I don't believe in teaching a lot of content to students just so they can know stuff for another class, whether it be another class in high school or another class in college. I don't believe that not knowing content for future courses handicaps students as much as we think it does.I believe in teaching students the thinking skills they'll need to understand and make sense of any content they encounter. Teach them how to fish, not just to recall how many, what species, and the differences between the fish.
I don't believe in cookbook labs where students are led down a path to conclusions already made for them, taking all of the thinking right out of it.
I believe in teaching students to think like scientists by having them do science and do their own analysis, draw their own conclusions, and use the science to support those conclusions.
I don't believe in teaching everything in a textbook chapter and using all of the textbook-created resources to go with that chapter.
I believe in selecting essential concepts aligned to standards and designing relevant learning experiences so students can reach real understanding of those concepts and the connections between those concepts.
I don't believe in generating a test from an electronic test bank that is filled with questions that assess random minutiae or, in the worst cases, nothing at all.
I believe in summative assessments aligned to student-friendly objectives, where both students and teachers have a clear picture of what mastery will look like on those assessments. I believe in assessing what matters
I don't believe in finding out that students haven't understood the necessary concepts until after the summative assessment.
I believe in formatively assessing students often in order to help them figure out what's broken in their knowledge and giving them a chance to fix it before speeding on to the next concept.
I don't believe in rigidly following a pacing guide or curriculum map, and I resent being forced to do that.
I believe in letting students have the time to achieve deep understanding along with the time to fix any broken knowledge at the time it is discovered to be broken.
I don't believe in letting students fail.
I believe in filling their toolbox with tools they can use to learn and fix broken knowledge.
I don't believe in the lecture-lecture-cookbook lab-lecture-lecture traditional science teaching format. I did that for years. It doesn't work to achieve real understanding.
I believe in designing learning experiences where students are active learners and participants in the process of learning (so they can get acquainted with the process of learning, something they can't do when they're being talked at most of the time).
I don't believe in letter grades, percentages, or ranking and sorting students.
I believe in a scoring system that gives students and parents honest feedback as to what concepts students have mastered and how far away they are from mastering others.
I don't believe in the "Well, I taught it and if they didn't learn it that's not my fault" mentality. In fact, I find that attitude pretty much akin to educational malpractice.
I believe that all students can learn, and they don't all learn they way that I learn - and I have to plan for that when designing learning experiences.
I believe that real learning is work. And so is real teaching.
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