Ms. Morey

It’s hard to believe that I am already near the end of my second block of the program, and while I still have a few final projects to complete for this block, I cannot help but look ahead into what the next few blocks will bring. I have done quite a lot of reflection about my own beliefs and pedagogy this block and I am beginning to feel like my process of becoming a teacher is more fine-tuned, so I am intrigued to see how the rest of the program can add to my already growing sense of self.

The inquiry approach that was introduced to us this block which has stood out most to me is the Spiral of Inquiry. The other approaches are also amazing and hold a lot of their own benefits, however the Spiral of Inquiry speaks to me on a more personal and pedagogical level. What I like most about this inquiry method is that it is incredibly student-centered, nearly every element revolves around making changes within the learning environment to help the students as opposed to catering to the education system. And the goals for the inquiry are not just about getting them to learn more or learn better, but it also deals with systemic issues within the education system that are preventing our students from receiving a great education from a deeper level than one might think. The Spiral of Inquiry has six key stages that they use to process change (both change within the school structure/system as well as change that students can make themselves in the classroom): scanning, focusing, developing a hunch, new professional learning, taking action, and checking that a big enough difference has been made. Later on throughout my practicum I would really love to be able to put these stages into practice, ensuring that the change I am aiming to make covers all aspects of the education system and works well for the students.

Speaking of inquiry, now is a good time to reflect on my inquiry intention from the end of Block One. The intention I had set for myself was: I would like to make sure that all of my future students feel valued and supported in the classroom in a way that is going to enable them to feel comfortable learning. Just yesterday, I took the time to reflect on my About Me section of my ePortfolio and I found the same issues with it as I do this inquiry intention, it is too simple and too broad. Education goes so much deeper than simply making sure all students feel comfortable in their learning environment. Instead, I should be asking myself about the reasons that students might feel UNcomfortable, and then work towards alleviating those issues. It goes beyond the learning content, or the environment. In addition to feeling comfortable, I need my students to feel safe, supported, and like they are a highly valued member of the classroom. By making these efforts, perhaps even through the Spiral of Inquiry, I aim for my students to feel strong and empowered with their own identities as well as their concept of self-worth. My new intention is a lot like my last, but it is bigger now, and will require much more persistence and motivation.

Reflecting back on my EDUC 391 Experiential Practicum experience and connecting it to the Spiral of Inquiry I can see that I think I already was attempting to engage in some of the key stages subconsciously. With each class I would scan to see if my future lessons would benefit all learners, focus on the learners that may not benefit from the lesson, develop a hunch about what I could do to differentiate the learning, and then take action in my next lesson by ensuring that the students who required the differentiated learning were able to engage in the lesson. I found that since I was teaching so many different classes and grades it was easiest to teach through activities as opposed to worksheets because then it left quite a lot more room for learning differences. Some students learned very well through vocalizing and group work, others preferred to be independent, some preferred to collaborate with another student on a project, some liked to move around and practice through kinesthetics. I did my best to ensure that each of my lessons provided room for these students to do what worked best for them, and because of the limited time that I had during each lesson I found that through my own inquiry it worked really well for the students! Yes, it was perhaps more chaotic than some teachers may like or want, but I see a classroom full of movement and chatter as a place of excitement and freedom of expression. I see a lot of what I want for my students within this very program as well. The assignments leave room for expression of self and differences between beliefs and pedagogies, and while the knowledge being taught to us cover the foundational necessities of what we need to know to be educators, I still feel as though we have room to apply the knowledge to our own philosophies as opposed to being molded into a systemic shape that the educational system expects.

Goals for Block 3

1. Stay true to myself and my own pedagogy. Stay on this wave of inspiration and motivation. I am where I am supposed to be and I am succeeding.
2. Explore self through teaching during the next practicum. Explore teaching methods or techniques that may not seem conventional but resonate with myself and/or the students.
3. Experiment explicitly with the Spiral of Inquiry. Make my own footprint within the learning environment I am placed in.

