Is Potential Ours?

I love my reader and wished I had more time to spend exploring more bloggers' work. However, today I was able to spend some time exploring and felt (yet again) that wow! sensation of knowing that I can, that I need to, make a shift in my teaching as I have with my learning. From Cool Cat Teacher's Blog my Aha! moment began.

What a motivational video produced by kids for us, their teachers. Makes me ready to shift it up a whole lot. What a great job they did touching on something many educators seem to forget--their capabilities.


As if that wasn't enough, Mrs. Patterson, a first grade teacher that has her students blogging, replied with a link to the following video:

It is just amazing what students are capable of doing. They don't get there when we don't believe in them. They don't get there when we limit their creativity. They don't get there when we limit ourselves to the "test" or to past practice or even best practice. They get there when we start teaching them how to learn, how to reach their potential, how to be the best they can be.

All of this brought me back to the first blog that I found in my reader today. Clarence Fischer's blog Remote Access blog entry called Tinkering is both enjoyable and motivational. He displayed the following video as he reflected on the various posts that encouraged the notion of tinkering as vital to fostering lifelong learners.

Imagine becoming that one teacher that allows students to learn on their own because they want to learn. Imagine their future in education. How do you learn best? I certainly have found that with the technology that I have become exposed to through Jeff Utecht's course I have found that by doing, experimenting, and taking a chance I learn best. When I can tinker, I will learn.