Summer Reflection |
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - Antoine de Saint Exupery
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Looking Back
Everyday after our summer sessions I came home completely exhausted. The program forced me to step out of my comfort zone and as a result grow as a teacher and leader.
The first thing I learned this summer was the importance of collaboration. It is true that as a high school teacher I have time built into each week to collaborate with my department, but little to no time is set aside for inter-disciplinary collaboration. I can see the benefit of having time for science, math, technology, and even fine arts teachers to collaborate during the school day. I learned much from teachers from other content-areas over the summer and even more from the elementary and middle school teachers. It made me think about how powerful it would be to work in a K-12 school or to even collaborate with all the feeder schools that send students to my school. Unfortunately, we received applications from 118 different schools, which makes this type of collaboration almost impossible.
While creative inspiration can be found through individual learning activities, sharing ideas and group play can lead to new and creative ideas (Henriksen and Mishra, 2013). The MSUrbanSTEM team provided groups with the opportunity to play and experiment (see F2F Artifacts). How often do I provide my students with the opportunity to play in a similar way? One of the first things I learned in my pre-service training was to always teach with a sense of urgency. There was not time for games or play. I have been slowly distancing myself from these ideas over the last few years and my experiences over the summer has helped me cut my remaining ties to these "all work, no play" pedagogies.
I have always prided myself on being an early technology adopter. After implementing a technology in my own classroom, I also make sure to share it with my coworkers and professional learning community across Chicago. I realized after the various readings and activities we completed during the summer how shortsighted it is to focus only on the technologies and resources available today and base my instructional activities solely on the technology available in my class (Kereluik et al, 2013). Additionally, as Mishra and Koehler (2009) note, "The fact that a technology is innovative and popular does not make it an educational technology." I also discovered how limited my view of educational technologies was. I had always thought of educational technology in terms of electronic technology and never through of crayons, Play Doh, or even tennis balls as educational technologies.
Everyday after our summer sessions I came home completely exhausted. The program forced me to step out of my comfort zone and as a result grow as a teacher and leader.
The first thing I learned this summer was the importance of collaboration. It is true that as a high school teacher I have time built into each week to collaborate with my department, but little to no time is set aside for inter-disciplinary collaboration. I can see the benefit of having time for science, math, technology, and even fine arts teachers to collaborate during the school day. I learned much from teachers from other content-areas over the summer and even more from the elementary and middle school teachers. It made me think about how powerful it would be to work in a K-12 school or to even collaborate with all the feeder schools that send students to my school. Unfortunately, we received applications from 118 different schools, which makes this type of collaboration almost impossible.
While creative inspiration can be found through individual learning activities, sharing ideas and group play can lead to new and creative ideas (Henriksen and Mishra, 2013). The MSUrbanSTEM team provided groups with the opportunity to play and experiment (see F2F Artifacts). How often do I provide my students with the opportunity to play in a similar way? One of the first things I learned in my pre-service training was to always teach with a sense of urgency. There was not time for games or play. I have been slowly distancing myself from these ideas over the last few years and my experiences over the summer has helped me cut my remaining ties to these "all work, no play" pedagogies.
I have always prided myself on being an early technology adopter. After implementing a technology in my own classroom, I also make sure to share it with my coworkers and professional learning community across Chicago. I realized after the various readings and activities we completed during the summer how shortsighted it is to focus only on the technologies and resources available today and base my instructional activities solely on the technology available in my class (Kereluik et al, 2013). Additionally, as Mishra and Koehler (2009) note, "The fact that a technology is innovative and popular does not make it an educational technology." I also discovered how limited my view of educational technologies was. I had always thought of educational technology in terms of electronic technology and never through of crayons, Play Doh, or even tennis balls as educational technologies.
Looking Forward
One of the first things I will be implementing in my classroom is a creation station. I had already planned on creating a maker space in my classroom with new electronic technologies I received over the summer from a grant, but will be incorporating a lot more "low-tech" technologies for students to build and play with. This may seem like a small innovation, but especially with rolling out 20% projects this year I think the creation station will end up having a huge impact on my classroom.
I also have a new appreciation for interdisciplinary collaboration and will be speaking with my principal of incorporating time for STEM collaboration during the school year. While we often discuss horizontal and vertical alignment during department and grade level meetings, having a specific meeting time for STEM teachers would help us plan and provide powerful interdisciplinary lessons and projects for students. This collaboration would also help us reach the same goal of my ImagineIT: increase student STEM identity and open up students to possible careers in STEM-related fields.
Aditionally, in my role as Career and Technical Education (CTE) Coordinator I work to help recruit students to the school and oversee our CTE programs. While I am in regular communication with the counselors at our feeder schools, the vast number of schools from which students apply from make it impossible to meet with each counselor and administrator in person. I want to work with our department lead teachers to create a guide that can be shared with our feeder schools. This guide would detail our vertical and horizontal alignment and the skills we look for in potential students. While this is a small step to increasing inter-building collaboration, I hope that it will start the conversation and lead to greater cooperation between elementary schools like I experienced and learned form over the summer.
In addition to continuing to gamify my classroom, I am going to be providing my students with more opportunities to play and engage in the engineering design process through modeling, iterating, and improving on their designs. When making a classroom more student-centered the important mindset shift that a teacher needs to undergo is getting comfortable with letting go of control and providing students with more opportunities to work together and take control of their own learning. I thought I was doing a good job at this already, but over the summer I realized how much further I have to go.
One of the first things I will be implementing in my classroom is a creation station. I had already planned on creating a maker space in my classroom with new electronic technologies I received over the summer from a grant, but will be incorporating a lot more "low-tech" technologies for students to build and play with. This may seem like a small innovation, but especially with rolling out 20% projects this year I think the creation station will end up having a huge impact on my classroom.
I also have a new appreciation for interdisciplinary collaboration and will be speaking with my principal of incorporating time for STEM collaboration during the school year. While we often discuss horizontal and vertical alignment during department and grade level meetings, having a specific meeting time for STEM teachers would help us plan and provide powerful interdisciplinary lessons and projects for students. This collaboration would also help us reach the same goal of my ImagineIT: increase student STEM identity and open up students to possible careers in STEM-related fields.
Aditionally, in my role as Career and Technical Education (CTE) Coordinator I work to help recruit students to the school and oversee our CTE programs. While I am in regular communication with the counselors at our feeder schools, the vast number of schools from which students apply from make it impossible to meet with each counselor and administrator in person. I want to work with our department lead teachers to create a guide that can be shared with our feeder schools. This guide would detail our vertical and horizontal alignment and the skills we look for in potential students. While this is a small step to increasing inter-building collaboration, I hope that it will start the conversation and lead to greater cooperation between elementary schools like I experienced and learned form over the summer.
In addition to continuing to gamify my classroom, I am going to be providing my students with more opportunities to play and engage in the engineering design process through modeling, iterating, and improving on their designs. When making a classroom more student-centered the important mindset shift that a teacher needs to undergo is getting comfortable with letting go of control and providing students with more opportunities to work together and take control of their own learning. I thought I was doing a good job at this already, but over the summer I realized how much further I have to go.
Sources
- Henriksen, D., & Mishra, P. (2013). Learning from creative teachers. Educational Leadership, 70(5).
- Kereluik, K., Mishra, P., Fahnoe, C., & Terry, L. (2013). What knowledge is of most worth: Teacher knowledge for 21st century learning. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 29(4), 127-140.
- Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2009). Too Cool for School? No Way! Using the TPACK Framework: You Can Have Your Hot Tools and Teach with Them, Too. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(7), 14-18.