Prepared or Not Prepared-That is The Question

As this semester comes to an end becoming a teacher becomes closer and more of a reality.  I reflect on a classmate’s genius hour who raised the question ‘does Brock prepare you for the real world’ and I begin to ask myself if this class has prepared me for teaching.  

My first instinct is a strong no but as I think about everything that occurred this semester I realized that it did.  Tossing aside the theory of this course, it was the fails and the stressors that prepared me the best.  The somewhat unclear instructions and changes in due dates was frustrating however I have realized that as a teacher this will be common.  Teaching will be stressful in an ample amount of ways and I may have to change my due dates as things will come up such as an assembly within my school or spending more time on a unit because majority of the class needs extra help on that topic.  The lecture when the professor could not get the technology to work could also be a very real occurrence in my classroom because technology is not always reliable and I may have to change my entire lesson plan to accommodate this inconvenience just like the professor of this class did.   I feel this course has helped me to develop the skills needed to calmly adjust to change and learn to time manage, the unclear expectations in assignments helped to bring out my creativity which is important for a future teacher to maintain when developing lesson plans.  Having to perform tasks with a curriculum document was challenging, as I have never seen one before and with the unclear requirements it was a very time consuming event.  This also prepared me for teaching because as a new teacher I will be exposed to things I am not familiar with and it is important to have the skills to be able to use different resources, find ways of getting help, getting feedback from colleagues and possibly use trial and error until satisfied with the result.

I suppose tossing all the theory to the side is extreme so some of the theory components of this course that prepared me for teaching are the know, do be umbrella as it taught me what to look for in terms of the big ideas to form my lessons around.  Learning about the vertical scan will be useful as a future teacher because looking at the two grades below I can get a general idea of where the students should be with certain knowledge and scanning one grade up will help me to ensure I prepare them with the proper knowledge to succeed the following year in a different classroom.  Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy was also a concept in this class and I think it was important to note the shift to verbs, which to me implies more active learning with 21^st century skills.   This leads me to my next point as this class has introduced a variety of ways to incorporate videos, Skype, and other types of media into the classroom to try and keep students engaged.  Things like group work or even blogs are becoming for prevalent in classrooms as the strict lecture format has been found to be ineffective at keeping students interested in the content.

As my final blog is coming to an end I conclude that this course has indeed began to prepare me for a career in teaching.  I have learned valuable skills such as creativity, patience, understanding for change, and teacher specific skills such as scanning curriculum documents and learning how to prepare lessons.

                        

  

Curriculum Document

         

      The last couple weeks of this course have been challenging for me since I have never seen a curriculum document before.

        Having to create a curriculum document has provided shocking insight to what a career in teaching will be like, and it will not be easy to say the least.  A bunch of terms were thrown at me such as the know, do and be which meant little to me at the time.  Meeting with my group and beginning our curriculum document I began to understand that the know, do, be will be central and important terms in my teaching career as all my lessons will revolve around them.

            When designing lesson plans based on the curriculum teachers look at three major questions of education: what is most important for students to know?  What is most important for students to be able to do?  What kind of person do we want students to be?  The answers to these three questions lead to the know/do/be framework and it is helpful when working with one discipline.  When looking at the curriculum document for the first time it initially all appeared to be jumbled information that made no sense.  Upon deeper analysis the answers to the three big questions for each unit popped out at me and I began to understand what each unit of biology taught and the expectations that followed.
   

The know consists of big ideas and enduring relationships in the KDB umbrella while the be corresponds to attitudes, values and actions.  Finally the do refers to 21st century skills.

The assignment for this class has led to my first blog rant:

    Not being exposed to a curriculum document until fourth year is beyond frustrating.  The concurrent education program is supposed to be preparing me to become a teacher and I feel all I have learned in the education classes is the usual Pavlov's dog and hierarchy of needs.  I feel a curriculum document should have been presented to us way before this class as it would have been beneficial to talk to teachers about curriculum documents during my placements.     Rant over.

Now that I have expressed my frustration we can go back to creating a document.  Looking at the Ontario curriculum documents it is evident that there are a lot of expectations and requirements for teachers to follow.  I feel it is going to be tough to create engaging lesson plans while meeting all the requirements and expectations outlined in the curriculum documents.  Perhaps this is why teachers have resorted to strictly lecturing as opposed to trying to come up with interesting lessons- there is not enough time in a semester to engage students with every lesson while also covering all of the material.  

