< Looking back |
Looking Forward > |
The ten days over the summer that introduced us to the MSU WIPRO Fellowship, were jammed pack with so much learning. Every day I walked away thinking to myself, “Wow, today was great, I wonder what tomorrow will bring,” and also, “this is the most thoughtful professional development I have ever been apart of.”
There were so many aha moments that occurred over the summer session that I’ll highlight a few of the most impactful to me. The first piece of learning I’d like to highlight is “hacking the curriculum.” Unpacking and reflecting on one of the most challenging units I teach, helped me to focus on where I need support in my learning. I often struggle with teaching evolution because it is such a controversial topic. Through this reflection and learning, it allowed me to analyze this unit from my viewpoint, as well my students. It pushed me to make connections back to the standards and why it is important for students to learn this. After hacking the curriculum a couple times, I reestablished the importance of pushing students’ building their understanding through inquiry and critical thinking, whether the topic is comfortable or not. The second aha moment I had was after a couple experiences that happened continuously throughout the summer session including; quickfires and tweeting. Each of these activities were engaging in their own way but the most powerful part about them both to me was the way in which they allowed us to demonstrate understanding in a what we know. Often times in the classroom I teach my students how to do something the way I learned or how I’ve come to use it to complete a task. However, with quickfires, they allow the learning of how to use a new tool while completing the task related to content. This provides an immediate purpose for learning without “setting the stage” or “modeling” how to students. You just dive in because you want to complete the task before the timer goes off but you also want to make sure your new product truly conveys your thinking and understanding. The pressure is shifted from completing the task the “right” way to self-teaching. My favorite quickfire was on Day 10 when we created the theme song around everything we had learned over the summer sessions so far. It was fun and challenging because we wanted to make sure we used the “extra spicy” challenge terms and of course, make it sound good. Quickfires really help you to highlight the most important parts of your learning. The other consistent experience that really allowed me to narrow in on my learning was tweeting. As you tweet, you’re extremely limited to what you can say, only 140 characters. As the days went on, I began teaching myself through the use of the app and others, how to convey more with such limits. For example, using pic collage apps to write on your pictures, those words don’t count towards your 140 characters. Or even using emojis within twitter to show the emotion of the experience. Lastly, mastering using hashtags within my statements by highlighting key terms. These are the tools that make me truly reflect on my practice in the classroom and how I can push myself and students forward. Through these experiences I learned so much and enjoyed every part, making me want to make my students experience the same I've had. I remember Punya referencing the fact that most tech tools aren’t created for educators, yet educators find ways to use these tools in their classroom. This has stuck with me because if we as teachers are able to repurpose tools, our kids will be able to, too. I hope to incorporate some of these smaller tasks into my weekly lessons, while also pushing my students to make connections to their community and other communities across the world through our imagine-It project. Students will also have an opportunity to push their own individual guided learning through my deep play group learning of genius hour. |
This summer’s experiences have provided me with a fresh look on what I already do in my classroom and how I can continue to push my practice. This experience has influenced me in a couple ways. One way it has influenced my teaching is by taking ordinary tasks like summarizing or word problems and presenting them in new forms to my students. I can pinpoint at least once every year of my teaching career that my school’s administration has stressed the importance of engagement for students. With some of the new tools like quickfires, memes, tweets, and other tools, I can take tasks that weren't engaging in the past and make them more engaging by repurposing tools to serve as the vehicle to demonstrating student’s understanding.
In as little as ten days, this session has also opened my comfort zone up to try new techniques with a more open mindset to learning from failures. It has helped me to think about education more as experiences than units and activities. As a learner, I retained so much of my learning through connections to experiences and connections to my classroom and practice. This proved to be much more meaningful when personalized creativity was permitted to shine through. I think this has influenced my practice to provide students with more choice than a prescribed way of expressing their thinking and work. I am a very organized and structured teacher however, I think that through my deep play group project of genius hour that it will give me a learning curve of how to be more flexible and increase my students ownership of their learning. In conjunction with genius hour, I believe my imagine-It will also create a purpose for ownership of learning in my class. In my general practice, I plan my next lesson based on my student misconceptions and preconceptions that fit within my unit. It appears that their thinking is guiding their learning but it's still prescribed based on my intended outcomes. In our imagine-It, students will develop ideas around different levels of community within the world and relate it to the ideas of science we learn about. I hope that implementing genius hour allow my students to study and learn about a problem or task that's personal to them. Students will develop solutions and test their ideas out, allowing them to follow their beliefs and test them with facts. This will allow their learning to be more student centered. I know that there are many times that our students aren't interested or feel connected to what they're learning in class, I hope genius hour will allow students to become invested in their learning. |