The End of This Chapter in My Life

    

     I have come to a bittersweet moment in my life where I am approaching my final week as an undergraduate at Brock University. Next year I will be completing my teacher's education and will receive my BA and BEd. At moments like this I believe it is important to reflect on our experiences and have a chance to realize what it all means. Though it will be strange coming to school next year and not take any Drama or English courses, I am very excited to continue on my search for my own teaching philosophies.

     This year, more than any other, I have been exposed to the idea of 21st century learning. I was nervous to learn what this meant for my future as an educator because I would not be teaching what I knew to be the 'right way' of teaching and I would not be teaching in the way that I was taught. After thinking about this concept for a while I realized that me not teaching the same way that they did 18 years ago when I first started school was definitely for the better. Twenty years ago they used what we call the "old" method. And in those twenty years so much has changed for the students that are entering the schools every day. So why hasn't our teaching methods also changed? Well this year I was able to explore that.

     At the beginning of this term we looked at 21st century literacies. I personally did a presentation on Character Education, as it is something that I am incredibly passionate about. One that was particularly new to me, yet detrimental to the success of creating global citizens, was Global Education. Though I knew of this concept I had never thought of it as a way of teaching and a tool to teaching. There are so many useful tools which enable you to talk across the world to another classroom and to truly experience another culture. When I was growing up we had pen-pals with a school in British Columbia, but that was still within Canada and it took weeks to communicate with each other. Now students can log onto a program and speak directly with a student in another province, territory, or country. Skype is even coming out with a program which allows you to speak to someone across the world and skype will type the translation and send it after they are done speaking. If technology is growing than why shouldn't our classrooms too?
   
     I have been following a teacher who blogs called Mrs. Wideen who recently did a Global project with her class.  She began by posing the question to her students: What could make the world better either in this school, in the community or in the world? She had a guest speaker come in who has done and is continuing to do a lot of work in Haiti. She then created a hashtag and has proposed this question to anybody who reads her blog. The hashtag is #kidscancreatechange and she has been creating a collection of what everyone using this hashtag has done. This enables not only the students to get involved in the issues of the world, but also students in many other schools and adults in many other walks of life. All by a blog post and a hashtag her ideas and her students' ideas have gone global. Check out this most at www.mrswideen.com under the title "Join the Global Project #kidscancreatechange". Using the tools around her, Mrs. Wideen was able to push her kids to create change globally.

     Another important aspect of 21st century learning is allowing the students to work and learn together. This is something I find incredibly important in my own practice as a drama teacher, but I had not considered it's importance in English until this year. I have always learned better with other people, but I thought that was just because I was a drama kid and it was my style of learning. I have learned this year that it benefits many people much more than I realize. One of my professors starts each class with a group discussion about what we are all doing for our projects. She says to us that 30 minds are better than one. I have realized how true this is in my education classes this year. Collaboration offers the opportunity for ideas to be passed around and improved upon. It allows for social growth within students and teaches them how to critique instead of insult. Collaboration is not only important for intellectual growth but also for social growth.

     Heidi Siwak explains in many of her blog posts the importance of collaboration in her classrooms. One in particular stood out to me which was titled "Creating Conditions for Collaboration". Creating the conditions was also something I had never considered because every drama classroom I have walked into expected collaboration as a standard and was set up in a way which made collaboration inevitable. Of course, English classrooms are not always set up in such a way to promote collaboration. Siwak explains that you cannot expect that throwing the children in a group will create great critical thinking skills, or that those students would even want to be there. You have to create an environment which puts collaboration on a pedestal and allows the students to not just want to work with their friends, but enables them to choose who would be most beneficial to their learning. In this post she suggests a couple of ways which encourages diversity in the collaborative groups. This post, and her others can be found at www.heidisiwak.com.

