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Welcome to you Cohort 21 Blog. This journal is an integral part of your Cohort 21 experience. Here you will reflect, share , collaborate and converse as you move through the C21 Action Plan process.
This is your first post and an opportunity to share a little bit about yourself as a learner and leader. Please respond the to the following prompts below:
1) Reflect on your own personal learning journey and K-12 education. Identify one learning experience that you can point to as having made a significant impact on some element of your own growth and development. It could be that teacher and subject that really sparked significant growth or a trip that opened your eyes to a whole new world or way of thinking or a non-catastrophic failure that you learned so much from. Briefly describe the learning experience and identify the various supports, structures, mindsets and relational ingredients that were put in place by the teacher or facilitator that directly contributed to your growth and success.
One experience that has stuck with me from a teaching perspective was lab work in my Grade 11 and 12 chemistry class. The labs were set up to allow for experimentation in order to answer a question. We were allowed to set up the experiments a variety of ways, encouraging us to use failure as a method of learning. The labs were connected to real world problems, or at least used common household ingredients, which seemed to make them more interesting. Rather than the bar being lowered when a challenge was too hard, the teacher encouraged the students to persevere until we overcame the challenge.
2) What is the one Learning skill (MOE) or Approach to Learning (IB ATL) that you feel is MOST important in this day and age? How do you intentionally build it into your curriculum and develop it in your students throughout the year?
I have been focusing on integrating collaboration into my classroom. I encourage students to work together to solve problems, emphasizing the importance of collaboration. We talk about how to effectively collaborate (listening to each others ideas, sharing information, etc.)
3) Insert an image below that best captures the essence of that Learning Skill or ATL. (Click on the “Helpful WordPress Video Tutorials” link in the left hand sidebar to learn how to insert it)
via https://www.aiim.org/What-is-Collaboration
So glad you joined Cohort 21! Looking forward to your posts.
Hey Matt. What a great lesson to learn from your chemistry teacher – lowering the bar may be a short term gain, but is ultimately a long term loss. I still struggle with this when teaching math i.e. if I skip over the examples with fractions, then we will be able to cover more examples, but then I’m doing them a disservice by not representing math in the real world. I find it so hard to find that balance sometimes!
I’m also interested to hear more about the collaboration techniques you use. I’ve been using more group work over the past few years but would definitely like to incorporate more of it in a variety of ways.
I’m excited to meet you and get started on this awesome journey together!
Hey Matt,
I’m personally working on integrating learning skill learning into my English instruction. When you are teaching skills like collaboration, do you take time to model this, demonstrate, or show examples for students in your context?