Day 322: Approach (Your Unique Method and Style)

There's this moment in every teacher's career where you realize you've been cosplaying someone else's teaching style. For me, it happened at 2:47 PM on a Tuesday when Marcus said, "Mrs. B, why are you talking like Mrs. Henderson?"

Mrs. Henderson was the veteran teacher next door. Master teacher. Teacher of the year twice. I'd been observing her, taking notes, copying everything. Her calm demeanor. Her precise language. Her structured transitions. I'd even started wearing cardigans like her.

But here's the thing: I'm not Mrs. Henderson. I'm chaotic good to her lawful good. I'm a storyteller where she's an explainer. I'm jazz hands where she's quiet intensity. And in trying to be her, I'd become this weird teaching robot that nobody recognized, including myself.

The approach revelation came when I stopped trying to teach "correctly" and started teaching like me. Not unprofessional me, not lazy me, but authentically me. Turns out, your teaching approach isn't just about methods—it's about the intersection of who you are and what your students need.

My approach is controlled chaos with a storytelling backbone. I can't help it. Everything becomes a narrative. "Okay, so the comma is desperately trying to tell the reader to pause, but the reader is rushing through like it's Black Friday at Target..." My kids roll their eyes, but they remember. The stories stick.

Mrs. Henderson would never anthropomorphize punctuation. She'd explain it clearly, logically, systematically. And for her kids, that works brilliantly. But my kids? They need the drama. They need the comma to have feelings and motivations. They need the semicolon to be the fancy cousin who shows up to family dinners overdressed.

Finding your approach is like finding your voice as a writer. At first, you imitate others. You try on different styles. You sound like whoever you read last. But eventually, if you're lucky and brave enough, your actual voice emerges. And it's usually weirder than you expected.

My approach involves way too many pop culture references. I can't explain anything without connecting it to movies, memes, or TikTok trends. "Inference is like when you see someone's Spotify Wrapped and you can tell everything about their mental state." Is this in any teaching manual? No. Does it work for my kids? Absolutely.

But here's the crucial part: your approach has to serve learning, not just entertainment. I spent a year being "fun teacher" and realized my kids loved me but weren't learning enough. The stories were overwhelming the substance. So I had to refine my approach—keep the narrative style but make sure it was always in service of understanding, not just engagement.

The approach crystallized when I started using what I call "method acting teaching." When I teach perspective, I literally become different characters. Not costumes (okay, sometimes costumes), but voice, posture, attitude. "Now I'm reading this paragraph as the villain. Now as the hero's mom. Now as someone who's never heard this story." It's ridiculous. It's also incredibly effective.

Yesterday, teaching voice in writing, I became five different writers. Formal academic me (glasses pushed up, serious face): "The precipitation occurred at approximately fifteen hundred hours." Casual blogger me: "So it rained around 3, and like, everything got soaked." Poetry me (dramatically gesturing): "The sky wept silver tears upon the thirsty earth."

The kids were dying laughing, but more importantly, they got it. "Oh, so voice is HOW you say something, not just what you say!" Exactly. My dramatic approach made an abstract concept concrete.

But approach isn't just about delivery—it's about design philosophy. My approach assumes kids are naturally curious but easily distracted. So everything I design has what I call "curiosity hooks" every three minutes. A weird fact. A surprising connection. A mystery to solve. It's manipulative? Maybe. But it works with who my kids are.

I discovered my approach really solidifies around certain non-negotiables. Mine are: everyone thinks, everyone shares (somehow), and mistakes are data, not failures. Every lesson I plan has to honor these. If it doesn't, it's not my approach, no matter how good the lesson looks on paper.

The vulnerability factor in approach matters more than I expected. My approach includes admitting when I don't know something. "Huh, great question about why 'island' has that silent 's'. Let me research that tonight." Mrs. Henderson would never not know. But my kids seem to learn better from someone who's learning alongside them.

Last month, a student teacher observed me and said, "Your teaching style is so... random." She didn't mean it as a compliment. But then she watched the kids' engagement, saw their test scores, noticed how they talked about reading outside of class. "How does random work?" she asked.

It's not random—it's responsive. My approach is like jazz. I have a structure, a progression, key concepts that must be hit. But within that, I'm improvising based on what the kids give me. Marcus makes a connection to Minecraft? We're going there. Sarah mentions her grandmother? That becomes our example. The approach is flexible within structure.

The mistake I see new teachers make is adopting someone else's approach wholesale. They buy the teacher Instagram aesthetic. They copy the Pinterest classroom. They use someone else's catchphrases. And it feels fake because it is fake. Kids can smell inauthenticity from miles away.