As our bellies bulge with excess calories this week as a result of the Thanksgiving holiday, I share an opportunity to fill our minds with new words. The author of Wordsmith.org, linguaphile Anu Garg, created a program that randomly displayed rare words and their definitions/etymologies daily for himself. He has been sharing his words with the world for 13 years.

You can signup to receive his A.Word.A.Day newsletter in your email inbox, or purchase his new book, The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words. One of my favorite aspects of this website is the fairly low-tech appearance of it. It doesn’t have any of the flashy Web 2.0 technology that we have become accustomed to on other useful sites, and that allows it to be easily viewable on any device.

I can think of dozens of ways to use this in my classroom, whether its a formal lesson or just as a warm-up activity. The power of vocabulary-building exercises has been proven time and time again, and we could all do a bit more with the help of the Wordsmith.

I was chosen this week to be the Teacher of the Year for my school. While I appreciate the honor and sincerely feel humbled at being recognized in this way by my peers, I don’t know why they chose me.

Yes, I am a popular teacher. I connect with students on a personal level, and I crack jokes as often as I can. And, yes, I conduct weekly “Techie Thursday” micro-sessions of staff development without any compensation. But, does that make me an excellent teacher?

I argue that the only way to know who is the best representative of teaching excellence in our school is to observe our fellow educators in their practice. We need to get into each other’s classrooms and watch what happens there. This would benefit all of us in so many ways that go beyond Teacher of the Year. We can learn so much about what is effective (and what’s not) by seeing it done.

Why doesn’t this happen already? The reasons are varied. Logistically, it can be nearly impossible to find “free time” to go into another teacher’s classroom, what with team meetings, grade-level meetings, departmental meetings, professional learning community meetings, planning, and grading. Many teachers, though, have more personal reasons. I find that many of my colleagues believe that they deserve some sort of professional privacy. They’re wrong. If we want our vocation to be given the respect that it deserves, we need to behave like other professionals. Doctors, for example, learn from experienced physicians and surgeons through observation and critical review of their own practice. We could do well to follow suit.