One lunch-period, the vice-principal at our practicum school sat down with us (meaning my practicum cohorts and I, not the royal we) and asked us to come up with a motto that described part of our teaching philosophy.

That’s mine, that title right there. Teaching is learning spelled differently. It could totally go on the back of a fancy-schmancy business card.

And, having completed the bulk of my lessons for my practicum (I am squee-ing inside oh-so-much) I’ve learned two major things about myself that I am documenting here for memory’s sake.

1. I don’t need as much pressure as I thought I did to work. I used to think that I was a person who worked under pressure, because I enjoyed procrastinating and then banging out papers like nobody’s business. After having worked off a lot of assignments though (and to be honest, not all of them were ridiculously exhilarating) I realized that I don’t need pressure, I just need a really good reason. Like teaching. I’ve realized that teaching, and things related to teaching,  motivate me to work like nothing else before. It’s a very interesting high.
2. I’m much, much more creative when I am in the physical act of writing. If I’m sitting down in front of a screen with nothing on my mind, there’s very little that’s going to happen. The exception seems to be blogging. Apart from writing on this site though, I can do so much more when I put a pen to paper, a pencil to foolscap or even a marker to a whiteboard. A dry-erase marker, of course. I think it’s for this reason that I’ll always be a lifelong proponent of the physical act of writing, because there’s something different about the thought process that goes on as we type or swype compared to the thought process that goes on as we write.

I’m excited for the near future career because there’ll be so much more to learn, not only about myself, but about others’ work habits as well. So having said that, I want to ask you (or you can ask yourself): What do you know about your work habits? What have you learned recently?