References

Spiral of Inquiry. Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education. (n.d.). https://noiie.ca/spiral-of-inquiry/.

Throughout EDUC 391 Experiential Practicum I found myself stepping away from the knowledge that I have been gathering throughout the course of the program and instead was looking for ways to put it into practice as well as methods for classroom management. Last week’s class with guest presenters Michelle Miller-Gauthier and Mark Gauthier has really resonated with me because it has me thinking about how I can keep record of my own assessment data within the classroom, perhaps even using their district record keeping as a template, just modified for a classroom environment. This idea has had me thinking a lot about what that might look like, how I might organize it myself to benefit my own understanding of my students’ learning, as well as different ways that I could use the data for that class along with future classes that I will have.

The content in last week’s presentation that interested me the most was how they broke down each curricular competency for each subject and assigned each student a number grade level as to how they are doing. Now, when I think about putting that into practice, I think I would like to do something similar, however instead of getting this data through testing (like they do at a district level) I think I would like to gather it through pre-, formative, AND summative assessment. Even I, with truly little assessment experience thus far, can admit that this idea sounds like it would be a lot of work, HOWEVER, I believe that I am well on my way to developing a system that would take some preparation at the beginning of each school year and then would become a resource for me to use throughout the rest of the school year. I do not entirely believe in grade books, hence the inclusion of 3 different assessment types and room for student growth between assessments, but I think that what I would like to have in my classroom is a hybrid of the district level assessment data and a traditional grade book.  

Bare with me as I try to explain what this might look like, because I believe that this journal may be my only way to record this thought-process before I am able to put it into practice. I would have a binder, and in that binder would be 3 charts per subject (pre-assessment, formative, summative). The charts would be laid out much like how Michelle and Mark had theirs formatted with the curricular competencies along the top with the student names on the side. My thoughts are that I would start with pre-assessment at the beginning of the school year and mark down where I believe each student is on the corresponding chart, then following that chart I could include an exemplar of their work and notes as to what exactly they should be focusing on, which students may require (more or less) help, and what methods of learning work best for them. From there, I could format my formative teaching around that and move onto the next chart for the students, making my way to summative by the end of the school year. I also think that by using this system I could more easily integrate cross-curricular projects or activities for the students because I would be able to take a look at what still needs to be assessed and form a learning encounter around what I am looking for from my students as opposed to keeping assessment within one subject at a time.

I apologize if this journal has come out as a sort of idea purge, it is something I have been thinking a lot about for the last few days and I am really excited to continue to work on this idea and experiment with it in the future!

I am back! And I did it!! I finished my 3-week Experiential Practicum and I am finally actually beginning to feel like a teacher. There is so much that I feel like I can share, from learning how to turn a hypothetical lesson plan into a real lesson with real students, all the way to behaviour management (the good, the less good, and the not good). Throughout these 3 weeks I have experienced highs and lows, going from pride to heartache all within the same day. I feel as though in just these 3 weeks I have developed long term relationships with both students and faculty within the school, which is something that I will never forget and will always use as a reminder to myself when times get tough.

Now that I am done this Experiential Practicum, I have come out the other end feeling very proud of myself. I feel like I went into it as a student and have come out a teacher. I have many moments of pride that I could reflect upon from this practicum, but I think that the moment I will cherish most is one that occurred after doing a story time and discussion with a Kindergarten class. It was one of my first lessons and I read them a short story about a cow who woke up one morning finding that instead of mooing, she clucked! The story followed the cow as she spoke with other animals on the farm and searched for her ‘moo’. I prefaced the story with the students by getting them to look for hints within the story as to who has the cow’s moo, and then afterwards we had a discussion about if their inferences were accurate as well as why the cow’s moo, or language, was so important to her. Ultimately the story time left me with a sense of happiness and pride because the students were engaged and actively participated to the conversation, as well as the fact that they gained a sense of the importance of language. Afterwards, their classroom teacher approached me and told me something that I hope I never forget. She said to me, “Miss. Morey, I want to tell you that the way that you engage with the students is fantastic. You have an absolutely amazing way of connecting with the kids and I can tell that it just comes naturally to you. I need to tell you this, and I need you to really listen, because it does not come naturally to everybody and it is important that you remember this because when times get tough later in your career, you can look back on this and remember that you. are. a. natural.”.  So since the beginning on practicum I have decided that my strength as an educator is connection. I immediately cared so much for all of the students that I interacted with and I did whatever I could to ensure that they felt included, capable, and seen. That teacher was right, it does come naturally, and that is something I need to remember and hold on to.

