Great class today. I wish we could have followed through on every question to gather the wisdom in the room. We have the same problem you will all encounter in your own classrooms someday, so much to do and so little TIME!
I must say that it is genuinly exciting to see you taking full advantage of every opportunity to engage with each other and the materials despite the flurry of information coming your way. It is impressive to watch you work! While you will all look very different from each other in the classroom, it is my belief that you will advocate for the good of your students, whatever that looks like, if you yourself have the tools, confidence and support to do so. I feel privileged to get to watch the building of all three!
You are also getting to experience first hand many of the learning strategies/stages spoken of in our readings. You are constructing knowledge by combining readings with past and present experiences. You are learning through both the process (conversation, reading, blogging) as well as the products (papers, posters, role plays). Art imitates life as real and relevant questions are explored. Your questions take on new life when they can change the focus of our conversations. As a result, your participation both individually and collectively profoundly impacts the whole class experience. The concepts you are learning are being scaffolded by requiring a time of reflection (your Take on a Voice paper), allowing for social interaction (making your cheat sheet) and experiencing a little ZPD thanks to both the support of team mates and the dedication of challengers. The classroom is becoming a place where risk is more the norm than the exception. After all, we're all in this together...
I know that many of you are in that odd but necessary state of disequilibrium where clarity comes and goes. This process is invaluable as we make all this information our own. Just think, with all of this thrashing around in theory you are beginning to create a real teaching philosophy. A flexible ever transforming one to be sure, but a framework to give your teaching a foundation in principle and heart. What are you becoming passionate about ED561?
Your next blog prompt is wide open. What is on your mind, shaping your thinking. guiding your inquiry? By the way, your thoughts could span across readings and even the other classes you are taking. I don't believe that we in Child Development have cornered the market on interesting food for thought!!
Enjoy,
I look forward to Thursday!
Zalika
In many of our classes, similar questions and ideas are discussed. For example, the Karen Gallas book we’re reading for Science is deeply connected to the developmental theory we’re exploring in this class. Social, Historical, and Ethical perspectives is creating a context for the schools most of us will teach in and the arts seem to enter in everywhere. We’re constantly being told to listen to our students, observe our students, and let them guide us—a model that is pretty different than my school experience. I like all of these ideas.
ReplyDeleteDewey’s theories of education spoke to me for several reasons. I feel that I respect him more because he has in-classroom experience with children. He’s not theorizing, he’s watching and observing and noting what he sees. I like that model and interesting to Talking their was into Science, because it’s was Gallas does, they’re both teacher-researchers. You can tell they are excited about what they do because they both wanted to learn more about how to be better teachers in their classrooms and how to communicate what they learned to help other teachers be better teachers in classrooms all over the country.
So, to sum up my ramblings, I am excited about the ideas of interconnectedness and being a teacher-researcher. I like interconnectedness because it asks students (i.e. us) to take information from other parts of their lives and weave it into everything else they are learning. I like the idea of being a teacher-researcher because if you make simple, well-noted observations, it gives you the opportunity to act on what you see and make intentional decisions about how you want to be as a teacher in the classroom. It’s empowering.
As we near the end of our second week in graduate school, there are a lot of thoughts that consume my mind. One of the first ones is phew!! I made it and I’m doing okay….and allowing myself to have some fun! The week before school started, I was a hot mess! I was so nervous going into graduate school because I was going off of what I heard about it. I heard it was such a hard and stressful year. Being that I have been in school for only two weeks, these feelings are sure to arise at some point but I have found the opposite to be true. I have found that I look forward to going to class, working with my classmates, and really coming into our own in this program. I guess one lesson that I’ve learned from that is to not go by what other people say. It is important to go into any new life experience with your own set of expectations. I am a firm believer that I am going to get out of this program what I put into it. I have learned that I need to take some time for myself over this next year and really focus on why I want to be a teacher.
ReplyDeleteLast night, I had dinner with my third grade teacher. When I told her that she is part of my inspiration as to why I want to become a teacher, she started crying. I seem to find that little moments like that make me able to confirm in my head that this career path is right for me. I know that I will have doubts, but it is those little experiences that make me want to be a teacher. Along those same lines, I have to remember one of the readings from ED 550 where Parker J Palmer talks about how it is important to have those teachers that have lead you into this profession but it is equally important to not mimic everything that they did in their teaching. Maybe in 30 years, I will be taking one of my students out to dinner and having the exact conversation….I sure hope so.
We are only two weeks in and already my brain hurts. The hurting, however, is the pain of success, like the sore muscles after a really long run or accomplished yard work. These recent experiences are not the first time I have thought about teaching, or educational theory. Yet, this is the first time that I have had these kinds of discussions with a bunch of people that are serious about the same issues I am serious about in teaching. I try to have these conversations with other people, and for them, it’s about as exciting as reading brochures at the DMV. There we go, I am at once exhausted, encouraged, conflicted, bewildered, inspired and questioning. But, this is what is supposed to happen, right?
ReplyDeleteI can’t help but think: this is only the very beginning.
Also, I am feeling this sense of burden. I need to be a conscientious educator. We are learning so many methods and theories, each with a likely place in the classroom. How can coalesce the salient points of all the different ideas? I have to be responsible, vulnerable, together and organized; I need know how to lead, consider, listen, encourage and guide. While my logical, rational self (which doesn’t make an appearance too often) reminds me that these things will come, from where I stand now, the enormity of the tasks ahead is extraordinary.
This week for me I am feeling a lot better! It seems like I have things a little more under control and I am not quiet as stressed out as I was for our first week. Last week all I could think about was can I really do this, will I be able to breathe at all this year or will I be living in a hole studying. Now I am feeling like I can handle school. I am not sure if that is just because it feels like we have less homework this week or that I am just getting back into the groove of school – even though I have only been out of school for a month! This week I am excited about school and not scared to death about graduate school and how hard it will be.
ReplyDeleteI am starting to get excited about what lies ahead. So far our classes have been really interesting and I can’t wait for our next classes, especially classroom management. It is amazing to be surrounded by peers who are interested in education and seem to genuinely care that everyone understands and feels welcome in our cohort. I love the material that we are discussing in our classes and especially learning about child development. It was so great to pretend to be teachers and plan our own curriculum for a year, I can’t wait until I have my own classroom and get to do this kind of stuff for year.
Development. Theory. Construct. Critique. Analyze. Imagine. Read. Answer. Discuss. Write. Reflect. Aaaah! Help! I'm overwhelmed, and I'm learning!
ReplyDeleteWe are a week and a half into our graduate program, and I definitely feel like a graduate student. Am I surprised? Prior to starting the program, I thought maybe it would take some time for our classes to delve into serious matters of education and theory, but no time has been wasted. Zalika mentioned that the clarity probably "comes and goes." She's right. It's good to know that this is normal and necessary.
Overall, I'm pleased with how the information I am learning in each class can be applied in other classes. Our instructors are clearly co-conspiring, and it's great. I feel like each day and class is a continuum of another. Zalika, Kip, Sara, and even Jan have discussed Piaget. Today I saw the ideals of Montessori and Piaget coming into play during our free-lance "science talks" in Kip's class. While I ready "Schooled to Order" for Sara's class, I was able to use my understanding of the stages of child development to develop my own opinion on the methods of schooling in the past. Everything put together just makes sense.
With that, I look forward to continuing to build on knowledge during the coming year. My education feels relevant, pertinent, and invaluable.