Creating Significant Learning Environments
As a student in middle and high school, I had never thought about what my classroom may look like in the future. I had considered different things I liked and disliked about the way some of my teacher's led their classrooms, but actually developing the culture of learning was foreign to me. Naturally, my classroom takes on my personality. I teach with a lot of energy, constantly moving around and getting students involved and try to give students ownership of their learning in one way or another.
Proceeding through the numerous mediums of information in this EDLD 5313, I found myself reflecting on my first 7 years of teaching often. How did I get to this point? What obstacles did I overcome and how did these make me not only a better educator, but a better person? Reading A New Culture of Learning, developing an ever-changing learning philosophy, and creating two units plans with very different formats of competency based vs. outcomes all have impacted me in different ways and have in turn let me to create the addendum to my growth mindset plan as I did.
Attempting to implement my Innovation Plan within a rigid mathematics curriculum in a data and assessment driven school district is overwhelmingly challenging, but understanding the importance of having students drive the instruction and take ownership of their learning via discovery, problem solving, productive struggle, and collaboration sheds some light in the tunnel.
Below you will find brief descriptions and links to the aforementioned work.
Change is uncomfortable, no doubt about it, but we have spent enough time critiquing, it is time for action. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned education upside down and rather than viewing it is a detriment, we must take advantage of what it has shown us we are capable of. There is no question the tools are in place where learning can be based around discovery, investigations, problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration.
Below is a link to my "Creating Significant Learning Environments" page that discusses my take on the environment that I am building in my classroom as a learning facilitator being guided by my students.
As a now self proclaimed Cognitive Constructivism, I view education as an interactive, social, and contextual process where teaching/learning is most effective when driven by the learners themselves. Taking the time to compare my learning philosophy vs. my teaching philosophy was quite eye opening, but it did not sway my belief on the power of adversity and importance of overcoming obstacles.
Below is a direct link to my Learning Philosophy where I take a deeper dive into the different roles of learner and teacher along with what my experiences inside (and outside) education have taught me.
Creating and organizing a course is one of the more challenging things of teaching. Too often teacher become comfortable in their ways and rely on their same materials, strategies, and lessons year in and year out. As a high school mathematics teachers, developing an all encompassing Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) based around a project that would drive the instruction was challenging an unfamiliar, but presented me with a new way of developing a new unit.
The link below shows a 3 Column Table and reflection on an outcomes based Quadratic Functions unit from a catapult STEM project designed for my Honors Algebra 2 class.
Understanding by Design
There is nothing one-size-fits-all about education. Variety it everywhere and is one of the keys to success. In the field of mathematics, creating units backwards is one of the more popular approaches and one that I have used consistently since entering the field.
I teach in a very content and data driven school district where our unit tests must be consistent from section to section of the same course in addition to district-wide midterm and final exams. With this said, the flexibility that could potentially help students and teachers alike is not as realistic as many would argue it should be.
In this unit design, I focused on the same unit (Quadratic Functions) as I did in my 3-Column Table, however, moving from a outcomes based design to competency based. While I was certainly more comfortable with this approach, my full plan found at the link below takes a further look into the similarities and differences between the two.
Growth Mindset Plan (now vs. then)
When I first created my Growth Mindset Plan, although I had gone through the videos and readings regarding it, it was pretty based on my previous understanding and prior knowledge of the growth mindset, which has been a focus in my school district for years. Although I still align with my early beliefs related to growth mindset, I now see the authenticity of the connection between the growth mindset and creating significant learning environments.
The link below leads to my original growth mindset plan which I did in a video format, but includes a reflection of where I now feel I am with regard to my plan, looking a bit deeper into the impact the mindset can have on my personal classroom environment.