While I did really well at connecting with the students that I taught (which were a lot since I was in the Library Learning Commons, approximately 150 students/week), there were certain elements of my teaching that I actively felt like I needed to work on perfecting. Because while connecting with the students has its own benefits to their learning, without proper time management and an easy teaching flow their learning might suffer in other ways. So, after my first few lessons I noticed that once I was up in front of all the students, my teaching method was rather choppy. It was as though I was jumping from Point C, to A, back to C, then covering B. And even though I had everything ordered nicely in my lesson plan, I wanted to adapt my teaching to the classroom as the lesson went on so I did not force myself to do anything that did not feel right. Therefore I was stuck between covering all of the information thoroughly and teaching it in such a way that worked best for that particular class on that particular day. I think I could continue to get better at an easy teaching flow through more practice and as well as working with one class more consistently. When I am in a position to work with one class for a longer period of time in future practicums, I think that as I get to know the students more, it will be easier to structure my lessons in a way that teaches them what they need to know AND in a way that is most effective for them.

Another element to my teaching that I would like to work more on are my time management skills. I think that this stems from the fact that being in the Library Learning Commons I only had about 15 minutes per lesson, and while that is enough time for some classes, I did find myself yearning for the ability to be able to go more in depth with some of my teaching. Given that the time was so restricted for each lesson, I had to keep their learning fairly superficial, and I did not have the opportunity to build background knowledge and therefore had to work with what they already knew. For some classes, I found myself teaching a rather in-depth lesson in a shorter amount of time simply because I was so eager to teach them something new and useful, but then in those instances I found that the entire lesson was crunched.

There are certainly a few more elements to teaching that I would like to practice during my next practicum, the time management and lesson flow as well as assessment, in-depth and connected lessons, and teaching in subjects other than English Language Arts. These are all elements that I am excited to try but have not yet had the chance to experiment with! I am curious to know if I will be able to maintain my ability to connect with my students while expanding my own learning into these fields that will be newer to me so that I can grow off of what I already have.

Overall, I am very excited to see where future practicums take me and cannot wait for the opportunity to apply the rest of my knowledge that I have gained throughout the course of this program. Here’s to 2 down, 2 to go!

Last week I participated in a Professional Development crash course about SCRATCH, an organization dedicated to introducing coding to our students through engagement and play. Before going into the demonstration, my knowledge regarding coding was pretty  bare bones, I  knew it had to do with computers, that it was a part of the BC Curriculum, and that the students who were introduced to it at a young age could really create some amazing content. However, this was the first time throughout my teacher candidacy that I felt completely unequipped going into a learning environment, I truly had never felt more like a learner.

This feeling of inexperience got me thinking a lot about the BC Professional Teacher Standards, in particular Standards 7 and 8. Standard 7 is “Educators engage in professional learning” and prior to this experience I sort of always thought that this standard was… well… obvious. Of COURSE teachers should be keeping up to date and learning new information whenever possible, but after spending 2 hours playing around with coding and still feeling like there is a lot of learning ahead of me, the standard has taken on a new meaning. Learning for teachers may not always be obvious, or easy. Sometimes the learning might introduce elements that are completely foreign or difficult for the teachers to understand, however, Standard 7 exists so that teachers do not forget the fact that we live in an ever-changing world! Which brings us to Standard 8: “Educators contribute to the profession”. It is one thing to learn, but it is another to teach, to contribute. While I found the session to be quite challenging, and that I acknowledge that I am nowhere near being an expert, I understand that, as a teacher, it will be my responsibility to master the art of coding so that I can provide my knowledge to my students.

