{"id":109,"date":"2015-10-31T15:59:33","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T15:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/?p=109"},"modified":"2015-10-31T15:59:33","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T15:59:33","slug":"taking-chances-at-sea-and-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/2015\/10\/31\/taking-chances-at-sea-and-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Chances at Sea and in the Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s blog post is about\u2026 you guessed\u2026 taking chances. It\u2019s scary as a professional to also be a risk taker, yet I\u2019ve found that it often leads to my best moments as a teacher. A few years back I took a chance and decided to take a year\u2019s leave of absence so that I could work on Class Afloat<\/a>, a school based on a tall ship called the S\/V Concordia. We sailed around the Atlantic with gr. 11 and gr. 12 students for ten months, visiting nearly 20 countries. It sounds like an awesome adventure \u2014 and it was \u2014 but more importantly it was a risky move for a guy who didn\u2019t know the first thing about sailing, or teaching classes like Multi-Media while working on a ship without the internet. Class Afloat became one of the most influential experiences I\u2019ve ever had as a teacher<\/a>, forcing me to get out of my comfort zone, to make my teaching more authentic, and demanding that become adaptable and open to challenge and change. Connections with students were fostered through our shared experience of learning, being open to trying new things, and not being scared to show our vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n

\"Concordia3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How am I taking chances in my teaching now? Well, I\u2019m not climbing aloft to unfurl the sails at 6am, that is for sure. I\u2019m trying something new in my grade 12 English course, and it revolves mainly around voice and choice<\/a>. I\u2019m attempting to co-construct the course with my students; a course that I have never taught before, only dreamed about teaching. \u00a0We are focussing on the genre known as \u201cNew Journalism\u201d, primarily non-fiction long form essay writers, starting with Truman Capote, and moving forward to writers like Chris Jones, Jon Krakauer, and Sebastian Junger. I wanted students to have choice in who they read, what they read, and how they showed their learning. Down the road I\u2019d like to create an iBook that houses all of the course materials, but for now, I\u2019ve chosen to release them into the crazy world of online reading, mostly on their own. It creates a sense of vulnerability for me as a teacher because I\u2019m no longer the sole holder of knowledge. I\u2019ve let go and, instead, I\u2019m focussing on skills rather than content. Is it working?<\/p>\n

At this point students have chosen who their focus writer will be and what platform they will use to create an E-portfolio on that writer. Most have chosen to create a community on Google Plus<\/a>, which has me pretty excited. The long term plan is students will identify the particular style of their writer of choice and emulate that style in a pastiche non-fiction essay on a topic of their choice. In addition, they will be writing reflections and critical analysis essays on different pieces by their writer of choice. I\u2019m hoping to get a conversation going on Twitter about how their writer is relevant in today\u2019s world. Everything will be published to their portfolios and, hopefully, we can share those portfolios with the outside world.<\/p>\n

\"Gr.<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have an exemplar portfolio to show them. I\u2019m not familiar with all of the individual writers that my students have chosen. I\u2019m struggling to ensure that deeper learning is happening by giving them the rhetorical tool-kit<\/a> to deconstruct and approach a piece of writing. Recent assessments for learning indicate students don\u2019t have a great handle on that tool-kit.<\/p>\n

Taking chances in the classroom means for me, relinquishing control. I look forward to updating this blog with the outcomes of my students\u2019 work. Until then, keep the ship pointed into the wind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s blog post is about\u2026 you guessed\u2026 taking chances. It\u2019s scary as a professional to also be a risk taker, yet I\u2019ve found that it often leads to my best moments as a teacher. A few years back I took a chance and decided to take a year\u2019s leave of absence so that I could … Continue reading “Taking Chances at Sea and in the Classroom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,6],"tags":[16,9],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-21st-century-learning","category-personalized-learning","category-student-directed-learning","tag-pbl","tag-project-based-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}