I wasn't sure what to expect from this program. What I have found is a renewed sense of curiosity within education. This program has pushed me out of my comfort zone and into a realm of trying to connect and engage students within the classroom in different ways. My previous experience had a lot to do with how I taught math. Collaborative groups, working within specific group roles on low-floor, high-ceiling tasks, I thought was a good as it gets. At my current site this format didn't work. Adaptation was needed and through various tools and ideas presented in this class, I feel more prepared as an educator to be that agent of change these students so desperately need.
Providing students with opportunities such as: access to teacher created videos through Google classroom to learn specific content, or to share responses via Flipgrid and preview what others had to say, to being able to edit a community Google doc has brought a new vibe to the classroom. I see students start to independently access information which was not the case last year. I can see this shift pushing me and my students forward, more to an environment of self advocacy and a learner centered approach.
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When I look back into how I was taught math, there is a variety of pedagogical strategies used throughout the years. From the standard lecture-based approach with an infinite problem set as practice, to collaborative groups with a focus on an investigative approach to an online format, where through a community blog, questions shared and answered by the learning community. I can explain from personal experience which strategy worked best for me. This might not be the same for everyone though.
The flipped classroom seems in theory to bridge this gap. Knowledge is front-loaded and then applied in the confines of the class, where all the "hard stuff" can take place with professional guidance. Why would we waste precious time, when we are all together to do something that could be done alone. With that, a flipped classroom is of great interest to me. I can see this being put to use in a couple of ways. When diving deeper into previously learned content, a series of short videos to be used as a skills practice would be useful as we got into the applied content during class. The flipped class could also be used a though provoker. This could be a mental or written brainstorm involving a driving question that you wanted students to come into class with. Much like we often do within our current cohort, if you are have some ideas coming into a class, a richer conversation will follow. Obviously the connecting theme is creativity. When digging into what Brown, Gardner and Robinson were speaking about, I have drawn the conclusion that creativity is a learned skill, but how to teach creativity is full of tons of mishaps, dead ends and hasn't been done right within our current educational model. Through our educational system, students become less creative because of the specific pathways we inflict on them as they "master" course work in specifically valued content areas. Sir Ken Robinson's story about a girl who just wanted to dance is a great example of this, which happens to feed into Gardner's idea of Multiple Intelligences (which he didn't directly speak about, but the work he is known for). All the while the speakers are talking about increasing, valuing and nurturing creativity, we first must start with Sir Ken Robinson's quote,"...Rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children" because if we are to adapt to what is being asked of the future work force in 5, 10, 20 years, education as an institution must evolve to meet the new demands from our economy. As our classrooms are inundated with technology, we really need to push ourselves to use technology as, "curiosity amplifiers" as stated by John Seely Brown.
I admit, I have a bias towards Sir Ken Robinson. I enjoy watching him speak, find his jokes humorous and timely and think that his attitude on education is spot on. It is not surprise that I find myself nodding my head during ALL of his presentations. In his presentation Do Schools Kill Creativity, he is quoted as saying, "Creativity is as important as literacy". As a math teacher, I can link literacy as the equivalent to basic numeracy skills. As technology helps us correct grammar and spelling and calculators help us perform operations on numbers, what is a skill that you cannot google? Is knowledge a commodity anymore? As we have learned in this course, the 4 C's are the intangibles of being educated. Creativity falls into this category. Recently, I have thought, why do we still break school days into specific content areas such as math, science, english but instead, maybe it would make more sense to create 4 C (or 5 C) specific courses. Period 1 could have a critical thinking focus while period 2 could have a collaboration focus. Course listings then could interweave each emphasis as students grow within each focus area (I can envision using a rubric such as the one created by NVUSD). As Robinson introduces the term, "Academic inflation" I think about what employers want out of educated persons. Perhaps this is because jobs that used to require a BA that now require a MA are doing so because of skills such as the 4 C's skills. Maybe these skills are more developed in Master's programs as opposed to Bachelor's programs? It is fair to say that most of my students come to us with a negative opinion on the educational system. Many have had little success within classes, been told they were wrong more often then they were right and have been relegated to a variety of support courses that alienated them rather than support them. This is a generalization, but serves true for most of our school's youth. Knowing that mistakes happen and it is not always about the (right) answer is a great starting point. I see this correlating with Mobley's 1st and 6th insight of a "Non-linear way of thinking" and "permission to be wrong". Allowing students to be creative and fostering this skill is not only aligning with the majority of Mobley's insights but also with Gardner, Robinson and Brown. How does fostering creativity in a school look like? What does it look like in a math class? These are tough questions and it is even tougher to admit that I am not doing as right as I could be by my students. But, this is why we are all enrolled in a master's program, right? |
Joseph WilliamsI have a love for getting students jazzed about math, art and food. Currently educating youth at an alternative high school program in Portland. Archives
November 2017
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