you do sound like an awesome teacher Milly. I vow to appreciate my child's teacher!
In your teaching experience - do you find that your teaching style or technique varies from the older teachers?
Can I answer honestly?
I have found that the only main difference is confidence.
One of the teachers I work with has 16 years experience, yet she still finds things like assessment and planning creative activities difficult. She is however very confident at her teaching styles and methods. Albeit some of them are a little old (she likes children to sit at the table all the time and loves neat hand writing only).
I personally, would perfer my children to be having fun when they are learning. Sometimes I do have 'indoor voice learning' (which basically means get on with your learning quietly), however most of the time I encourage them to help each other with their learning. Peer work is fantastic, as it really helps consolidation of their learning, if they can teach another child in their own words than I have explained properly.
I am still finding thinsg out in terms of what works best for me. Like our current topic is 'food' and we are doing things like ' food around the world', making fruit salad, planting food (veg), this teacher had already nabbed all the globes and world maps as she knew she would need them in advance. As this is my first year teaching I was actually (pathetically) unaware that I needed this things on display from day one. So now, im hunting the school for books about food around the world and stuff like that. Still cant find a damn world map. Having said that though, I did show them 'Google Earth' and they were fascinated! The teacher with 16 years experience is too afraid to use 'Google Earth' I did tell her I had only just downloaded it myself, but she was adament they would be fine with just a globe. I am not saying having a globe wouldnt be good for the kids, however, we should try and keep up with what is current and things that they will have to get used to for the future.