This past week, I left class very encouraged, but at the same time
slightly overwhelmed. I want to give my students worthwhile experiences, and I
want to become a learner and an explorer alongside them, but—as we discussed in
class—I did not grow up in a school system that encouraged that kind of
critical thought or open-ended learning. I have to be an exploratory learner as
far as exploratory learning is concerned because it is not something that I
have had my own personal experiences with. I feel most comfortable giving my
students guidelines and parameters because that is always how I thrived in
school, and I personally did not feel comfortable when my teachers left
projects or questions open-ended. However, I am realizing that though I did
well on standardized tests under that type of instruction, all of the
guidelines and parameters ended up being a detriment to my critical thinking
and my ability to think and explore freely. I would like to now learn how to
change my mindset… to move away from the comfort and safety of textbook
curriculum and standardized test preparation and into the unknown of my
students’ own self regulated learning.
What really helped me come to this conclusion this past week was how
open the facilitation was. The ability we had as students to read the Web 2.0
tools article on self-regulated learning and then reflect and share what we
thought about others reflections helped me to start off the class knowing that
my personal thoughts and the thoughts of my fellow classmates would be central
to our learning. Also, the open discussion we had at the end of class was what
I honestly learned the most from. As I got the opportunity to hear other
teachers talk about their struggles working in a system driven by standards and
norm-referenced tests, I was encouraged to continue to move outside of that
box. I was also inspired as I got to hear more veteran “rebel” educators share
how they were able to work around such restrictions and give their students a
challenging education.
I think that the facilitation format and subsequent discussion were so
wonderful because I felt inspired to go into my class the next day and
challenge my students to critically think more than I had the day before. I
gave my students an assignment to work on where I wanted them to depict the
verb conjugations visually, and while many students wanted me to give them
exact guidelines or tell them exactly what to draw, I told them that I wanted
them to push themselves to think outside of the box and think critically instead
of depending on me to directly give them the answers. It was very exciting when
the students started to take it on and realize that they were capable of
creating and thinking outside of the box!
One thing I would have liked to learn more of the other night in class
is how specifically other teachers moved away from their textbooks and
curriculum and more into student-directed learning. Again, I am one who thrives
on guidelines, and while I am slowly moving away from that thinking, I feel
that I still need some help to figure out how I can proactively make my
classroom student-centered. I would have loved if we had more time for the
veteran teachers to discuss different ideas and mindsets they went into their
classrooms with in order to bring the students’ critical thinking and creativity
to the forefront.
No comments:
Post a Comment