I have experienced many years in the classroom as both student and instructor.  Years of experience in exceptional education has taught me that a single prescriptive action or strategy is not conducive to truly meeting students’ needs.  Exceptional education is not a one-size-fits-all approach to choosing worksheets and coloring pages to be distributed year after year.  But I have found it to be much closer to deep space-exploration.  It is a journey in which the instructor leaves a home planet with a fleet of star ships, each loaded with knowledge.  The teacher must navigate through each student’s mind, each child's inner cosmos.  While some areas of each galaxy have been individually charted on an IEP, the teacher must also explore uncharted territory in finding the best route for data to travel throughout each individual mind.  Like an ever-present connection to headquarters, available research-based findings help the teacher avoid pitfalls and wormholes in this unending process of exploration.
 

I believe in the power of fun and enjoyment, and believe that this is one of the most powerful ways to motivate students into desired actions.  Applying skills in pretend situations that students can relate to, playing games that require students to use high-order thinking, or helping a student to enjoy learning in some way is much more likely to yield desired results.  There are as many fun ways to learn as there are less interactive ways. 
 

When the knowledge I attempt to present does not fit into the mind in one direction, I turn it another direction.  If numeracy can’t fit into the mind as numeracy, then I put it inside a capsule of music and rhythm.  If it still won’t fit, I wrap it into the colors of a video.  If that doesn’t work, I tuck it into the fun of a game.  But I must continue, always trying to relay information, working with it until it clunks into place in the student’s brain. 
 

The world is the current title I am reading; so I am a life-long learner.  I am practically always learning some new language or study of math or science.  I have visited museums across the country by myself.  I pick up new ideas in energy conservation and technology through reading and watching TV.  These new ideas keep my mind active and processing; they keep me humble enough to learn and grow.
Teaching is not for everyone.  It is not for those who want to do something else.  Teaching is not to be thought of as the career for those who are not skilled enough to perform in a different industry.  Rather, it is its own industry, populated by those with patience, wisdom, knowledge, and reasoning.  It’s as serious a task as volunteering for military service, or performing emergency surgery, or running a race at night through untamed jungle.  But it is the life I have chosen of my own free will.  I have volunteered myself for this race against the speed of cognitive development, this race in which I must make up for the lack of each individual.  I must fill the gaps in a vulnerable dam that is the student’s mind, a levy that is continually pounded by life’s ever-deepening sea.  I must fill them all with self-substantial mastery of concepts, self-evaluating perfection of skills; for these are the only things that will resist the flood of life and the expanse of time.  There are so many gaps to fill: holes in object permanence keep me from filling gaps in symbols;cracks in transitivity keep me from fixing weaknesses surrounding inference; fissures in social interaction prevent me from stuffing some of the holes in social skills.  There are so many.  But I must try to fill them all.  Some are too far away to reach.  I cannot fill in the gaps created by an environment I cannot change.  Nor can I fill any openings of the past.  I cannot recreate the shape of a mind.  I cannot fill every need.  But I must at least try.  Regardless of their number, or their distance from my reach, I must try to fill in all these gaps.  And I must work quickly; for every moment I work, I am watching an impenetrable tide rise, always ascending towards a higher level Piagetian depth, towards another year of age, another level of solidification.These minds, these personalities, are ever-changing and require an attentive, thinking mind to orchestrate learning.  Teaching is a serious affair.  Still, in light of this student-life-altering responsibility, I have taken upon myself this teacher-life-altering commitment.  Teaching is definitely not for everyone.  But experience has proven that it is most definitely for me.