{"id":153,"date":"2017-01-12T03:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T03:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/?p=153"},"modified":"2017-01-12T03:00:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T03:00:55","slug":"teaching-for-the-unknown-an-action-plan-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/2017\/01\/12\/teaching-for-the-unknown-an-action-plan-in-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching for the Unknown: An Action Plan in Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inspiration can come from anywhere and at anytime. Thanks to the initiative of fellow cult, I mean Cohort member, Nichola Bendle, I got my act in gear and started to really think about what I truly cared about in my classroom. During a recent PD session with Dr. Bev Freedman<\/a>, where she was introducing us to her training on how to create a culture where faculty feel comfortable having colleagues enter their classrooms and observe their teaching, she mentioned something very briefly, almost as a throw-away comment:<\/p>\n

“It’s important that we start to teach our students from the known to the unknown”.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr. Freedman referenced Dave Perkins at Harvard’s GSE<\/a>, and her point was that students need to be nimble learners as they face an uncertain future, one that will require them to likely change their jobs a number of times, requiring them to constantly be in a state of learning, but for a world that is rapidly changing. Our students will need to “learn, and re-learn, and then learn beyond what they already know”, according to Perkins, and I tend to agree. How might I teach my students to UNDERSTAND rather than to simply memorize a concept? Here is my key action plan guiding question:<\/p>\n

How might an authentic English classroom environment be the perfect place to help my students best prepare for the unknown?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Specifically, I’d like to focus on two fundamental skills: reading and writing. I want to co-construct activities with my students that will give them skills that are applicable in any environment, whether it’s writing a resume for McDonald’s or completing the rhetorical analysis question on the AP Language and Composition exam in May. I want my students to be passionate readers, who can summarize a complex text in their own words. I want my students to feel confident in their analytical skills, understanding how to identify what matters (and what doesn’t) when evaluating a text’s purpose or tone or style.<\/p>\n

So there it is: a fairly blank canvas with a monstrous and highly vague goal: preparing my English students for the unknown. I think this will require research, consultation with my peers and colleagues, and some more specific goals.<\/p>\n

If you can recommend some reading for me in my quest to prepare English students to be ‘more nimble’ learners, I’m keen to hear your suggestions!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspiration can come from anywhere and at anytime. Thanks to the initiative of fellow cult, I mean Cohort member, Nichola Bendle, I got my act in gear and started to really think about what I truly cared about in my classroom. During a recent PD session with Dr. Bev Freedman, where she was introducing us … Continue reading “Teaching for the Unknown: An Action Plan in Progress”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-plan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","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=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/brenthurley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}