All great things must come to an end. I am sad that the journey of reading The Wild Card has come to an end. This book is full of teaching advice and creative ideas. I would highly recommend this book to teachers of all levels of experience. Below are the final thoughts on the book.
Identify your go-to thing and start there.
Chapter eight was all about authenticity. This chapter discussed the importance of being authentic with your students. I asked my mentor team what their go-to thing was. MK: I feel most confident when teaching leadership or doing leadership activities so I would say that is my go-to thing. This topic connected to the next point which discussed authentic creativity. It is okay to be inspired by someone else's creative ideas or methods of teaching. What is not okay is trying to be a carbon copy of another person. This will cause you to lose your authenticity with your students.
Push through barriers and overcome obstacles.
Chapter nine talked about the concept of grit. As an educator, it is important to have grit. This enables you to push through administrative obstacles, creativity obstacles, and many more.
Persist with and build on your creative efforts.
Chapter 10 discussed the importance of always being a student, never a master. It is essential as educators to always being moving forward and building on our skills. The book specifically talked about building on your creative abilities beyond your go-to thing. The common thread throughout the book has been to not be afraid of stepping outside your comfort zone. One section in this chapter talked about starting an after school program for students. This reminded me of FFA and I asked my mentor team if they noticed the similarity.MS: I think the after school programs talked about in the book have a similar goal of FFA, which is to get kids involved in the community and leadership.
Overall I have really enjoyed this book! I have so many notes throughout my copy, that I look forward to re-reading the book during times of need for advice or creative ideas.
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Olivia, you do an awesome job merging the themes of each chapter with your own reflections and highlights from your discussions with your team. They have given you some great advice on how to apply the concepts from the book to your journey as an ag educator. Being that this was also the NAAE summer book club book, did you check out what other ag educators had to say about it on CoP? You might want to check it out!
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