Anytime I try something new in teaching I get nervous. Whether it was back when I was teaching first grade, or to my present day college courses and leading workshops for conferences around the world, I am always scared things will flop and I will look like a fraud. I will never forget the time my lesson on animal adaptations went awry when the blubber bags filled with lard busted and turned my classroom into a grease pit. It was a chaotic disaster that ended with 3 students having to call home for a change of clothes. I cried that afternoon. I felt shame. My perfectly crafted lesson was a mess. Literally.

The next few weeks after that lesson, I played it very safe until I got the itch, and courage, to try something new and exciting again. In order to give myself a boost of confidence that I needed for an adventurous lesson, I created this stop sign for my door. As you can see it says, “experimental teaching in progress!” There was something about this sign that gave me a bravery boost. It reminded me that so much of what we do in the classroom is experimentation. Experimenting with new ideas, new ways to deliver them, new ways to assess them, etc. Every year, every day, every moment of teaching is one experiment after another as we seek to connect the learning to learners who are changing every second of the day. Their moods are up, down, back, forth, and their brains, like ours, are often distracted by so many real world issues that can make teaching very difficult. Hanging this sign on my door reminded me of that fact and allowed me to feel much more freedom in the work.