The most important blog post in the edusphere so far this year

The art of teaching is essentially the art of motivation; if you can make them care, you can make them learn. Mrs. Bluebird gets to the heart of that idea in this must-read post, talking about her work with middle schoolers.

I'm the happyfun entertaining teacher on my grade level team. I joke with the kids, I'll toss in references to the shows they watch and the things they're interested in, I'll make silly faces and tell fantastic stories about aliens battling bears if it'll just make them tune in to what I'm doing. I think that I'm in direct competition with video games and television, even if they're not in the room--the way a 6-year olds mind can wander, I have to get them back again...and again...and again.

I wish it was as simple as presenting the information, guiding them through practice, and testing for mastery. That's what they made it sound like in ed school, after all. The reality is parent sending their kids to school with Mountain Dew in their lunchboxes after they've stayed up until 11:00 the night before watching this real cool movie called Saw III and Oh Man Mr. Ryan that was a totally awesome movie and Do you have any books about Saw? or Chucky? cuz that would be totally freaky!

With all the technology at my school, I've considered setting up a TV studio in the empty classroom next to mine and sending it to my projector via the wireless network. Mr. G TV could revolutionize how we teach 1st grade.