Sept 10th Exit Slip

There were two concepts that were brought up in the Frank McCourt videos and the discussions that we had afterwards that really stuck out to me and left me with further questions.

The idea of not acting and of being honestly yourself when you enter classrooms as a teacher is the first thing that stuck out to me. This stuck out to me primarily because during the discussion I had after viewing the video the question of whether this approach leads to or prevents burnout came up. In some ways it seems possible that being completely authentically yourself in your teaching could lead to burnout since it might make it harder to maintain the boundaries you need to have with your students. It also might make it harder to protect your work life balance. On the other hand, not having to act like someone you are not could help mitigate burnout. The energy of having to keep up a facade that is not accurate to who you are could be something that leads to teachers burning out. The reason I believe these questions came up for me is because you hear a lot about the rates of burnout and the numbers of people leaving the profession being high in education. So, I think it is important to consider how we can teach in ways that are best for our students but that also help us avoid burn out.

The other concept that stuck out to me was the idea of meeting kids where they are at, letting them vent or be annoyed, and incorporating that into your lessons. I’m not sure how this can be applied to math. I think it could be beneficial to allow for time for students to discuss their frustrations and anxiety around math or the specific concepts they are learning. However, McCourt talked about doing this in ways that seemed to lead more directly to the students learning (i.e. he got them to tell him what they disliked about a book, so they were discussing the book). So, a question I have is how we could do this in math. Maybe having kids talk about their anxiety around a math concept could cause them to think more about that concept in a way that may help them learn. I would be curious to see if this would be the case.