Contribution to Learning and Learning Community (EDLD 5305/5317)

Group Members for EDLD 5304/5317: Eboni Mitchell, Anna Akuretiya, Christopher Aebig, Desiree Masters, Margie Biermann, Alessa Berg, Taylor Burks, John-Michael T. Wallace, John High, Evan Dolan.

The ADL program is different. It is application based and has value in our worlds. With this being my second master’s program, it was extremely unfamiliar. This is now my 3rd full semester of the program, and I can confidently say I see the direction now and see how my innovation plan can truly unfold authentically in my organization. I have worked with some awesome peers from around the US, some as far as California and others as close as down the hall and it has been an awesome experience to be able to view education their different lenses.

The summer semester presented a new challenge for me, as I had to take off the spring semester for the birth of my second child while also coaching varsity baseball. I will be the first to admit, it took a bit to get back in the swing of things and to again be to visualize my transition to blended learning in the classroom. Within 5304, I began to see what I once thought was unrealistic, was achievable. I teach in a rigid, relatively by-the-book district that is resistant to change at times. Currently our curriculum supervisor is in the process of standardizing all assessments to collect more data, which is my mind is a bit of a step backwards. While I do see the value in this data (I suppose)), I also see an opening to appeal to the hearts of my peers in my department, and potentially beyond. As I have discussed throughout, my plan is to start small with my team of Algebra 1 teachers, however, word spreads fast. The Influencer Strategies and 4DX Model provide a foundation for how to put this into place. Being goal oriented and having a way to keep track of progress provides stability in the process of the rollout.

EDLD 5317 was much different that 5304, and felt like a course I could really let my opinion be heard in. Creating a potential publication for Edutopia, a website that I frequent and often look to for various things was a bit outside of my comfort zone, but an awakening experience. I rediscovered the reward in sharing my thoughts/opinions in a field that I am passionate about to a new audience and am looking forward to the feedback I hopefully receive from around the world if I do get published. The media pitch I created provided a new way to appeal to the target audience and forced me to use some new tools that can be beneficial in my blended learning classroom. My group provided critical feedforward/feedback on our rough draft that was extremely helpful as we finetuned to reach our final publications.

Collaborating in the summer is challenging, as so many educators are constantly on the move with an erratic schedule, however, I found that I had built up a strong enough community that I was able to have meaningful discussions and provide feedback/feedforward with often. The discussion boards obviously provide great jumping off points and allow me to view the topics we discuss in these courses with vantage points I may be unfamiliar with. Although my original group I started the EDLD program with has moved past these courses, I remained in contact with them via GroupMe and Skype meetings and had weekly conversations about the assignments/discussions throughout. This speaks to the community that has been created in the ADL program. Additionally, I was able to find a new group to work with, many of which were also were moving forward with blended learning as their innovation plan. When reviewing each other’s rough drafts of our publications we stuck to WhatsApp for much of our communication, but also utilized Google Docs where were able to leave comments right in the context. Some of us exchanged frequent text messages to have a more personalized and direct dialogue.

Outside of these specific group members, I also had a consistent line of communication with John High and Evan Dolan, two fellow members of my district as well as the ADL program. We had some great conversations on how we can take some of the ideas of these two courses, such a sharing articles with peers and utilizing feedforward/feedback as well as influencing peers via the strategies of 5304 to have an impact on our school. The Facebook group for the ADL program is always a great tool to fall back on and although I do not post on it a ton, I often find myself reviewing the comments and reaching out to individuals directly from there.

For the reasons above, I feel I deserve a 90/100 for both courses for my “Contribution to Learning and the Learning Community” grade. I now view myself as a leader within my groups and feel I am a strong communicator and provide meaningful feedback to my peers while also providing practical constructive criticism. I have made changes based on the feedback I received from classmates and professors as required and participated consistently in discussion boards to fuel conversation based around learning. While I was not able to attend live classes at times due to the time difference and classes often falling around bedtime for my two girls as well as during baseball practice, I was sure to watch all recordings and work through all readings/videos throughout. I look forward to completing the ADL journey this upcoming fall semester.