I found a lot of great and insightful information in the four videos we watched for this week’s session. In my opinion, all 4 of them share the idea of allowing students the freedom of practicing the 4 C’s in the classroom. At times the scholars in the videos give the message that these skills can’t be taught but that students will become critical thinkers, creative, collaborators, and or communicators through open ended and rigorous tasks. And for students to accomplish this we should allow them to learn exponentially or at least facilitate this type of learning environment. This is something that John Seely Brown mentioned in his talk. He believes that this can be accomplished by students having a mindset where they have a passionate pursuit of extreme performance with a deep questioning disposition while being committed in being present and engaged in the classroom. I also admired Ken Robinson’s quote on “seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are (children), and seeing our children for the hope that they are. Our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future.” This to me is a great 21st century skill since us as teachers have to allow students to use their talents to be successful in any content class. This ties in with what another scholar in a video, Daniel Pink mentioned about advocating that the answer isn’t just one answer and to find it is straight ahead, but the answer should be “peripheral”.
All of the talks tie in with 21st century teaching and learning, equity, the brain etc. since my biggest take away is giving students open-ended work where they are challenged which then makes them use their own 4 C’s skills to a certain extent. Being a Math teacher, my students and probably the majority of them, still believe that in Math you always have to get the correct answer, no matter what. That there is only one way to find a solution and that it seems to be the end of the world when they make a mistake in a Math classroom. I know that I have to put in my part in what Ken Robinson says to “celebrate human imagination”. As a second year teacher this is something that I have been trying to get better at in acknowledging and celebrating mistakes in my class. This school year I opened up my class with 3 days on celebrating mistakes and trying to create this type of culture. This goes in with Mobley’s 6 insights in helping students think creatively. To me thinking creatively is giving students the option to go in any direction to find a solution. One of the main ways I practice this in my classroom is showcasing student work where each student work showcases a different approach to a solution. The open ended tasks in my classroom allows students to be creative and I also try to students work with people with different academic capacities so they can get that exposure to diverse ideas when doing group work. What I do is in no way perfect because I know I have to give more power to my students. I say this because when I feel that students aren’t practicing or using the 4 C’s I tend to take over. So how do I not take over and feel comfortable in seeing them struggle? The feeling I get is to jump in and guide them in the right direction and at times their guided with my thinking and in what I believe in. I catch myself doing that a lot. Which brings me back to the main question, how do we or can we even teach creativity?
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As I began reading the end of Darling-Hammond, I was trying to focus on the first principle: meaningful learning goals. Honestly I can say that I agree with a lot of what was said in this section especially on how assessments should be used to better support students. I think something that myself and the rest of my cohort is doing with our research since we will be gathering data and then analyzing it. After analyzing this I believe that we can use these results to make our classrooms a better learning environment. These assessments should be used just for that not to rank our schools or our students. These assessments should be “used to guide learning, diagnose students’ needs, and inform teaching.” (pg. 292) I think that if we can do this we can really help students prepare for the future while instilling 21st century skills rather than preparing them to just pass the class.
If teachers can’t explore new teaching practices then how can we develop and improve the learning environment in our classroom? The third policy mentioned in Darling-Hammond, was Strong Professional Practice. I mean, who wouldn’t want an incentive for developing their professional growth? I have been lucky enough to attend a couple of AVID Summer Institutes and a talk from Jo Boaler but for me they have been free. There have been many opportunities where I would have loved to attend other week long conferences or daily conferences but I can’t attend because they are expensive and I have to pay for them. Why can’t the government at any level support teachers in a better way for these opportunities to be equitable and accessible for all of us teachers? This has to change. Another policy that caught my attention was the last one: Schools Organized for Student and Teacher Learning. I loved the idea that the a change should happen where there are “investments in technology that extend the capacity of every teacher and child to connect with an infinite variety of resources and tools for learning, and in new assessment systems that value students’ abilities to use these tools to solve real-world problems.” I feel that we are all trying to do this but our time to develop this is very limited with very little resources. This was seen across the Learning and the Brain Log where there was a theme across our ideas of changing the classroom where students are and can be more creative through collaborative and engaging curriculum. A lot of the focus this week (days) was done towards the movement of integrating the 4 C’s into our classrooms by having people from the very top all the way down to students working together to accomplish this. I truly believe that these four characteristics are highly important to prepare students for the “real life”. But as a teacher I honestly feel very frustrated. After seeing the case study that I observed, doing the readings and from previous class discussions it feels really frustrating that I don’t have all the technological tools available to me and my students. I have 5 chrome books for my 32+ students to use. If I ask my students to get out their laptops about 8 students on average will get their devices out. I know I have and am doing activities in the classroom that involve the 4 C’s but it lacks the technology part. If I had enough resources along with my colleagues I am sure that we will be more open to try and take risks in our own classrooms and try assignments or projects that involve more students to work with technology. As mentioned in the ACOT article, they “found that teachers were not as interested in learning about technology when access to technology seemed unlikely.” The crazy thing about this is that this quote comes from a study from 1994, we’re in 2018!
In regards to what I will do to make sure that 21st century learning is happening in my classroom is that I will have to adapt these skills while integrating technology with the resources that I have. I need to learn on how to better outreach to colleagues at the current school site that I am in or from any other educators and learn from them when it comes to using technology in the classroom. I feel frustrated with the lack of resources but I have to get that out of my mind and try to think as positively as I can and implement technology in the tasks and projects I already do in my Math and AVID classes. |
Samuel UreñaWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2018
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