What I've Learned This Year

Today I read a very informative blog called, "What I've Learned This Year". This blog is written by Mr. McClung, a first year teacher. He goes into detail about the things he learned his first year of being and elementary school teacher. I found many of his suggestions and comments to be very helpful.
Mr. McClung mentioned that many teachers forget to make their lesson plans appropriate for their students. This is a huge problem, we as teachers need to make sure our plans are made with the students in mind. In addition, he says that teachers get so caught up in what their superiors think and seem to forget that their audience consists of children. I can see how and why many teachers would do this, but we need to keep the most important people in mind, and that is our students.
Another great teaching tip he gave was to be flexible. We need to remember that our plans are not always going to be perfect. In fact we may have to change our lesson plans completely due to unexpected events, you just never know in an elementary classroom.
The most valuable information I got from this blog was to be reasonable. He states that we as teachers need to be reasonable with our students. We do not need to expect them to be perfect. Most importantly we cannot expect every child to be able to accomplish the same task and receive the same grade. We as teachers are going to wish for all our students be make straight A's but we have to realize before we get into the classroom that it is not going to happen.
Overall, I learned a lot from Mr. McClung's blog. It was great to read feedback from someone who has experienced it.