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.