As April gets ready to depart, so too does the school year. The snow (yes, there is still snow in Muskoka) is beginning to melt away almost as fast as the few remaining days in this school year. I have done so much thinking in recent weeks that I have failed to document and so I will try my best to retroactively recreate it here.
Continue reading Questions and Connections: My Cohort Experience
This has certainly been a long time in the making…
As a reflective practitioner, it can be quite easy to get caught up in educational philosophy and trying to mine each and every one of your decisions for the philosophical stances it either explicitly or implicitly takes. While there is certainly many great things that can come from this process, like all philosophy, there is the potential to be completely paralyzed with the multitude of outcomes and deciding which path is best. It can get to the point where you are so worried about the words you say being misconstrued that it can become challenging to actually say anything definitive. Eventually, it is time to stop philosophizing and take action.
I’m not sure how to feel right now. After one of my most professional productive winter breaks of unit planning and brainstorming while fighting off turkey comas and overbearing relatives, I came back to school to find out that my grade 12 history class – the same class I had been planning to use as my trial for blended learning – was cancelled. Evidently, this is a part of small schools as the school makes timetable adjustments to help students get the prerequisite credits they need. Such is life, and it’s back to the drawing board as I feel passionate about creating an opportunity to bring blended learning into the class.
There was a time in university where my procrastination hit an all-time high – where anything was better than writing essays. It was in this moment of hilarious irresponsibility that I discovered the “Will it Blend?” video series on YouTube.
I’m coming back to it now as I begin to think about how to confront the realities that: a) eLearning is becoming a legitimate alternative to the face-to-face classroom, and b) technology is allowing us to, in the words of Dr. Ruben Puentedura, create new educational tasks and opportunities that were “previously inconceivable”. How can I best leverage the power and benefits of technology and personalized learning in a face-to-face classroom?
It’s that point in the year when I’m struggling. I’m currently teaching 3 different courses (two of which I’ve never taught before), heading up the drama club, and helping to coach our senior boys basketball team. While it may seem like I’ve bit off more than I can chew, it’s exactly the giant mouthful that is sometimes required when working in a small school. More often than not, I love being as big a part as possible in the school community, but every so often you feel stretched thin and wonder how much better you might be at one passion if you were given the time needed to really pursue it. I could go on and on about how this affects my practice and planning, etc. (and I’m sure I will in another post very soon), but right now I’m just wondering what’s in the best interest of students.
They (Justin) say a good blog ends with a question. But what’s my question going to be?
Should I be asking something practical about the best way to implement all of the mind-blowing new tools I learned about at our first cohort meeting? How can I best manage my time, as well as all of these new tools and the data/information they produce? Or maybe I should aim for something more profound: What will education look like in 2030? How can I best prepare students for a future that is as uncertain as it is rapidly changing?