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.