As I reflect on this school year and my graduate school program, this year has been a rollercoaster to say the least. Looking back on all that I have done, especially when it comes to my collaborative group and my contributions to my learning, I embraced Fink's idea that to become a "powerful performer in life as well as [a] self-directed learner, [1] must learn how to assess the quality of [my] own work” (Fink, 2013). Reading through my previous reflection posts from my graduate courses provides evidence of my growth:
For this term, there were a few live class sessions I was unable to attend but that did not deter me from watching the recordings multiple times and reaching out to my peers for support. Posting and replying on the discussion boards is where I learned even more. Once I completed my post, I consistently reviewed the boards and replied where it felt necessary to let others know how they could improve but also validate their hard work and share that they inspired me to think deeper or from another perspective I had yet to consider. There were a few times I also editing my initial post to add new ideas or information based on the feedforward I received. The deadlines and associated requirements of two replies was something I checked off for the purpose of the grade, but that did not end the work, as I would reply after the deadline and definitely more than twice. Providing feedback/feedforward to others gives those same people permission to provide it to me, which is something I crave because I am aiming to make those tiny gains that add up. My collaborative group was vital to really pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone and think beyond the basic requirements of the courses and the programs. While we were encouraged to change the group up each term, I cannot express enough how grateful I am that we stuck together and brought another member in. What we called the "core four" of myself, Amanda Mask, Lindsay Krueger, Hillary Turnage, and then adding Katie Beauchene created a group of women who come from various educational backgrounds and are in a range of positions from kindergarten teacher to coordinator of digital learning that collectively build each other's individual pedagogy into a more global perspective that will enrich all of our students' lives. My last two courses, Instructional Design of Online Learning and the Synthesis of Applied Digital Learning, went hand in hand. The instructional design course was something I anticipated the entire program to be, about creating content-driven instructional online courses and add to them as we learn more tools. Fortunately, the exact opposite occurred because the program allowed us to experience the true effectiveness of choice, ownership, voice, in an authentic learning environment that created significant learning, so as I created my 3rd 9 Weeks of Algebra 2 for next school year, there was more to the learning besides the math. My innovation plan has always been about teaching 21st century skills in a blended learning environment through the lens of mathematics but I never saw that to fruition until now. This meant that I constantly shifted back and forth between the work because the assignments and learning relied on each other. Reflecting on the overall program in the synthesis course enhanced the materials I was creating for the instructional design course. If I were to give myself a grade on my contributions to my learning and the learning of others, I would give myself a 98/100 for both classes and also a 99/100 for the entire program. My accumulation and contributions of learning have grown and thrived over the past year and I cannot wait to see what next year has in store. References Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences : An integrated approach to designing college courses. Jossey-Bass.
0 Comments
Initially, I thought the program would be a piece of cake, just learning some theories through a textbook and lectures, and then regurgitating them in a test. Thinking even further back in college and high school, I learned how to play the game of school and win with grades. There were glimpses though of self-directed learning and significant learning environments but I was ready to get a master's degree in the same structure I had earned everything else... a very traditional setting with hints of technology and choice. It is absolutely amazing reflecting back on how much we have learned over the past year and I am so thankful I started this program in June of 2023. Considering the first two classes of developing the innovation plan and building the shell of the ePortfolio were really the foundation for everything else, having the summer time to immerse myself in the self-directed learning structure was vital to finishing the program stronger than ever. Here are some highlights from the summer:
Through these discussion boards, the videos, and all of the reading, I was learning that my ideas had value and had been defined by others in more concrete ways, such as the learning theories and cognitivism or even more recently cognitive overload. Being surrounded by other educators who also want to improve their practice and passion to serve their learners as best as possible in our constantly changing world also made me feel more sane. I tend to give off the vibe of being extra and doing too much, being a brown noser or a teacher's pet, but it is really because I have lived my entire life just wanting to learn and make the most of the one life I have. Knowing those like you reading this right now have a similar perspective on life, learning, and education, encourages me to keep being authentic and provide students the same opportunities. I also thought this program would be about just making the digital resources and learning new tools along the way. Instead, we found that there is so much more to just putting something online or taking a physical document and linking the digital version online... we have to emphasize choice, ownership, and voice. We got to experience that ourselves and know what it feels like from the receiving end so we can be more effective in leading organizational change or providing professional learning opportunities. Here are some highlights from the fall:
