Periodically,  I wonder if I’m going too far in my classroom. I stare at the time line for the core curriculum. I copy down the skills to be taught then I create an excel  spread sheet to  track my progress at teaching those skills and finally I do away with the rest.

For that reason, I strongly believe that  days of spending six weeks on Julius Caesar “because all kids must know it” are over.  It is sardonically ironic that as educators, we often lack the most important facet of learning: reflection.

We educators  must acknowledge that we have failed class after class of students because we decide to be married to the content that we teach and not the skills necessary to produce informed and engaged citizens. Instead, we waste our time struggling over Elizabethan English when many of our kids can’t read contemporary English. Reflection would help us to see that an entire unit on Thoreau may not be  as relevant through our students’ eyes as it is through our own. Reflection would help us to understand, that the same principles and lessons we want our students to learn via Chaucer could be acquired through more  culturally relevant content. Reflection would help us to understand that the behavioral problems we face in our classrooms are a reaction to a lack of engagement that we help foster—with our everyday choices in teaching.  Reflection would force  us to listen to our students.