Pushing Yourself Outside of Your Comfort Zone
Today I was listening to a special podcast by Linda E. Allen on the Toastmasters web site. She was talking about the importance of doing things that push us outside of our comfort zone. Although she was referring to public speaking and leadership, I was thinking of how it applies to teaching. When being a teacher for a few years, it is easy to get ourselves into teaching the same courses over and over again and doing things we feel very comfortable with… As much as it might be attractive for some, it also sometimes means that we do not invest as much effort in our work as we should and as a result we become “duller” – not as sharp at what we do… I think Linda’s ideas are very applicable to teaching. If we want to be the best we can – we have to do things we are not as good as – but we have to experience the learning process and make ourselves as best as we can. So why I am writing about it in my science education and technology blog? I do it, because exploring new technologies is for many of us – pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones. I think it is important for that reason (the process of learning new things applied to teaching) as much as it is important for the reason of using new technology in teaching for the sake of improving our students’ learning.