Nice to see another teacher on Steemit. We need more teaching posts on STEEMIT!

I have been teaching since 1979 and went through academia studying how we learn and what breaks us through. Eventually, I got an Instructional Aide Certificate with a Phonics Major and Math minor and tutored on the staff and privately.

Two things changed by life--being hired as a tutor when I was being tutored (in Calculus) and teaching illiterate adults how to read and write. I found that I loved to teach and was fascinated with the energy of the one-on-one interplay of teacher and student and how fragile and magnificient it was at the same time.

When I went to the university I feel in love with Educational Psychology and how to get through to young kids. After getting my BA in Psychology and a minor in Education, I graduated with Elementary and Mathematics credentials, my student teaching at the elementary level (2,5,6,).
To be honest, most of my graduate work in Education was an insane waste of time. What I did find valuable were my classes in Educational Psychology, Curriculum, and theories on Teaching Reading. Some of my student teaching helped to realize the utter necessity of being flexible and having a mass of materials that could engage your students at will.

I have taught high school, middle school, elementary, and preschool.

Simply put, I think teaching well is the most important thing we can do to help our children--and everyone else--become the best they can be. Unfortunately, I see a lot of teachers who know their subjects very well and got degrees in teaching who are terrible at relating to children (esp. high school math teachers).

Simply put, a good teacher know exactly what it is like to not understand their subject and can help their students gain mastery in it by knowing the graduated sequence of lessons they need present and when to present them.

These days, I tell my private students, my goal is to teach myself out of a job.

D. Chance DeBoe
Creator of The Teacher's Alphabet