Linear

Principals tend to be threatened by things they don't understand or can't control because they're more dependent upon the person, not a system.

Chapter 12: Teaching, Gender, and Curriculum by Sara Freedman

I am, by nature, a linear thinker. My thoughts flow from left to right, from cause to effect, from manipulating variables to measuring outcomes. This means that I was, by nature, appreciated by my former principal, also a linear thinker. I observed some of the other teachers and judged them to be disorganized, too 'big-picture,' and failing the students for not teaching specific skills.

And I've recently realized that I was very wrong.

Lately, my opinion has been changing to believe that linear thinking has little to no place in the classroom. People are not linear. You cannot simply change one variable in two different classrooms and expect it to have the same effect. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm going to focus more on the results of this realization. Although I'm very glad that I have a new way to think about teaching, one that is much more open, idealistic, and hopeful, I'm feeling pretty bad about what went on when I was teaching. 

For one thing, the focus of my classroom was on the mastery of skills. During my first year of teaching, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and so the students and I read things and talked about them, and then we wrote things and talked about them. We enjoyed each others' company in our discussions. We had fun, and we laughed. During the next three years, my classroom was focused on skill mastery. I attempted to get teaching down to a science -- if I plan out every step, determine exactly how everything will be scaffolded, and know precisely how I will measure it (over and over again), then I will be a good teacher. Don't get me wrong, in some ways, I still think those ideas are solid--but I don't think that they should be the basis for curriculum. Teaching is not a science, it's an art, and it's informed by human interaction, not numbers. 

If I went back into the classroom today and had to choose what type of teacher I would be, I would be the teacher I was during my first year. I was confused and my grades were a "cloud of mystery" (to borrow Pete's phrase), but I think that my students developed a stronger love of reading and writing than they did in my subsequent years. Of course, I have no data to back that up -- and I wouldn't want any because it would be in direct opposition to everything I'm saying here.