A Teacher’s Hat: The Mission
By: Kriti Khare
Tags: Growth, Invitations, Collaboration, Education, Letters

The other day, I asked myself why I wanted to be a teacher. I realized it is because I never want to stop learning. Throughout my education, I have taken courses in adolescent psychology, computing science, math, curriculum design, laws and ethics, inclusive education, and assessment, to mention the broadest topics. There are many practices I have noticed in my university classrooms and during volunteer work at schools and so much of what I have seen excites me and drives me to learn more.

Teaching and Learning; Photo by mrsdkrebs on Visual Hunt / CC BY

I have started reading more and found a new zeal to research and critically analyze the many strategies and ideas I see around me. They are hard to keep track of and I cannot pretend to know everything. Hence, through A Teacher’s Hat on Medium, I have started to build a place to keep all the ideas together with the help of my Professional Learning Network. I learn from the teaching community in every interaction and I hope that the articles here provide actionable ideas to teachers as well.

The Mission

My vision for A Teachers’ Hat is for it to be a place of collaboration such that the ideas and strategies shared can be adapted by all teachers. Sometimes the strategies might apply to a certain subject but I often find other subjects inspiring me to include techniques I had not thought applied to me, to my own practice. The focus is on giving the reader (a teacher) the skills to be able to at least have a barebones idea of the strategy and to implement it in their class as soon as possible with some additional resources since articles can never do justice to the intricacies of techniques. I hope that the reader gets to know not only what the technique is and why it is useful but also how it can be implemented in the classroom.

As an avid reader myself, my reading list for teaching and education related books is long. I learn best by writing and thinking deeply about how I can implement ideas I am learning about in my own classroom. A Teacher’s Hat is a place of reflection of the works me and my fellow writers have engaged in.

We run a book club where we read a book together as a community. You are welcome to join us too!

Here’s the link to join:

November 2018 book — The way of mindful education by Daniel Rechtschaffen.

Contribute

I encourage you to come join me in this venture to learn as much as we can about teaching and learning from each other. Is there a book you would like to recommend, a strategy you would like to share, an experience from your own classroom, anything that you feel might help a teacher?

I am always happy to welcome new contributing writers, whether they are preservice teachers, teaching assistants, research fellows, veteran teachers, professors, or educators, that are committed to sharing their experiences and to advancing the field of education. A more personalized letter can be found here:

You may choose to actively participate as a writer in an ongoing capacity, or submit an article as a one-time guest or make suggestions for topics you would like to read about. You can always comment on the articles and engage in the conversation on Medium and on Twitter.

Contact me using this form or through social media. I would love to hear from you!

I hope that we can create a great learning environment for our students and most importantly, I hope we can all share and easily access the tricks we have in our teacher’s hat, because that is a hat, we never take off. #WeveGotThisTogether #Teacher2Teacher

The Team

I am proud to say that A Teacher’s Hat has expanded from a single writer to ten active writers who have diverse backgrounds!

Give us a shout on Twitter or link to us on Medium! :)