     All of these things have effected my own philosophy of education. I have come to realize that this will be an ever-changing and ever-growing entity of mine, but I am very excited about the direction it is going. I have realized the importance of diversity in the classroom. I do not just mean this in reference to the students I am teaching, because I will not have much control over that, but diversity in how I teach. Every student has their own strengths in learning something new and it is my responsibility to allow that student to find their strengths and use it in our classroom to further others understandings of the concepts we are looking at. I need to create a sense of community in order to invite my students to share their strengths and even their weaknesses. I must allow for time for them to learn and fail on their own and I must give them feedback and encourage them to get back on their feet. I must practice what I teach, particularly when it comes to character education. For some of my students I could be a primary role model and out of respect for them and their future I must be the best role model I can be. This includes admitting when I am wrong, because everybody makes mistakes and that is just as much a lesson as any curriculum expectation. I must use all the tools I have at hand, and there are quite a few, in order to expand my students knowledge. But most importantly, I must never stop learning.

     I am finishing my undergraduate degree in the coming weeks but this does not mean I will never pick up a new book or play. This does not mean that I am the most knowledgeable person about Drama or English. It means I had a desire to learn more and that desire will continue for the remainder of my life. I am no expert in these two subjects, but I am passionate about them. I will continue learning from the world around me, my future coworkers, my fellow classmates, and my future students will all teach me something. I just have to be ready and willing to learn.

Where Are The Resources?!

     



     Lets face it, as teachers we are busy!!! We want to do so much for our students and for our own studies but then we run ourselves to the ground. If only there were things out there to help us...

OH WAIT! THERE IS! 

     I have been pretty lucky in my studies as I have been given to opportunity to collect many resources for my future teaching career. I have a huge binder full of activities and lists of books, but it makes me a little nervous that my binder is already so big and I haven't even started teaching yet. I can't even imagine what it will be like five or ten years from now. BUT *this is where things get exciting* I have been learning about so many amazing online resource sites that save the resources you are interested in on your own file. This not only reduces what you have to carry around but you are also saving a couple trees at the same time. So what are these magical sites you ask? Well there are a bunch but I will only talk about a few.







     First, my go to for quick ideas: Pinterest. I know this is not explicitly a teaching resource site like some of the other ones but it is one of my favourites. There are tons of things you can find with a quick search. In fact, my class uses a pinterest board to share our resources about 21st Century Learning. You could potentially make your own class pinterest board and have your students post on a specific topic that you are looking at in class. Pinterest is great for a lot of things and sharing is definitely one of them. It is also great for finding little things for different holidays for your classroom. It may not show you exactly how an activity connects to the curriculum but it is definitely good when you are stuck and need something small, easy, and quick.







     Second, my new favourite just because the resources show their connections to the curriculum and there are so many resources: Cube for Teachers. This is something I just discovered last week. Cube for teachers is a by the teachers, for the teachers website. Any teacher can create an account (and they ask for a boards email to make sure you are a teacher) and you then have access to so many resources. You are also able to upload any resource that you have found particularly useful within your own work. Not only can you save the resources you like for yourself but you can also send them to a group you've created. This site is even more useful because you can specify your search right down to the specific expectations of the Ontario K-12 curriculum you are looking for within your subject and grade level. You can also search across multiple subject areas. Pinterest is great for the small stuff, but this is great for the bigger ideas.











     I am very excited about all of the resource sites that are out there. Of course, I will be coming up with my own activities and such when I am a teacher, but sometimes even just a starting point can help you find the perfect lesson for your class. So I am curious; what types of resource sites do you use and how do you find them useful? What helps you stay a little less busy but still give 110%?

Are YOU Afraid to Fail?