Perhaps my next blog will incorporate ways to cover everything in the document while making learning engaging and fun!

Student Centred Learning

       

      The purpose of school is to educate students and give them the tools necessary to succeed not only in education, but their further journeys of life.  So why are schools more teacher centred rather than student centred?

Photo retrieved from: http://teach.com/what/teachers-teach/teaching-methods

The lecturing method of delivering information seems to benefit the teacher more than the students; the teacher is content with standing there and teaching the facts however students are disengaged, bored, struggling and not quite grasping the concepts.  I feel students struggle with the lecturing method because they are not engaged, analyzing the information, critically thinking about it, or reflecting.  They are not being active learners but rather passive ones.  The teacher is trying to fill their brains with as many facts as possible that are deemed important by the curriculum with no connection or relation to real life application.  A teacher needs to be aware that there are many different types of learners in the classroom and it ranges from visual to auditory, to kinaesthetic.

Photo retrieved from:

http://questgarden.com/107/02/2/110224192120/images/Learning-Styles-Posters.jpg

 If a teacher knows their students they probably know their strengths and weaknesses and can modify the lesson to cater to the students strengths to ensure they are grasping the concepts and fully understanding them.

Photo retrieved from:

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/07/find-out-what-type-of-learner-you-are.html

        If the mindset of teachers change from strictly delivering the information to modifying the lesson to optimize learning for their students, then the classroom will shift from teacher centred toward student-centred inquiry learning.  In chapter 4 it defined inquiry based learning as learning that promoted creative problem solving as students attempt to make sense of their world as they synthesize questions that apply to real world situations. Inquiry based learning promotes higher order thinking and uses features from bloom's revised taxonomy such as creating, analyzing and applying rather then just memorizing facts.  When education moves toward student centred inquiry learning students play an active role in the design of their own learning and they can apply their strengths in the classroom to succeed.  

       Teachers can help facilitate this type of learning by delivering lessons that have many different components to them.  For example, they can deliver the required information in a lecture format but then have the students challenge and experiment this information through discussion in groups, experiments, technology etc.  By incorporating group work and analyzing the information in the lesson students can further discuss concepts that were unclear, perform further research as well as perform activities that they are strong in.  For example, if a student is a visual learner they can look up the information on youtube to see how it works, or if a students is a hands on learner they can learn fractions by using clay and physically divide it up.  Not only do students have a higher level of success when they use higher order thinking skills but they become engaged, interested, and facilitators of their own learning. 

     In conclusion teachers should try and make learning more student centred and find ways to alter lesson plans to benefit the students.  This may require more time and effort however the pros that students receive will outweigh the cons.

Bring Back Creativity!

         So I was reflecting on my blog from last week and I realized why I found it so difficult to write…there was no structure, no guidance, and it was open-ended.  In my entire educational experience this was a first.  I have NEVER been assigned something where I can take the lead on, never has an assignment had so much freedom and I realized I did not know what to do with all my freedom.  Where would I start? Is this what the teacher would like? Does this meet the criteria?  The way the curriculum is structured it does not allow for creativity and open ended writing and this is why I feel so many of us had trouble with it.  I had no idea how to approach it.  Structure was gone and chaos came in.  I began to wonder exactly where in my educational career I lost my creativity, I used to thrive on free journal writing as it was a chance to be stress free and really write about anything I felt like.  The opposite occurred when writing my blog- I had more stress then I did writing a lab report or even a test.  I felt even worse when she mentioned genius hour-this did not have to connect to the readings in any way- which meant even less structure.  This led me to conclude that the way education is structured-rubrics, outlines, marks etc, sucks the creativity out of people and creates robots who cannot think for themselves.

photo retrieved from http://ambience.ca/blog/?p=136

            Since lack of creativity seems to be an issue in education I think it is an intelligent proposal to move from Bloom’s taxonomy to Bloom’s revised taxonomy.  

