Category Archives: marker

I admit it.  I was a goofy teacher.  Kids never knew for sure whether I was serious, joking, or halfway in-between.  I worked for hours sometimes preparing the chalkboard, or later, white board, for the days lesson, putting key points and reminders up in cartoon form.  I used characters, symbols, jokes, pokes, and silliness to get the idea across.  Principals and others who evaluated my teaching always wondered why my classroom sounded so raucous and wild from outside the door with kids laughing, music playing, and sometimes desks being shuffled and shoved around the room.  The perfect-classroom-is-a-quiet-classroom crowd always hated my teaching style.  But the ones who came in and participated, got involved in paying attention and watching the kids interact with the content loved it.  I am not bragging.  My lesson plans were a mess filled with booby traps, explosions waiting to happen, un-intended consequences (also called teachable moments), and brainstorms that threatened at any moment to electrocute somebody with lightning.  Teaching is a dangerous business.  But the point is, there is an art to teaching that brings out the artist in you.  I offer the following evidence;

I admit it.  I was a goofy teacher.  Kids never knew for sure whether I was serious, joking, or halfway in-between.  I worked for hours sometimes preparing the chalkboard, or later, white board, for the days lesson, putting key points and reminders up in cartoon form.  I used characters, symbols, jokes, pokes, and silliness to get the idea across.  Principals and others who evaluated my teaching always wondered why my classroom sounded so raucous and wild from outside the door with kids laughing, music playing, and sometimes desks being shuffled and shoved around the room.  The perfect-classroom-is-a-quiet-classroom crowd always hated my teaching style.  But the ones who came in and participated, got involved in paying attention and watching the kids interact with the content loved it.  I am not bragging.  My lesson plans were a mess filled with booby traps, explosions waiting to happen, un-intended consequences (also called teachable moments), and brainstorms that threatened at any moment to electrocute somebody with lightning.  Teaching is a dangerous business.  But the point is, there is an art to teaching that brings out the artist in you.  I offer the following evidence;