Becoming Free from Teacher-centered Teaching

Looking at the self and teaching from the perspective of the teacher alone is a "teacher-centered teaching". I have certainly practiced teacher-centered teaching. I have: 1) planned lessons with curriculum alone in mind [teach what I want to teach in the schedule I created], 2) been overly sympathetic to the plight of the slower students and lost sight of the goal of education, bringing everyone else down in the process [reducing student learning to the common denominator], 3) been short-sighted about the abilities of the students and limiting the scope of the lessons learned [assuming the relative difficulties of the materials based solely on my own concepts of what's easy and what's difficult], and