Another Teacher Standard that comes to mind is Standard 2: “Educators act ethically and maintain the integrity, credibility, and reputation of the profession”. I would like to bring this one up in relation to our coding workshop because I was impressed by the amount of support, vulnerability, and encouragement between all members of the coding workshop that day. While some were celebrating their accomplishments, others were alongside celebrating with them. Whenever someone was stuck, the group all offered tips and suggestions for helping them get past their roadblocks. While I believe that the workshop was challenging for many of us, there were no feelings of frustration or irritation (from what I could tell, being online and all…) and instead there was a fostered sense of collaboration and togetherness.

Overall, I know that I need more practice with coding before I go into my teaching profession. I would like to carve out opportunities for myself within my future practicums to perhaps play around with it with a group of students because I think that they might learn and catch on differently than I have. However! I have faith that I will eventually learn all of the necessary skills and I am determined to become proficient in coding because I think that this subject could be a really fun and useful tool in the classroom. I can see myself using this cross-circularly quite a lot, and I am excited to see exactly where it can take me and my students.

References

Imagine, Program, Share. Scratch. https://scratch.mit.edu/.

Professional Standards for BC Educators. Professional Standards – British Columbia. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for-educators/edu_standards.pdf.

A topic from Dr. Frasier’s most recent lecture was around oral storytelling and creation stories. While I found the information interesting for many reasons, one stood out to me the most: the connection between creation story and people, place, and land.

I believe that with elementary students it would be important to tell these creation stories in oral form for two reasons:

1. they can develop an awareness for the land they live on and begin to connect themselves to it
2. to value and appreciate the First Peoples Principal of Learning “Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story”.

I feel like the ability to connect yourself with land is not one that comes naturally, but instead occurs as a type of realization once it is brought to your attention. And, for those of us who wish to honor and appreciate the land we live on because of this realization, it changes our perspective on life, nature, society, community, and many (if not all) other aspects of our lives. So, to develop that sense in our students from a young age I would be interested to see how that impacts their own lives and the effect on their own well-being. It is not that we want to tell our students that the world does not revolve around them, as that would be inappropriate, but it is important that they understand the part they play in these many facets of the world around them and to devlop their own purpose as well as respect the purpose of others.

The concept of good teaching is subjective. Subjective to the teacher at hand, the students’ opinions, and even the schools expectations. However, at the base of it all I believe we can all agree that good teaching invites deeper thinking, creativity, and success in our students. I think it is also important to point out that good teaching is not only demonstrated through summative assessment because while a class full of students with great grades on their report cards may indicate good teaching, good teaching can also show itself within the learning process each step of the way.

Pre-assessment is just as essential to good teaching as summative assessment. This is because while summative assessment shows what the student has learned, pre-assessment demonstrates the point at which the students are in their learning journey prior to extending into new educational territory. Finding out what our students know prior to engaging in a lesson is important because all students are different: they come from different cultures and backgrounds, they may have attended different schools or had different teachers in previous years, and they certainly have different educational resources available outside of school. All of which indicates a different type of knowledge base when starting a lesson or project in class. Proper pre-assessment will ensure that before beginning new learning each student already has the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to participate fully, as well as a level of engagement that will keep them invested throughout the course of the assignment. Full engagement and understanding will ensure that our students are able to achieve deep learning so that they can use their new knowledge and acquired skills later in life.

