Teachers: There Is No Need to Keep Your Heads Down

This is an interesting post by Damien Riley on teaching without recognition. How many times a teacher has felt like nobody cares about what he/she is doing and the only reward for him is a test score.

Think hard and comment. From Dynamite Lesson Plan:

Teaching has a lot of small "instant gratification" moments where you can assess kids right there in the lesson and see if they "get it." I have kids write on white boards and hold them up for me. At that point I can see the percentage of mastery. There is no better feeling in those moments than telling the class they have "100% mastery." They clap and say "yesssss." It’s really a great part of the job. Harder moments are after your kids score low and you don’t have a chance to assess again. In the past I have made the error of reviewing quickly and reassessing hoping for high results. The hard truth is that in those times, you must spend a length of time keeping your head down teaching without recognition. All the while you should hold on to the hope that your quiet labors will pay off in your students’ public scores.

Ahem...did we mention tests or assessments? Open to discussion.

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