How many times have we been told in our lives "I told you so" but those saying that knew from experience exactly what we would learn through our own experiences? The deepest learning happens through experience, not a textbook, and not someone just telling us how it is. We need to feel it, see it, understand it ourselves through our lens. This program provided that and more and it really started to drive more radical change as the program began to reach its end. Here are some highlights from the spring: What really worked for me was the growth I could make in my learning through the choice, ownership, and voice. It sounds so cliche but it is very true. I've mentioned before that I expected to breeze through this program just to get my master's on my resume but words cannot express how deeply grateful I am to have not gotten that experience. There were times I struggled, as we all do, when the whirlwind gets in the way (I wrote about it quite a bit but one blog post that really encompasses the idea is The Wild Ride of Winter) but ultimately this was the perfect time and place to struggle through it and come out the other side realizing I had more potential that I could have fathomed. My entire ePortfolio up to this point captures all of my learning so far and the work is not done. What I could do better is not being so self-critical. My entire life I have been my own harshest critic... I mean even my parents did not ground me for "bad grades" because they knew I would be harder on myself than they could ever be. Even in education, when others have given me the feedback of "you are doing great", a lot of negative self-talk would creep in. I always want to give my best, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it is not about the final product in this moment in time because it's just that, a moment in time, a snapshot of where I am that is not set in stone. There is always room to learn and grow but I need to give myself more grace to not be at 110% all the time. I am definitely anticipating change for the next school year. There are a number of teachers and friends leaving education for valid reasons but those who are staying in the fight with me, including my collaborative group, have similar growth mindsets that sort of counter what administration and the system expects of us. A colleague phrased it nicely... education is becoming "what more can teachers do so that students do less?" Do we really want a society of people who are doing less? I would hate to look back on life and feel like it was wasted. This is where the courage to abandon the past comes into play... my campus has a strong legacy of academic excellence that is slowly fading not because students are not capable, but because we continue to conform to past standards and teaching practices that do not meet the students of today and tomorrow. Where the most effective change can happen is in my classroom and I can use the tools and resources and ideas we have gained through this program to bring others into the journey with me and build a community that breaks the status quo, walks against the grain, and really pushes for the change that is necessary in education. People have asked me if I want to be an administrator and my response is typically "absolutely not". My passion and purpose in life, in this moment, is to be a teacher in the classroom with students, working alongside other teachers to pour into others what teachers have poured into me. Unless God tells me otherwise, I am sticking around for the long haul and am ready to be a driving force in the change needed in education while directly in the classroom. Algebra 2 carries a lot of weight in Texas. A part of the school accountability rating is tied to graduation rates on the distinguished achievement plan/diploma and the one class that is explicitly stated that students need to take to get this is Algebra 2. There are also implications that Algebra 2 is setting students up for success on the SAT, which has a minimum score of 520 on the math portion for a student to be considered college and career ready, another part of our school accountability rating. The range of students we have in Algebra 2 is probably some of the biggest in the department. We have students who have failed Algebra 1 STAAR on multiple occasions, students who have historically had to take credit recovery or summer school to earn math credits, students who have been successful in their math classes and are average, and students who are more accelerated than their peers and could potentially test out of Algebra 2 and move onto upper-level math classes. With such a wide range of needs, a blended learning environment with synchronous and asynchronous components has the potential to reach even more students where they are at and build them up to their next level accordingly. The Algebra 2 team and I have worked closely together all year long, adapting our instruction almost daily to meet the diverse student population needs so when considering who I should have look at my 2024-2025 3rd Nine Weeks, they were the first people I trusted to go to because I know these colleagues will support me and provide the best perspective and feedback. Geometry leads to Algebra 2 so I got them involved too as well as our Math Instructional Coach who has worked extensively with these two professional learning communities. Geometry teachers know the students who will be seeing this course next year, the Algebra 2 teachers know what we went through this year and how we planned on adapting the content for next school year, and the Math Instructional Coach understands bigger perspective and effective instructional practices. I put my work into my Canvas Sandbox course that I could enroll the Algebra 2 teachers, the Geometry teachers, and the Math Instructional Coach as students