From much of the readings I have done so far this block I have found that many educators struggle with the concept of teaching the mandated curricular content as well as ensuring that their students are developing the skills and knowledge necessary for success later in their lives, long after they have left the elementary classroom. While I have not yet run into this problem, I am sure I will because as exhaustion sets in and the weeks begin to blur together during my first few years teaching, I believe it to be possible that I may turn on my autopilot just to ensure my students are gaining access to the required information. However, throughout this program I like to try and figure out ways in which I can get ahead of such potential issues so that I can recognize when they are beginning to occur and already have developed methods of maintaining my focus and staying true to my pedagogy. To set my own intentions on how I would like to see myself maintain such focus throughout this potential conflict two ideas come to mind: always finding time to take care of my own mental and physical health to avoid burnout and to ensure that when completing year plans prior to the beginning of the school year I embed active learning content and notes to remind myself of the whys behind putting the extra effort into my teaching. The first intention is rather self-explanatory, taking care of my mental and physical health will allow me to keep my goals aligned with my teaching practice, therefore always remembering to teach my students in such a way that ensures deep learning. I believe that my second intention, however, will take much more forethought and frontloading, but will yield greater results throughout the course of the school year. By putting great effort into my year and unit plans early on in the school year I will be able to make sure that I have not only covered all of the necessary curricular content but also that I have well-developed ideas and learning activities that will align with my pedagogy and what will work best for the students, while allowing for flexibility to suit the needs of the individual learners in the classroom.

Today I had the privilege of attending a webinar featuring Michael Yellow Bird on “Mindfulness and Mindful Decolonization” and for lack of a better expression, he blew my mind!

I have always been aware of generational trauma that Indigenous Peoples face due to colonization and residential schools, but I have never thought to obtain a deeper knowledge as to why and how this trauma takes place. I feel that I could go on forever reiterating everything that he explained about the human brain but I fear I would do it an injustice.

Overall, what I have taken away from this webinar is that generational trauma runs deep. It is not just a a sadness because of a loss of culture or language but it has actually been affecting the physical brains of the people who have had relatives or ancestors that were exposed to extreme trauma for many generations now. As a future educator I learned that there are authentic ways of healing such physical effects and that we can implement elements in our classrooms using traditional healing that can help all of our students fight their own trauma-induced anxiety or depression.

Such tips from today that I will be bringing into my classroom are as follows:

• making sure my students are getting their heart rates up prior to any deep learning, this is proven to improve their cognitive function
• pre-assess my students’ well-being through ensuring they have run, danced, sang, and slept

My biggest take away from today is that our students’ mental and physical health goes so far beyond the obvious, and that Eurocentrism has taught us only the basic fundamentals of how to help our students. Singing and dancing can heal our students in ways that extend beyond having fun, and genuine sleep and healthy diets heal their minds as much as they do their bodies.

I still feel like this blog post is doing the webinar an injustice… yet still hours after attending I remain at a loss for words. Michael Yellow Bird opened my eyes and provided me incredible sight into the deeper reasoning behind generational trauma, and for that I am grateful because I now feel that much more confident in my abilities to be a great teacher for my students.

Involving our learners in their own assessments is an extremely exciting and new concept to me! New because in no way throughout my K-12 experience was I given the opportunity to self-assess, and exciting because I would have loved that chance and cannot wait to provide it to my future students. Self-assessments will benefit my future learners because through self-assessment they will be able to follow their own progression of learning as well as map out their own next steps. Throughout this process they will develop a better understanding of the learned content as well as their own learning styles so that they can better help themselves understand future assignments using self-reflection and collaboration.

