There are so many teaching strategies and there is so little time to implement them all.  James Lang talks about how beneficial it is to change up our teaching so that we can „cast as wide a net as possible with your teaching strategies in order to gather up the most possible students“.  I enjoyed his approach to education much more than „Teaching to the Six“.  While I appreciate the idea that I will not reach every single student no matter how hard I try, I fear the logic behind „Teaching to the Six“ inevitable leads towards not even attempting to reach the rest.  Instead, I feel it is my responsibility as an educator to „cast as wide a net as possible“, yet I understand that some fish will simply elude my net and I cannot blame myself. 

In casting this wide net, I have found countless books on education and each book provides a wide variety of activities which address the multiple intelligences to engage as many students as possible.  All of these books at first seemed overwhelming as a new instructor.  I Thought that each lesson had to incorporate each type of activity and that I was somehow a poor instructor for not applying every activity to my lessons.  The more I teach, the more I have come to realize that these books are merely more than toolboxes, and that not every job requires every tool.  However, the more tools I have, the better equipped is am for more types of jobs.  The trick now is to learn when too use each of those tools the most appropriate way, and how to fit them to my own personal style.  

As educators we bring our personalities with us into the classroom.  Visiting  other instructors can in this way seem intimidating.  We get to glimpse into their own personal teaching style, and might feel discouraged that we do not use the same activities or  that we have a different kind of rapport with our students.  It is important to remember when we go into another classroom that although the instructor might have a different method of instruction, this does not mean that our own methods are flawed.  Just as Lang notes the different, yet equally beneficial preaching styles of his priests, it is important to remember that our teaching style can be just as effective even if it is different.  I even feel that attempting to adapt a style that does not fit your personality may negatively affect your effectiveness as an instructor.  

So the trick is then to figure out when and how to use these strategies we learn from our books and from each other.  Because so much of education relies on personality in the classroom, there is no way to learn this in a book.  Unfortunately, the only way to learn which techniques to use and how to implement them is through trial and error accompanied by immediate reflection and critique.  Through this process we can filter the information from the books and observations to find what fits best to our personality.  In this way we make these resources more manageable and cast the widest net possible to reach the most students.