“How can we influence the educational system in the United States or even our own school district to embrace connectivism? Should we?”
It is funny.. I have been having a conversation in my head that parallels these questions this very week. I have been thinking a lot about my teaching style and have been feeling very critical of it lately. My style (both personally and professionally) is to have two or more books, news articles, The New Yorker, NPR, documentaries, films, music scores and interpersonal conversations, etc., all going at once. This is how I bombard my students. When we read a book, we look at themes, structure and personal connections. We question it intellectually and emotionally, looking at both author intent and reader experience. Often, they are overwhelmed. My honors classes find me so far out of the realm of what they’ve experienced that they are sometimes uncomfortable and vacillate between feeling like I am too hard and too easy. I have heard both in a very short span of time. I give them self directed projects and experiment with many different activities and lesson styles and often will say “Let’s learn this together”. Until recently, this never really made me feel weird or anything. I always thought this was a good thing. Now that I hear in the news that there is something “wrong with teachers”… that we are somehow at fault for what people seem to be defining as the breakdown in our educational system, I am looking hard at what I am doing and trying to make sense of it.
What I teach can’t be quantified on a standardized test. What does that mean? I don’t know. I think my original intent was to be the teacher from Common Craft’s “The Networked Student”—the teacher as learning architect. I really like that idea but I don’t think it is what the American people want in their schools. I know I should be confident in my process and in my education but at the moment, I am questioning everything. I don’t know what is wrong or how to fix it. I know that technology is making things completely different from what we have ever experienced before and that nothing will ever be the same but I couldn’t tell you if my hunch about how to do things is right. I feel like I am groping around in the dark just like everyone else. I wish I was confident in the answers I am giving but I am not.
How do we move from a hierarchical system of learning and thinking where there are experts and novices and welcome such a radically different system of change in which the learner creates his or her own experience through networking and participatory action? In answer to the question, I think that while my hunch says to embrace the change and let the reshaping happen, realistically, I know that our education system does not approach anything with a ready embrace…and there is no way to speed that process up… That is not to say I don’t have faith that it will happen… I just wonder if it will take a tragedy or a miracle to make it happen!
Angela,
ReplyDeleteI do sometimes have these feelings about our education system. I am still excited by visiting a forward thinking school's website to see what they are doing. There are many here in the US, and even more in overseas schools. Our skype call to Jeff in Bangkok really got me going. I have shown their website blogs.isb.ac.th to a number of teachers in our school. There is a variety of reactions, from 'WOW' to 'we could never pull that off'. I hope someday to push our envelope as a technology and art teacher to include much more connectivity with each other and with schools all over the world.
Yours,
Aaron
Nice reflective piece Angela. It is ok to feel unsure of your pedagogy. The problem is this.. they change things over and over. Once us teachers are settled with teaching a certain way, a new process is the "hot" thing and we are asked to now do it a new way. Nothing is wrong with trying new things. I always feel uncomfortable when I am trying new things but it is normal. Go with your gut and what feels right to you. It is great to listen to your students feedback. You do not have to take it to heart totally, but when you give the students choice (I feel) you get a lot more of them feeling as though you appreciate their intelligence and that they matter, which equals engagement and participation. Not all students, but more than not.
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