Elements of self-assessment that I see myself using frequently with my future students are self-reflections (what is working, what needs to be worked on) and co-created rubrics. The self-reflections will be used as a formative assessment while the students are working through a project, this will give myself and my students a greater understanding of how they are progressing through their project and help us outline their next steps together. A self-reflection would start with the student noting down how they are doing with their learning activity and outlining their next steps or challenges they are facing, then, they could collaborate with their peers to see if they can gain any insight from them, and then finally sharing with myself so that I can ensure they are on the right path and provide help if necessary. In this formative assessment I hope that I will be able to foster a sense of curiosity for my students so that they know they have a choice in what their next steps will be, as opposed to having the entire progression of the project pre-laid out for them, ultimately leaving no surprises. I like the idea of my students being surprised by their own projects or assignments because it can make learning fun and can get them excited for the next learning activities throughout the school year. The co-created rubrics will be done prior to the learning activity being started, and I like this concept because as a class we can decide what all learners can achieve, what most can achieve, and what few can achieve. My goal is to co-construct them in such a way that will give each student a goal as to how their projects will end up without strictly outlining and exact expectation, ultimately giving them freedom within the rubric to experiment and be creative. The rubric can be used as formative and summative assessment, depending on which point it is referred to throughout the process.

The aspects of self-assessment outlined above reflect many elements of ADST, which I am working on implementing heavily into my classroom. I fear that through feeling overwhelmed or exhausted throughout my teaching practice that I will fall more and more into the routine of an ‘ask-and-answer’ teaching style. However, I believe that if I implement ADST into my teaching structure right off the bat and develop the above assessment techniques it will ingrain a habit into my teaching routine that will put a heavy focus on collaboration with my students! My ultimate goal is for my students to enjoy their schoolyear with me and to develop skills that they can carry forward in their lives. I also want them to be able to look at their work and understand where they are and where they need to go to so that they can reduce the amount of time spent feeling inadequate or like they have hit a wall with their learning.

Through learning about assessment I have become extremely interested in the different modes, methodologies, and opinions behind different techniques and I am beginning to be inspired to learn more and excited to put it into practice. I think this is because through these modes of assessment, once I have practiced them and become more comfortable with them, it can make my job of teaching much more fluid and ultimately allow for better comprehension of content amongst my students. While learning about assessment so far in this block I find that the information comes very naturally to me and motivates me to create a safe space in my classroom to allow for constructive feedback. Yet another element of teaching I have come to look forward to!

If I had to set two intentions for myself regarding assessment they would be:

1. Do not get discouraged if my attempts at assessment do not yield the results that I was expecting or results that may be beneficial to myself and my students’ learning
2. Try to base my assessment methods around what works best for my students, not around what I think is expected of me

My first intention comes mainly from reading Katie White’s text, Softening the Edges, and Regie Routman’s text, Reading Literacy: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners, because they both discuss the importance of trial and error in assessment and feedback with their students. From reading the tales of these two ladies perspectives around assessment it is obvious that there is no standard of assessment that will work well for every teacher/student combination and therefore insists that assessment takes patience and an ability to adapt. However, I tend to expect a lot from myself in all elements of my life so I worry about trying an assessment technique and not getting the results that I was expecting, or perhaps results that would help my students expand their learning. If this were to happen, I would know that I have not only wasted my time but also the time of my learners, ultimately setting us all back in our learning. Thus, by setting this intention I think I will be able to remind myself that in my future classroom we are all learners and that the best way to further our learning together will be to develop a strong community in the classroom. Building relationships and making connections with my students and fellow colleagues will be my first step in sticking with this intention.

This brings me to my second intention: by making these connections in my school and being patient with my own learning around assessment I believe that I will be able to maneuver my assessment methods and techniques around what works best for my students. This may take more time to perfect… but as I have heard many times already since September (especially from Gretchen), we are never done developing our pedagogies and a good teacher is willing to shift their modes of teaching and assessment for the greater benefit of their students. I am interested to develop a deeper learning of assessment throughout the course of this program and my practicums so that when I am in a school employed as a teacher, I will be able to recognize when I need to shift my methods of assessment in such a way that it does not disrupt learning. With these intentions I think that I will be able to have patience with myself and my learners and remind myself that each classroom will be different than the last. Assessment should not fit a preconceived mold and should instead fit the community.