Teaching is an Art Form

Teaching is an Art form... not like a form of art, but an art form. Artist create through many different forms of media. The very definition of artist is...somebody who does something skillfully and creatively, that is exactly what I mean when I say, "teaching is an art form." When teachers engage students in their learning environment with guided, goal directed, and meaningful activities the learning process is transformed into an art form and not just memorizing rote facts for a test or quiz. Thus the teacher is an Artist, skillfully and creatively unlocking the mysteries of learning.

This link to "Preparing Tomorrow's Leaders" is good look into the ideology of "best practices."
I chose this blog out of the four possible to choose from because of the title, you never know what the students in your class will go on to do in life, so as a teacher, you must prepare them, ALL of them. Then I read the article and was somewhat surprised by the content, as if there was going to be some secret formula for teaching and preparing students. The article begins by the author explaining that she didn't want to be the "boring" teacher and recognized that students may not have learned all they could have. Then she became an Expeditionary Learning (EL) teacher and now the lessons were designed to prepare learners for the future by having them learn and practice problem solving now.

Some of the greatest problems learners face are verbal skills (reading, writing, vocabulary), especially in content areas that seem to speak and write in a different language. Science is one of the content areas that has a very distinct set of vocabulary terms and style for writing (reporting) your results. This teacher used a variety of approaches to literacy instruction to ensure the different learning styles of her students would be met. In a way the methods she used were in fact a formula for success. This teacher also realized the "Common Core State Standards" were not a deterrence to student achievement, but a tool to guide her toward student achievement. The literacy focus enabled the students to not only become better readers, but also helped them to shift from persuasive writing to report writing. Recognizing the need to make shifts in styles, like report writing in science, helps students to make the connection to style shifts and vocabulary context in other areas. Having muliple frames of reference can enable students to approach problem solving from muliple ponts of view and that's how you prepare the leaders of tomorrow.