Teaching Tip #117

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #117

To this, I say Amen!

Now before Mrs. Jago lets me have it, I am not anti-worksheet.  I am simply anti-busy work.  Certain subjects need repetition - that is, after all, how I managed to succeed in one of my favorite college classes, College Algebra.

So when worksheets reinforce vital skills, I’m all for them.  But I know I’ve doused plenty of my students’ enthusiasm for To Kill a Mockingbird when I hand them a crossword puzzle not to reinforce learning but to keep them busy and to have something to put in the grade book to justify what we did that day.

I was a bad teacher.  I’m willing to admit it.