In your blog, consider reflecting on your journey towards 21st century teaching practices (or leading them). After reading about what is expected (in terms of the standards, 4Cs, etc) and the path the journey takes, what are you feeling? What can you do in your classroom/school to engender 21st century teaching and learning? What do you need to learn? Include your thoughts related to the Darling-Hammond readings, too, as they apply.
When I think about the 21st century teaching and how we are teaching today (virtually). I think they go hand in hand. There are many negatives about COVID but I am "a glass half full" kind of girl so I see many positives to our new reality. The key is to be creative and challenge yourself to learn new things. First of all, I know that many of my colleagues, myself included, would not be as tech savvy as we are today, if it weren't for COVID necessitating new ways of teaching. However, with that being said, I still feel like I need to step up my game a bit. As I have mentioned in the past, I have had a difficult time with Linda Darling-Hammond's honesty of our United States educational system. In spite of our reading, I have researched Ms. Darling-Hammond a little more, and I have found her to be a profound researcher. She is progressive and knowledgeable. She understands and is educating others that there is a BIG need for the United States to re-evaluate and restructure our old and outdated educational system. Her "system" not only encompasses the need for the 4 C's (Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking) but she also includes the need for social-emotional learning, project-based learning, and inquiry-based learning. Now you can probably see why I agree and am so motivated by her work. She includes ideas of restructuring by getting rid of NCLB (No Child Left Behind), and allowing teachers more prep time to work with colleagues to plan lessons that dig deep into content and not just graze the surface of many lessons. She believes the idea of "looping" with students is positive and allows teachers to really bond with their students and foster their individual needs. She feels teachers need to be valued and treated professionally so better teaching can happen. She also believes that the US should give less assessments and focus on open-ended assessments, instead of multiple choice. Curriculum and lessons should be designed to align project-based learning that include inquiry-based thinking and the 4 C's. Secondly, as mentioned previously, I need to still step up my game. After creating our lesson for this week, I realized that I need to focus more on meeting the 4 C's in every lesson. In all honesty, it wasn't difficult to create our lesson with the 4 C's in mind. It just takes time so the teacher can build upon scripted curriculum programs. I believe that is the problem. We are directed to teach the curriculum (usually from a script if you look at Benchmark (elementary English Language Arts curriculum) and Bridges (elementary Math curriculum). There is no room for freedom of creating your own lessons because there isn't enough time in the day to teach all of the above. If our curriculum was redesigned as an outline and we had the freedom to create lessons that included Creativity, Collaboration, Communication and Critical Thinking, I think the students would be more successful. As for now, I am taking what I have to teach and using positive moments to take advantage of better teaching strategies. For example, I am using more "breakout rooms" for collaboration and communication. I am including directions that asks students to be creative and use their critical thinking skills. My only worry is that not everyone is doing this. So, what happens to those students who don't have teachers that challenge themselves and challenge their students? Do they remain the statistics? How do we step back, recreate our purpose for our students, change and challenge our teachers, in order to make progress and get out of this "Factory Model" system?
3 Comments
Reflect upon this week’s content and how it relates to your daily practice: Include the key elements you believe must be included in your classroom/school to prepare your students and colleagues for the future.
In addition to our regular reading assignment, I read a couple articles from "edutopia" about the use of technology in the classroom and how it benefits our students. A few of my take-aways from distant learning is being open-minded to learn new things, being brave to try and implement new ideas, and creative for designing new lessons with technology. Distance learning has taught me to try new things, with and for, my students. It has pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me feel like a "learner" again. Reflecting upon this week's content, I would like to begin with www.edutopia.org/article/10-teacher-picks-best-tech-tools by Jonathon Eckert. This article shared the top 10 teacher tech tools. As I was reading it, I realized that I am proud of myself for not only recognizing most of the tech tools, but for also using many of them in my classroom. Out of the 10 tech tools mentioned, I have used and continue to use, 5 of them. In addition, I have used PearDeck and received a training on it, but I have not created my own PearDeck lessons for my students. Another great article I read was "6 Ways to Jam on Jamboard: Using the Digital Whiteboard in a Hybrid Classroom". It's website is: www.edutopia.org/article/6-ways-jam-jamboard-using-digital-whiteboard-hybrid-classroom. This was a great and useful article because I already use Jamboard in my classroom but I was beginning to feel that I was running out of ideas of how to use it creatively. This article by Linnea Lyding helped me to see many other ways I can use Jamboard. I especially liked the Gallery Walk idea. You use questions or statements for each board to jigsaw shared learning. Students would be instructed to use their breakout rooms to discuss the slide and write their responses to the posed questions and/or statements. Then the groups change slides and add their responses to the next gallery board. It is a great collaboration technique within small groups. Once the group returns back together, all of their collaboration is shard among the larger group. While I was reading the aforementioned articles, I steered off into a more personal direction because I saw two great headlines that caught my attention. The first article is titled, "A Daily Routine That Builds Trust and Community Among Students" by Henry Seton. It is an edutopia article located at: www.edutopia.org/article/daily-ritual-builds-trust-and-community-among-students My greatest take-away from this article is allowing students 30-60 seconds in the morning to have a "prized moment in the day". Mr. Seton begins the article by highlighting his father for his accomplishments in life. He says this 30-60 seconds to lift another up can be about anyone in a students' life - alive or deceased. This time that students share "refocuses us, fosters community, and reignites our motivation" (Seton, 2021). He continues to say, "These brief moments become the seeds for deeper relationship building, starting points for future conversations" (Seton, 2021). I love this idea and I want to begin each morning with it. It will be great to learn "who" lights up my students and what they have to say...whether it be about someone in the classroom or not. Finally, the last article I read for personal reasons is titled, "A Fuller Picture of What a 'Good' School Is" by Youki Terada. It is located in edutopia at: www.edutopia.org/article/fuller-picture-what-good-school. This article really touched home for me. It is focused on disadvantaged or minority students and their futures. Terada states, "For students who come from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds, schools that emphasize the social and emotional dimensions of learning - relationship-building, a sense of belonging, and grit, for example - may do a better job of improving long - term outcomes than schools that focus solely on high test scores" (2021). The author goes on to mention schools that focus on students' well-being may not have the highest test scores but students are more likely to graduate and be well-rounded because of their sense of belonging and motivation. C. Kirabo Jackson, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University states, "The skills that are valuable for future success aren't usually measured on tests. So while teachers and schools are often evaluated by their ability to improve students' test scores, broader measures should be used". This really resonated with me as I reflected back to our reading of "The Flat World and Education". Linda Darling-Hammond is correct....something has to change in the United States. My hope is that more people like Mr. Jackson produce studies that show how important social - emotional well being is for our students and their academic success. The most critical population is the population I serve each and every day. It is our more vulnerable populations. Jackson continues to say, "So the data that we're finding are consistent with the idea that these particularly vulnerable populations are the ones that benefit the most from the socio-emotional interventions. They're [people who are successful in life] very smart, very knowledgeable, but they also seem to be well-adjusted, for the most part. They tend to be engaged, highly motivated. So there are a lot of other traits that aren't measured by test scores but if you look at successful individuals, you see that they have those things". This is the direction we need to be headed in. I truly believe that relationship building is our number 1! When students feel a connection, have a sense of belonging, and feel safe, learning can happen! |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2021
Categories |
Photo used under Creative Commons from pstenzel71