Why I Know So Little

Whatcha doing Mom?

“Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are those who think they know more than they don’t know.”  R. Verdi

The title of my blog comes from the above quote. I thought that the quote was quite appropriate because I really want to be a good teacher.  The longer I teach, I do realize how little I know, which is completely opposite of what I thought it would be like to be a teacher.  I remember being a student teacher and feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed.  I said to myself (numerous times), “This will be so much easier when I am a teacher.”  How wrong I was.  Teaching doesn’t really get easier.  It gets more involved every year.  Yes, choosing the methods to teach with and analyzing data becomes easier with practice, but students are so different from year to year that I feel like I have to relearn everything each year.  Is it just me or do other teachers feel the same way?

The great thing is that I’ve joined a few social networks in the past few months, such as Twitter.  From the people that I connect with, I have learned a lot.  I have:

• collected hundreds (at least) of sites that I have bookmarked and tried to remember to use in my lessons
• learned about VoiceThread and used it with my students  (See here)
• Skyped with another 4th grade class in New Orleans.  (Thanks Ms. Naugle)
• participated in a few webinars which have taught me even more
• started blogging with my students (Classroom blog)

These are just some of the many things I have learned to do thanks to my PLN.  However, I truly realize that these activities and ideas are just the tip of the iceberg.  There is so much more that I don’t know and I think/hope that it will always be that way.  I don’t ever want to stop learning.  My students need someone who is excited and passionate about new ideas.  Without that enthusiasm, my students would stop succeeding and so would I.