     When most people hear the word failure they automatically associate it with negativity and a lack of success. It is when you have not been good enough to do something. BUT, failure is only failure if you give up. I see failure as an opportunity to try again and to critically analyze what I did wrong. Yes, sometimes failure can hurt especially when it is something you have been working towards; however, failure does not have to be an end point. Failure can be the start of a new chapter.
     The real question is, how do we approach failure in schools in a way which teaches students that failure is a learning opportunity? The concept of failure becomes complicated when we incorporate evaluation and marking students. There has always been a debate about whether it is appropriate to fail a student but I do not wish to get into that debate with this particular post. I therefore do not mean that we should be giving the students an impossible assignment in order to have everyone fail, because that is not fair and it will only teach our students to hate teachers. Instead, give the students opportunities to experiment and then fail. I would like us to focus on the unmarked failures. The experimental failures where students are given opportunities to try new things and to fail in order to learn. Putting evaluation and marks aside, what can we do as teachers to give our students the opportunity to fail in our classes and to try again in order to improve? I believe these failure opportunities are an essential part of character education. Failure can teach resilience. Give them time to try new things and accept when something does not work. If they are doing a presentation and they are using a new technology to present it, and the technology is not working, give them the opportunity to recover. Allow them to still present, but allow them to realize that this is a learning opportunity.
     The trouble is finding moment to allow our students to fail and creating an environment where there is no fear of failing. Start by creating a community within the classroom. As a prospective drama teacher, this is always one of the first things I try and do in a classroom. In order for my students to feel comfortable trying new things, they need to feel like they are in a safe environment where they will not be bullied or made fun of for their mistakes. Creating a safe environment is extremely important when you are asking your students to welcome failure into their lives. You also must allow time for your students to experiment and discover on their own. This will allow your students to potentially fail in a safe environment. It also provides opportunity for them to learn how to recover and carry on from those mistakes. We will create intelligent risk-takers. This will not only help our students in the classroom setting but also in life.

     Nothing in life is perfect, and we will never have everything go our way. Life happens between all of these assignments we give our students. Not every brain understands things the same way. Part of what school does is equip students for their lives outside of the classroom, and part of life is making mistakes. If we teach our students that they need to try new things, and therefore make mistakes, yet we teach them that mistakes are terrible things then we teach our students to fear failure, and in turn, to fear trying new things. Many people are comfortable with singing in the shower where nobody can hear them, but how many of those people will sing in public. People take risks when they are on their own but are often afraid when they are in the eyes of others. School is a public place with a public gaze. People are afraid to fail because they know others are watching and judging. I want to encourage everybody to go outside of their comfort zone (both students and teachers). There are many great inventions today because people decided to push through and learn from their failures. There are many authors, actors, and musicians who were told they were terrible at what they do, but they took the criticism and became something great. We need to teach our students to also become something great and help them realize that part of the journey there is failing. We can no longer fear failure.

We All Have a Story

     Over the past few weeks I found myself repeatedly having discussions with people about what struggles are present in their lives. For some, it was that they ran out of their breakfast cereal and had to find something else to replace it, for others it was a loss of a loved one, an assignment that they just didn't understand, or an argument with someone who was important to them. I unconsciously started placing these issues in a scale of who was struggling the most in order to allot time to help them through their situation. However, there was a moment over this time where I realized what I was doing and that my scale of rating was corrupt. Everything that I was saying was important or hard to deal with was based on my own experiences with these situations. For example, most of you are probably thinking that running out of cereal is not that important, however, to someone with OCD who has the same cereal every single morning, it can be a difficult situation to get through. What I have realized is that we need to stop placing personal struggles on a scale and start looking at the people behind the issues present.
     In my class a few weeks ago we talked about character education and then we talked about mental health. I believe that these two things are pieces of the same puzzle. Character education will allow us to teach our students to be more understanding, kind, and empathetic to each other and will allow our students to realize that everyone has their own struggles and their own stories. It will allow a more inclusive environment for those struggling with mental health issues and will push forward a classroom where everyone in accepted for who they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU3QfyqvHk8

     Character education is very important for our students, but, it is just as important for our teachers and I believe we need to practice what we preach and show the students what these words really mean. We have all had situations where you go to hand something in to a teacher or a boss, and you know it is late, but you hope they will understand because you were sick all weekend and couldn't get anything done no matter how hard you tried. The moment comes when you go to hand it to them and explain yourself and they shut you down and tell you it's too late. We have all also been in a situation where we have turned someone down because they handed in something late. My challenge to you is to ask yourself what this reaction accomplishes. Does this mean always allow students to hand in things whenever they want? Of course not. It means, next time you are presented with a situation where a student didn't complete their assignment on time, take a moment to talk to them and figure out what their situation is. Practice the empathy and understanding that you teach. The student could have an undiagnosed learning disability or a problem at home that needs to be looked into further. The student could just be going through a rough time, or they could have just not done the assignment because they didn't feel like it, but until you talk to them, you may never know.
     I believe that we cannot teach character education in our classrooms unless we get to know our students and understand their lives. Think of your own life; has there been an obstacle you have had to get through during a really busy time at school? Have you handed in an assignment or work proposal late? I guarantee you have at least once. What was your story in that moment? I don't mean what was your excuse, I mean what was happening in your life at that point in time. Was it an outer circumstance like a family member, or the weather or did you just push yourself too far for too long? Next time a student comes to you with a late assignment, think about your moment, practice empathy, and listen to their story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ-pU7ozt3g

