Teaching Metaphor Revisited

As I reflect on my teaching experience and revisit the metaphor I created prior to teaching, I have realized that some of the ideas I included were right on target while others were undeveloped or underemphasized. I do agree that it takes a dedicated person to become a teacher (just the same as a gardener), one who enjoys working with children, watching them grow and learn, and takes pride in every student’s achievements. A teacher must create a comfortable and safe environment, organize the classroom, utilize properly leveled texts and content into the curriculum with differentiated design, and research many theories to apply in the classroom. All of these areas of concern are certainly ones in which I witnessed being a large part of the daily routine. However, I did not focus on Classroom Management in the area of behavior too strongly in the initial metaphor; probably because I did not think it would be a huge issue with those cute Kindergarteners. I probably learned more about this area than any other area. It is probably because it caught me off guard, but I’m glad I had the wake up call before my student teaching experience in the fall. The easy part is defining the KUDs, creating assessments, and sequencing instruction aligned with the objectives. The hard part was making sure all of the students stayed on task. As such, if I were to write another metaphor, I would certainly include focus on behavior management. Perhaps something like this:

A gardener has many parts to focus on. Deciding what those parts will be and how to use them is typically carried out in a step by step fashion. However, an event, such as a flood or a snow storm, would be cause for an alteration in the approach. As these events are often unexpected, the gardener must make quick decisions about how to save his plant(s). This is the part of gardening that is much like behavior management in teaching. It is often an unexpected, distracting event that can throw a teacher and the students off track. It is the strategies that the teacher applies that make a difference in the outcome (although I’m not sure if it ‘saves’ the student exactly, but it certainly ‘saves’ the teacher). Just like with the gardener, these strategies are learned over time and improve with experience.