Jaques Pepin is a world renown chef, author, and culinary educator. He emphasizes with his students that their most important class is Technique. Students can learn the recipes, understand how to source the finest ingredients, and gather the most advanced equipment but technique is how they bring in all of those parts together.
In education, we can know the instructional theories, we can source the best curricula, and we can gather the latest and most advanced instructional materials but the success comes in using the appropriate techniques to make all of those things effective. The techniques you implement are honed and polished through repetition and practice.
The most engaging, rigorous reading curriculum becomes a collection of stories if its purpose is not applied with the appropriate techniques in the classroom.
When setting expectations in your classroom, you can have a beautiful poster that addresses all of the necessary elements and tell the students what each expectation is, but if those expectations are not taught, reviewed frequently, and referenced when reinforcing and correcting then it just remains a beautiful poster.
Like any skilled tradesperson, we are constantly perfecting our craft and taking the new things we learn to make what we do increasingly better.