We Must Evolve With The World

          Hello! And welcome to The Present Learner blog. My name is Michelle and I am a university student who is working towards being the best teacher I can possibly be. In a couple of my courses right now we are focusing on the 21st century learner, but what exactly does that mean? 21st century learning does not focus explicitly on the memorization of subject matter, but instead focuses on the higher order thinking of the skills which can come out of the subject matter. The big misunderstanding associated with the 21st century learning technique is that the teachers will not teach the subject matter and will instead focus purely on the bigger life lessons. This is not true. Though there is a focus on what we call the 4 Cs (communication. creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking), as well as life skills and technology and media skill, they are all wrapped up in the subjects that we know and have been teaching for many years. We are not entirely changing what we are teaching, we are changing how we are teaching it in order to create more globally and individually aware students. This YouTube video is from New Brunswick and why they are implementing this change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjJg9NfTXos

          So what does this have to do with me? Well obviously I am learning it in school at the moment BUT, it means that I too have to change what I know as education in order to fit the new way of teaching and learning. This is no problem for me. I love learning new ways of just about anything. The struggle I'm having is adjusting to the technology side of the 21st century teacher. I know what you're thinking... a 22 year old in university probably knows a ton about technology! And that may be true for many 22 year olds, but definitely not this one. So when my professor suggested we each create and upkeep a blog, I thought it was a great way for me to start figuring out this thing called technology.

          Technology is constantly surrounding our society and it is found now in almost anything we do. Even when it comes to things like reading books, it is so easy to pull out an iPad or a Kindle and download which ever book you want to read without even moving from your morning coffee. The reality is that technology is constantly growing and changing and the children we will be teaching will often know how to use the new piece of equipment much faster than we will. The question is what do we do about it and how do we keep students interested in what we are teaching them. The answer is simple, use things in the classroom that they understand in order to teach them something new! This does not just pertain to technology but it definitely includes it. As soon as a teacher accepts that the students will know certain things that they don't, the teacher can begin to teach FOR the students instead of TO the students by allowing them to use what they already know. Technology is something that most students will have a basic knowledge of, and if they don't, they will probably have an interest in it. So use this to your benefit. Students will listen when they are enjoying what they are doing.

          Of course, there are problems with using technology in the classroom. Will my students stay on task? Will my students use websites, particularly social media sites appropriately? What if one of my students cannot afford a computer and I am planning on assigning homework which must be done online or must be typed out? Technology is expensive, and it is often a very non-private way of sharing, so as I become a teacher I will not only be looking at what new technologies are available for my classroom, but at what my students need to know about the technologies to keep them safe before they use them. Our world is becoming less and less private, and so we need to talk to our students about that.

          Many of our students will at least have access to technology inside the classroom, and many more will have access to outside technologies as well. Just because some students may understand how to use a certain program or piece of technology before entering the classroom does not mean that we do not have to learn how to use it as teachers. We need to recognize that though we will learn from them as they learn from us, there will be students in our classes who may not have had any exposure to technology. We are catering to our students' interests, but we first must learn. And as the technology changes, we will learn again. There will be a never ending process of learning for every teacher, particularly for the 21st century teacher, because technology will never stop evolving. BUT there are people around to help! When in doubt, Google. But first check out websites like c21canada.org, and p21.org which will help explain 21st century learning as a classroom act, as well as a community initiative. Both of these websites have a page on resources of books and websites to assist teachers. So teachers, don't stop learning. I know I'll be looking at new forms of technology for the classroom. It is an evolving world, and we must evolve with it.