care how his coworkers feel about him. He is more concerned with building a relationship with his students and trying to make their learning environment a better place. He is an outsider, and proud because he knows he is making a difference in his classroom for the children.
His fourth year post was a lot different from the others. It was shorter but it was stronger, it got straight to the point and got his message across. There were two main points and the first was “You gotta Dance with Who You Came to the Dance With.” He was again telling us readers that it is ok to not fit in with your coworkers and that you should not care what they think, and not to change who you are just because your peers look at you differently. There are only two people whose opinions should matter when it comes to the work place, the children and your superiors. His second point was was pretty blunt and simple; “Challenge yourself!” I could relate to this point much more than the others I read. I have been the victim of the boring classroom, where teachers sit and don’t push the students to do their very best, or give the classroom any fun exciting things to look forward to, it is just the same boring monotonous stuff that is dreadful to sit through day after day. He tells us that this is just unacceptable, we can’t get comfortable with teaching the same stuff day in and day out. He says we have to challenge ourselves as well as the students, we have to push them and get them excited to come to class. His goal is to ensure that his students enjoy the classroom and not resent school like he did as a child and these blog posts were written to help other future teachers do the exact same thing.