Qu’est-ce que je fais maintenant?

Well, Garth and Justin certainly delivered on their promise of this being a PD experience like no other. It was certainly an informative and inspiring session, and now I feel like a repair man with two vans full of tools but only one pair of hands to drive them.

During my time at OISE, various workshops and special guest speakers tried to cram technology and new types of learning down my throat. “Yeah, that’s great,” I thought to myself, “but I won’t really have the chance to implement these systems and ideas in my practicums since I’m only there for a short while. I don’t want to mess up the systems already set in place by my Associate Teacher. I’ll try these out when I get a class of my own.”

Flash forward to the present when I find myself with 8 primary french classes of my own. I’m trying to use the AIM system to get everybody engaged and on the same page, but I know full well I’m going to have to differentiate and personalize the instruction somehow. Not all of them are okay with sitting on the carpet, but when I try to use worksheets, some of them finish before others even start! I feel the success of my 21st century all-male learners depends on my ability to meet their 21st century needs (and/or tiny attention spans).

Cohort 21 is giving me the tools and resources to solve this problem, but it’s up to me to figure out which tools and resources to use and how to best use them. It’s like that scene from Apollo 13 when all the NASA engineers are gathered into one room, given a set of materials identical to the ones available to the astronauts in distress, and tasked with trying to figure out how to fix the oxygen filter problem. Here’s the link in case you haven’t seen the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2YZnTL596Q

Though my problem is slightly less urgent, it’s no easier but I feel like I can solve it with persistence and a willingness to ask for help from my colleagues at school and at Cohort 21.