The Change of Education needs to consider the Teacher

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosz/2040577615/ 

I've been reading all these different manners of changing your educational practises, from Backward Planning, to Activating Students' Creative Thinking, and the list goes on.  With the changes in our school of "No Marks", "technology implementation", "Using Web 2.0 Tools", "Eportfolios", and many more that we are exploring, we all need to remember one thing.  Even though one of these methods looks great and alive (The exploration in our Physical Education Department is absolutely fabulous - tweet Ryan Neufeld - @teacherneuf and Jeff Vaughan - @CptKudos  for more information), this doesn't mean it will work for everyone.  Not all teachers are the same, we may have similar training, and have gone to the same classes, but the personality of the teacher does come through somewhat, in some way, or manner.  This means that not all methods of teaching will work the same for every teacher due to this personality.

The great news is that if every teacher is different from the next, students won't get use to one style of learning, and this is a reality of life - no two things are the same (look at the picture - really look - and tell me if you see the exact Flamingo twice - look at their coloring). 

So as teaches this is what we normally do  (Sorry for speaking for a group of teachers but after 25 years of teaching in a number of schools and acting as a computer facilitator of learning technology - I've seen a lot of styles) - we take what we like the most out of every learning experience and we use that.  Sound familiar?  So do students.  We do not criticize the different manners in which a student learns, we try to instigate a number of ways of learning in our lesson plans, try to touch all (or as many as well can) of the different ways students learn.  Why can't we accept the same of teachers?  We learn different, we use what we've learned, to the best of our ability.  Some of us learn quickly, some of us take more time to contemplate things, but in the end, almost all teachers have the same goal, to be the best that we can.

Think about it.  How much do you use what you've learned compared to a colleague?