{"id":28,"date":"2014-03-11T21:01:59","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T21:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/?p=28"},"modified":"2014-05-06T12:57:46","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T12:57:46","slug":"pushing-pulling-nudging-lifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/pushing-pulling-nudging-lifting\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing, Pulling, Nudging, Lifting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Not<\/a><\/p>\n

This has certainly been a long time in the making\u2026<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This has certainly been true of my journey with Cohort 21. A true meeting of the minds, at the end of each session I feel like anything is possible, but when I get back to the very busy and \u00a0imperfect world in which I actually teach (this isn\u2019t a suggestion about my school, but true of everywhere) I feel it incredibly challenging to see how the big ideas I love to talk about look in the particular setting of my classroom. It\u2019s easy to get tied up trying out new technologies or aiming for a certain look to the classroom, and forget that what I really want is the simplest and most complicated goal: to help my students be happy and learn.<\/p>\n

A purely philosophical conversation can aim toward ideals and truths that aren\u2019t always present in their purest sense. If\u00a0my<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0goal is ultimately to honestly help my<\/strong><\/em> students, then it must start with an honest recognition of who my students are and the obstacles to learning that might arise for them as a specific group. This alone is a nearly insurmountable task; however, I can certainly aim at what I see as a, if not the, significant challenge to my particular leaners.<\/p>\n

The learners in my classroom have an astounding range of language proficiencies between them. Some of them are completely comfortable with university-level texts, while some are reading 5-6 years below their grade level. This, as you can imagine, leads to many problems. Not least of which is the ethical challenge of how I spend my time in class. Is my time best spent working intensively with a handful of students who are just on the cusp of passing? Or is it best spent moving those students with Bs and Cs to the next level? Or is it best spent enriching my program for my high-achievers and pushing them out of their inertia so they don\u2019t lose their solid work habits before they get to university? Unfortunately, each of those goals require a different percentage of my classroom time and the bottom line is that I can\u2019t do each one of those things the way a class traditionally operates. Maybe I\u2019ll have some teachers shaking their head at that statement (\u201cI can\u2019t\u201d), but it is a very real challenge that can either be swept under the rug or faced down.<\/p>\n

For me, what it ultimately comes down to is creating a level of productive academic rigour for each student. And to accomplish that with such a diverse range of language abilities is finding the best way to be in more than one place at once, and that is ultimately what brings me to \u00a0the idea personalized learning.<\/p>\n

That brings me to the \u201cwhat\u201d, but now I have to figure out the \u201chow\u201d. I need to figure out how to push, pull, nudge, and lift students all at once. How to create different paths \u00a0\u2013 some of which may never meet \u2013 and yet maintain a sense of community within my classroom.<\/p>\n

I have yet to uncover what that looks like in an English class. Right now the best action I can offer is the hammering out of these ideas into words. Right now, it\u2019s trying to leverage Google Sites<\/a>, Google Drive<\/a>, Google Forms, Flubaroo<\/a>, Coggle.It<\/a>, and Diigo<\/a> (among other sites), to try and create collaborative spaces for students. Right now, it\u2019s trying to offer course work, wherever possible, in multi-day chunks that students can work through freely. Right now, it\u2019s a lot of one-on-one\/two\/three conversations and running around like an oddly-relaxed chicken with its head cut off. Right now, it\u2019s a strategic bolstering of the ESL program to ensure students are set up for success in our academic and university-level program. Right now, it\u2019s trying to add up the success and failures to come to a conclusion of what works and what doesn\u2019t. Right now, it\u2019s lots of frustration and fun.<\/p>\n

As always, I\u2019m more than open to suggestions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has certainly been a long time in the making\u2026 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 … Continue reading Pushing, Pulling, Nudging, Lifting<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}