#11

As I have started reading the Classroom Instruction that Works book, I've found that there are many methods to do everything. There are pros and cons to all of them and a lot of deciding simply has to do with personal preference and style. Studies show that there are some methods that work better overall in some scenarios, but the significance is not very strong. What I take from this book is that as long as you know what you are doing and you are consistent and have a strong desire to improve the lives of your students, you will be a successful teacher. A lot of the strategies given in this book are contradictory to each other, so I will have to figure out which few I want to implement in my own classroom to be the most effective teacher I can be. I thought the section on Homework and Practice to be particularly interesting. It opened my eyes to why I had to have so much homework in High School. Each teacher was trying to get me to spend the recommended 50-60 minutes a day working on that subject outside of school. With six classes, I spent a lot of time outside school working on school work. If I understood as a student the reasoning behind the homework, I feel like I would have been less resentful of it at the time.