into it so they could navigate it like the students would and they tested it during one of our conference periods. Knowing my team, they will focus on different components, i.e. some will focus on making sure the math content is explained correctly or written with appropriate vocabulary in that context, others will focus on the bigger picture and consider how what they are working on ties to other material, etc. I also wanted them to go into the course like a student and use the information given to them in Canvas to complete the tasks. If I were to give any more detail, then I would think that detail would be considered important enough to put into the pages in the module anyways. I am leaving it open for them too, just like I would leave it open for students to have choice, ownership, and voice. They reported back through direct observation and response. The Algebra 2 and Geometry teams work very closely together with each other and the Math Instructional Coach so us sitting down together to analyze our resources, give constructive feedback, and adapt our work according to that feedforward is a part of our routine. I received a lot of feedback that my consistency with my structure was great. Our campus and district just implemented Canvas for the first time this 2023-2024 school year, so we are all still learning what Canvas is capable of doing and what impact it has on student learning. Canvas is very user friendly from both the student and teacher perspective so constructive feedback that was given on how to improve overall usability was really in the small details. One of those details is how I organized my information. I have added a different organizational structure for my learning resources and applying activities, which organize them by the objective. The applying activities also includes quick checks, which are more formal formative assessments for students to analyze their work. I also am considering ways for the reflection piece to be a part of that grade. I learned that sometimes I give too much information. My innovation plan aligns with my big hairy audacious goal, which is that in the nine-weeks cycle, learners will develop deeper, more internalized mathematical patterns and logical reasoning by actively participating in specific and intentionally designed modules that facilitate connection building between prior knowledge, current topics, and other subject areas. This incorporates process standards and 21st century skills. Within every module, I put the page of all of these components, but every single person looked at it and said “no, I am not going to read any of that if I am a student because that is too much information”. Suggestions were made, brainstorming happened, and together we identified that it would be beneficial for students to have access to all of these components but be specific when stating content objectives that we are also focusing on specific process standards and 21st century skills too, so I took away the page for the process standards and 21st century skills in every module and focused on specific standards and skills within a module, listing them in the objective page. Once I implemented the feedback and showed the second iteration to my testers, they agreed that it was even more student-friendly. I also learned about item banks and quizzes in Canvas! Initially I had just decided to stick with the requirement of using the online testing platform, Aware, for any assessments, but if I really want students to have more choice, ownership, and voice, they need access to their own assessments to analyze their progress. Embedding quick checks through the Canvas quizzes using item banks so not every student gets the exact same question (opening the door for cheating), then they will see that the purpose of these quick checks is not about the accuracy grade in that moment to then put into the Skyward grade, but it is about tracking their own progress and using that data to make decisions on what to do next, go back and keep practice or move forward. Being explicit with which resources go with which objectives and consistently reiterating the objectives throughout will make the growth more significant. What I plan on doing to take it to the next level is incorporating components of the 2024-2025 3rd Nine Weeks 3 Column Table more explicitly too. That is definitely something that will happen as the year progresses and based on feedback I get from students throughout the next few years. What I could improve for in the future is getting feedback from other teachers at my campus, particularly the Precalculus and College Prep Math teachers who typically see our students next year in class, as well as other teachers from the district. Something to consider would be presenting the course to a non-math teacher because they would then have a different perspective that is more aligned with students, learning the content for the first time or refreshing their memories on what they have learned in the past. I also would use my students over the next few years as usability testers. Once the course is created, I would not simply implement it and then wait until the following year for feedback. Any insight on usability would be addressed immediately as any teacher would and should. Usability is using my ability to learn and grow, just like I expect from students. Overall, the work that I did for the 2024-2025 3rd Nine Weeks with my Instructional Design andImplementation Considerations, and blogging about it in Applying Digital Learning in Algebra 2 and Applying Digital Learning to Algebra 2 Part 2 has been incredible. I was able to put together something that actually might make a difference for students, rounding out my master's program at a high point. |
My husband lovingly teases me when I reflect on my day with him and say "I learned something new today!" because he would be surprised if I didn't learn something new.
This blog is a collection of the new things I learn along the way. Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
|