When I first started teaching they handed me a binder and said make sure to teach all the things that are in bold and get to as many as the others if you can. That was it. Other than some sound advice from my team leader, “don't leave marks”...and he didn't mean on the furniture(he of course was joking), I was pretty much on my own to do whatever I wanted. Since I had great discipline( I even won an award for it) they pretty much left me alone, leaving the occasional “let me know if you need anything” note left in my teacher mailbox. My first three years of teaching were like this....and my kids flourished. We didn't waste time learning how to take tests. We didn't take “practice” tests. We didn't spend time on learning study skills...we just learned. Some days we even wasted some teaching time having fun(which is highly frowned upon now a days). We will take Thanksgiving  for example. Now, I taught the older kids and my first 5 years I taught in an highly urban … [Read more...]