        This revised version applies more to the 21^st century skills and higher order thinking skills.  This involves analysis, evaluation, creation, problem solving, creative thinking and creativity.  Students will learn the ‘basic’ skills such as multiplication and division as well as give students the opportunity to approach questions in a creative way through discussion with peers.  Higher order thinking involves critiquing the information you are given through critical thinking and this will allow students to think outside the box which I feel inspires creativity.  I feel like this is so important because great ideas were not comprised from memorization of multiplication problems or memorizing a reading.  Great ideas came to be though innovation and inspiration, which stems from creativity.  Advancements are made when someone has an idea and takes a risk and I think this should be encouraged in the classroom as it could lead to something profound such as a discovery in science. 

photo retrieved from http://hniforum-room13-mr-stove.wikispaces.com/Bloom's+Taxonomy

            In order to allow creativity to come into the classroom we as teachers must be on board with it and encourage it.  This would involve giving options to readings, or open-ended assignments, or things such as genius hour, which we will be doing in this class.  A science class does not have to solely be sitting in a desk listening to a teacher lecture, to encourage creativity students can be asked to come up with an experiment based on the information they learned that week.  Then at the end of the week the teacher could help the students to perform the experiment that they created.  For creativity to be in the classroom the curriculum is going to need to have a little bit of “wiggle room” to allow time for these activities that are open ended.  I understand that it may be a difficult to grade students on creativity but it is already being done in some schools.  In chapter 2 there was a story about a grade 10 class and the teacher incorporated creativity into the curriculum by assigning his class the task of writing their own song and perform it for guitar class.  The project involved planning, reflecting, deciding on tools, techniques etc and it was graded by formative assessment which was effective because the students co-constructed the assessment rubric with him so they understood and agreed with the expectations.

            That example was just one way to incorporate creativity in the classroom.  I feel there needs to be a balance between structured activities as well as open ended ones in education which goes back to the theme of last week’s blog- the new story.  Finding a balance between the old story as well as the new ideas and theories will create a balance that will ensure students receive the necessary information to advance in education as well as be creative and have fun with learning.

Moving Forward with Education

New year, new story

This week in lecture I saw a little bit of insight to what education is becoming- technologically based.  Instead of being asked to hand in papers weekly we are asked to blog weekly, or follow our professor on twitter and I think the curriculum needs to move into a new story to match the advances of technology.  It has become clear that test scores are dropping, students are not interested in learning nor do they want to do the work.  So how does one engage a student and motivate them to want to learn?  A teacher that can connect to students is a good start, but how does a teacher do that with the “old school” methods that the curriculum still implements?

Old to new

            The current version of school is what we consider the old story.  Student’s sit in desks that face the teacher and the teacher delivers the information.  Students are passive learners and fall victim to the hidden curriculum and top down learning.  Top down learning is when a teacher moves from topic to topic without any order which I believe is similar to a high school setting, students learn math one period then English the next without any connection to each other or a real life scenario.    

The extreme new story of education would have bottom up learning which relies on direct experience and repeated practice of the new activity in a systematic way however I feel that the story will fall in between the two and it will incorporate sideways learning which is a combination of bottom up and top down learning.  Sideways learning aims at maintaining a mindful state, which makes us receptive to openness and change in an ongoing situation.  This type of learning allows us to learn the basics that the old curriculum values while also allowing creativity and seeing that there is more than one approach to a problem.  This type of learning can be taken outside of the classroom and be used in the real world.

Incorporating technology

            It is one thing to change the content of the curriculum so that it is more applicable for students to use daily however I do not feel that is enough.  The next step would be to change how the curriculum is delivered so that students are interested in hearing and learning what the teacher is teaching.  I feel that the lecturing and memorization method of teaching is not serving students well and it needs to go.  Teachers need to “get with the times” and incorporate technology and hands on learning in the classroom.  One way to do this would be to acquire smartboards in the classroom so students can engage and actually get out of their chair to learn as opposed to sitting in one for 6 hours everyday.

            When teachers are delivering information to a student they need to replace “this is a...” to “this could be a…” to encourage creativity and allow students to take charge of their learning.  This is a shift from an unconditional form of giving information, which means the material is presented from a single perspective to conditional form, which allows for creativity and alternatives.  Mistakes should be encouraged in the classroom, as this is how we learn and grow.  Students should be allowed to question the material being delivered and perhaps investigate using trial and error to confirm the information is true.  For example, if the teacher says adding NaOH makes a solution more basic they should allow the student to try this in an experiment so they can see for themselves as opposed to just accepting the information as true.

The link to this video shows how technology in the classroom would allow such trial and error of an experiment to happen in the classroom.  The student is able to make mistakes think critically and see the results of adding NaOH. (watch 7:29-7:51) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzahyTMq8u4

            

Nearing the end

            In conclusion I feel that the new story of education will include technology to spark interest in each student.  The classroom will shift from teacher based to collaborative based so the students have a responsibility and a say in their learning which will encourage them to engage in their learning.  The new story will be full of creativity and the dark cloud stigma above making mistakes will be gone.