Self Awareness: The Most Substantial Tool in Teaching

         As a budding educator, I have learned a plethora of useful theories of pedagogy, affective methodologies of implementing those theories into classroom curricula and I've even journeyed through the mind of a student and conducted research on the three styles of learning: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, as well as the Multiple Intelligences Theory which states that students have one or more of eight different talents that experienced teachers can utilize in order to facilitate the learning process. The theory states that every student is intrinsically gifted with; verbal linguistic, bodily kinesthetic, musical rhythmic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, logical mathematical, natural or visual spacial intelligence, that would allow him/her to easily grasp concepts that might have seemed to have been convoluted prior to the awakening of their slumbered learning skills.
        All of this knowledge will be very conducive in my teaching practice, however, the most formidable discipline that I have ever studied, is discipline itself! Who am I? Why do I want to teach? And most importantly, what are my weaknesses? Reverting to my background in economics, I conducted a SWOT(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) Analysis on myself and was faced with a reality that was conspicuous, yet frequently neglected. The biggest problem that I currently grapple with is procrastination, and instead of procrastinating to find a solution for the procrastination, I "abruptly" went on a treasure hunt in pursuit of a remedy for this pestilence. My journey led me to a book called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy which offers an array of superlative advice on subduing the deliberate deferment of important tasks.

***FRUITS***

• "Decide exactly what you want to accomplish in each area of your life"(7)
• "Plan every day in advance"(13)
• "Apply the Pareto Principle also known as the 80/20 rule to everything"in other words if you have 10 things on your daily itinerary, two of those tasks will result to more than the rest of the items put together, so procrastinating will in essence lead to shortcomings. Also you (I) should resist the temptation of finishing the easiest tasks first. Eating a frog means accomplishing a feat that is not easy, but doing it because it will get me closer to where I need to be. (20)
• "Long term thinking often improves short term decision making"(27)
• Go back to the basics of A,B,C's "The power of this technique lies in its simplicity..."An A item is defined as something that is very important, something you must do or else face serious consequences etc....(32)