Insanity

is doing the same thing again and again, expecting the results to change.

If that is true, then perhaps the fact that classrooms are operating the same way now as they were 100 years ago shows that we may be going insane.

Some things have to change. Classrooms cannot stay the way they have always been. And indeed, they are changing, because they are being filled with students that they’ve never had before, each and every year.

Each year, we teachers receive a new group of students that we are responsible for. We have a vision of how the year will go. We think:

• We must teach them.
• We must guide them.
• We must inspire them!

But how will we do it if we stay the same? Our students are changing each year, and the world they are growing up in is changing, too.

We need to make ourselves ever-changing instructors, then, if we wish to fulfill our goals.

Too Much of a Good Thing

When we combat a problem, we are usually looking for “it.” We are looking for the one magical thing that is going to work in every situation. We are looking for the golden ticket that never has to change because of how awesome it is.

When we find it, we say, we will never go looking for anything else ever again. It will work for us, over and over, no matter the class we have.

But there’s a problem with that. You see, there is no golden ticket. There is no one way to teach that will work for all groups of students. Thinking that there is will only lead to heartache—and eventually, insanity.

As I stated before, your class is going to change each year. The one thing that you found worked for your group last year may not work for this year’s students. So, you will need to diversify.

The interesting thing about diversity is, it always leads to a larger view of humanity. It leads us to look at perspectives that we never would have considered. It brings us closer to a wholesome approach to learning.

Therefore, a good practice we can adopt is the one that takes us outside of what is comfortable and makes us look around. We need new ideas, and that is how we will get them.

Trying Something New

To try something new in the classroom will be unsettling at first. You will feel very vulnerable, because you don’t know if it will work as well as what you normally do. But think of it this way:

If you always order hamburgers for lunch, but have heard that Chinese food is really good, you will struggle to decide whether or not to try Chinese food for the first time. But if you do try it, the result may be that you like Chinese food even more than the burger you ate every day until then.

Trying a new strategy in the classroom is just like that. You’ve heard what others are saying about it, you’ve looked into it yourself, and it sounds like it will be good. So the only thing left to do is try it.

If it works out, great! You’ve now found a new way that you like more than what you were doing.

If it doesn’t work, great! You’ve now ventured out and tried something new and gained important experience.

Failure is an option. In fact, it is the only option if we are going to become better teachers.

Without failure, there is no proof that you are trying to improve.

Deep Culture

In the world, there are so many different cultures, with different opinions and different practices. And it’s great! But that diversity can quickly turn to misunderstanding, causing people to take unnecessary offense.

To prevent this, we need to make sure our students have an eye of understanding.

If we can teach them that different isn’t bad, we can open their minds to see more connections, more possibilities, and have a greater understanding.

We need to teach them that doing it their own way is good, but that if they want to become better at what they do, they need to look around and see how others are doing it, to gain another perspective.

Integration

*A note to the teacher:

This is not justification for merely teaching random facts about Cinco de Mayo, Mardi Gras, French cuisine, or Japanese Animation.

Those things are only surface-level cultural ideas, and will not produce the life-changing results you want in your students.

If you want to provide meaningful experiences for your students about culture, you will need to go deeper than that.

For example, you could have a conversation about whether students remove their shoes when they walk inside their home or not. Then, you could talk about how there are cultures where it is considered incredibly rude to wear shoes indoors.

After that, you could hold a discussion on why that culture may believe that it is wrong to enter a home with shoes on.

This allows the students to walk in another culture’s shoes (or lack thereof). They have now seen the world from a new point of view.

The more you take your students on these philosophical journeys, the greater their capacity to understand the world—and people—around them will become.

Comment Below!

• Are their times you feel afraid/uneasy to try something new?
• What cultural scenario would you take your students through to help them widen their horizons?
• What is a piece of your “deep culture” that you would like others to try and understand?

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