Monkeys are clever.
I wouldn’t say that I’m super clever when it comes to book smarts. Teaching IB has certainly raised my insecurities about my lack of precise knowledge of history.
And yet one thing I’m clever at… are comebacks. When students have something to say I can usually come back with a good comeback pretty rapidly. Maybe it’s because I taught at middle school for so long that I’m able to rapidly fire them back in a quick fashion to blow the kids away to oohs and ahhs.
Whatever the case, being adaptable is an essential trait of a teacher.
It’s interesting because I am now teaching some of the same units I taught while I was student teaching at Santiago High School. As a result, I have revived some of my earliest ever delivered lessons. The lessons are quite timely, with one of the first ones being the creation of memes for Nicholas II. In the end, it was a very “clever” lesson that students continued to show lots of creativity in.
