Blog Post #9

Mr. McClung started teaching in the fall of 2009. After his first year of teaching he decided to summarize his experience and what he has learned over the school year in a blog post. In his first post, What I've Learned This Year (2008-09) starts off with an important decision that Mr. McClung tried to model throughout his first year as a teacher, stay positive! Mr. McClung starts his summary off by talking about, how to read the crowd. He explains one of my worst fears as becoming a new educator, creating a mindset that was all about the teacher. Meaning, he was so focused on how he was being assessed by his superiors, that he lost track of the most important thing of all, his students. That is one of the things I fear most when becoming a teacher, that I will be so focused on what my superiors will be thinking that I will lose track of my students comprehending what I'm actually teaching. Mr. McClung's summary goes on to talk about how no lesson is perfect. The lesson you teach and the one you plan are always different. And how important it is to remember that when things go wrong, simply work with it and try to better the situation and ALWAYS do it with a smile! Another important thing that you are always to remember as an educator is to always listen to your students and show interest in what is going on with their lives. It is important to do so, so that you can build their respect. When Mr. McClung shared what one student of his wrote on a survey:


I know my teacher cares about me as a person when he
- Listens to what I say

This really touched my heart because he points out something extremely important that most teachers forget about. "Listen to your students because you may be the only person who does."
The last thing that Mr. McClung writes about is, it is never too late to change your way of thinking. As teachers we are continually in a learning environment so we should soak up all we can, we owe it to our students.

In Mr. McClung's latest summary, Version 4 (2011-12) he talks about two things that he has experienced throughout his fourth year as a teacher, the first thing that he talks about is how he was looked at by his peers. Over the years as a teacher Mr. McClung has never taken into consideration what his peers thought about him. He was always concerned about what his students and his superiors thought. He goes on and talks about how this thought drastically changed his mood for the worse throughout the school year. After getting over the anxiety that this thought has caused him he comes one conclusion, to stick to what has gotten him this far, which was making his students happy. As long as you stick to this rule and remember who you really work for then you should never divert down the wrong path. 

The second thing that Mr. McClung talks about in this reflection is, challenge yourself. Over the last three years Mr. McClung has taught social studies and Arkansas History. This year he really noticed that his core subjects that he taught started to become routine. He began to depend on old lesson plans and his creativity was starting to diminish. In other words he was becoming too comfortable with his teachings. Luckily he was presented with an opportunity to teach pre-AP civics and American Government. With teaching these new subjects it will challenge him to come up with better lesson plans and to be more creative than he was with social studies and Arkansas History. Mr. McClung stresses on how important it is to challenge yourself with new things so that you never lose sight of what is most important, which is to inspire your students and make them excited about learning and making them want to come to class.