Month: April 2017

CFE Week 1: How possible is personalized education?

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I was very fortunate to be able to do my Community Field Experience at an educational services center. The best way I can describe the center is as a private personalized alternative school. The teachers and tutors are focused on providing holistic learning that is personalized for each student either in tutoring sessions or in small classes. They take great pride in providing a personalized education for their students. This is something that I truly admire and was taken aback by this week.

One of my goals as a teacher is to be able to personalize the education I provide my students. I had done so in my classes by determining student learning styles, their strengths and weaknesses, and likes and dislikes. I took this knowledge and tailored my lessons to include all aspects of learning styles, provided students on their strengths and weaknesses and areas for development, and attempted to include topics of interest. Yet with 30 students in each class, it is hard to make the lesson really personalized and ensure that each students needs are fully met. What was amazing about my CFE was that they truly embraced the true meaning of personalized education. Every student was known by the majority (if not all) of the staff: their strengths, areas to improve on and how to support them in their education. Their personalized education was rooted in strong supportive relationships between staff and students.

This is something that I have been very reflective of the last week. I spent the vast majority of my time in my long practicum building and maintaining relationships with students. I thought that I had done well, but after seeing the relationships that are present here, I believe that my relationships were not as strong as I had believed. My students knew that I cared about their well-being, that I was available for support, and that I wanted to help them learn and succeed. Yet I didn’t get to know my students – where they came from, their stories, successes, failures and how I can really be there for them. I am aware that being able to get to know each of my students on this level would require more time than I have and is not really feasible. I was inspired by the strong relationships to incorporate this into my future practice. I thought of many ways I could get to know my students better: entrance interviews, journal entries, more “ice breakers”, passion projects, and interest polls to name a few. I am excited to try these out, not all at once but to build them into my practice over time to see what works best for me and large numbers of students. This is all fine and dandy of course, but even if I was able to know my students better, how could I possibly personalize their education while also personalizing the experiences of every other student? This leads me to ask the question how personalized can education be in the public system?

After a lot of thinking and a few searches online, I decided that the best way to provide personalization is through choice. Mike Nagler below explains this well in the short video below using a pizza analogy (and who doesn’t love a good pizza analogy!). Choice allows students to personalize their own education. I am no longer the one to personalize, but rather the facilitator of personalization. The students are in control of their experiences and success, while I am there to guide and support their actions, thinking and learning. My goal is to provide students with choice and support to ensure that students are learning and growing. This will require communication between myself and my students, their teachers and parents. The students at my CFE school were given choice in their learning, guidance, and support, resulting in success in whatever form that may be for each student.

I am eager to be able to support my students learning with the strategies that I have learned here, and look forward to what next week brings!

Week 10: What a journey this has been!

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I began this journey excited, nervous, and filled with questions: what was I going to learn? what are my real strengths? what are my weaknesses? how can I improve? what happens if a lesson goes horribly wrong? what if they don’t like me?

I ended my journey yesterday with answers to all of those questions, and an even larger stack of questions I can’t wait to discover the answers to. I am so thankful to have had my practicum at such an amazing school, filled with support, compassion, empathy, a wealth of knowledge and opportunities to try new things. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to work with amazing teachers and learn from them and to continually develop my practice with their advice and feedback.

Highs:

  • As promised, we finished the Ultimate Disney Bracket and were able to watch a movie on the last day. The winner was The Lion King, but turns out you can’t buy that on iTunes so we watched Hercules instead. I brought in a bunch of snacks for everyone and it was an amazing way for us to share our last day together.
  • I received ample feedback from my SA and FA, but I wanted direct feedback on my teaching from the students. I asked them to write for me what a class would look like as if they were a fly on the wall observing the class. Some students went above and beyond, writing a small narrative about my teaching strategies, while others just indicated their likes and dislikes. I was overwhelmed with their responses. Of the 35 responses I received, they could only think of two things that I could improve on. The first was to do more labs (which I understood but it was hard to do in a genetics unit!) and the second was to post grades on the wall (which I was hesitant to do and am still contemplating if I want to do it!). I was told by many that they appreciated my high energy, engaging activities, and sense of humour, while others were blunt and told me that I was their favourite teacher and they were sad to see me go. A few even offered to write me a formal reference letter to give to their principals so they would hire me to be their teacher in the fall! It was a phenomenal feeling to know that my hard work was appreciated by the students and that I really made a difference in their learning.

Lows:

  • Report card marks were due at 8:30am on Wednesday morning and since last weekend was a holiday, I was scrambling Tuesday night and Wednesday morning to complete them. I ended up in a scramble Wednesday morning after having a stack of assignments moved that needed to be inputted. In the future, I will start on report cards earlier so that I am not scrambling at the last minute!
  • The ultimate low was that I had to say goodbye to my students and peers. I cried on six separate occasions on Friday because I was so sad to have to end this amazing journey. I cried while writing thank you cards because I was so grateful to have such supportive mentors, while saying goodbye to my classes and wishing them a happy weekend for the last time, and while writing my students final blog posts. They were tears of sadness mixed with joy, excitement and a little fear of the upcoming unknown as I am about to embark on the next leg of my educational journey.

10 weeks, 45 teaching days, 110 lesson plans, 146 marked tests, 29 poster projects, 100+ hours in my car, 86 amazing students, hundreds of smiles and laughs, and a lifetime of learning and growing. Peace out practicum. 

 

Week 9: Science and Media Literacy

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With science articles claiming becoming increasingly common in popular media sources and outlets, as well as the rise of “fake news,” I feel that it is my duty as a science educator to provide students with tools to be informed critical thinkers, especially when it comes to science in the media. Rather than reflecting on the highs and lows of the week, I wanted to reflect on the highs and lows of my attempt to develop my students media literacy, with a background of why this is so important to me.

In my final year of my undergrad, I was introduced to the idea of incorporating science articles into the classroom. The professor had an assignment called “Science in Society” in which students were to find a current article in a popular media source and present one slide to the class on the science behind the article. For example, a student could bring in an article on the methane leak occurring in California and would explain the effects of the leak using scientific principles. Initially I was inspired to bring this into my future classroom as I wanted students to be able to find an article and then do research to explain the science to their peers. This evolved after we discussed media literacy in one of my courses at UBC prior to the practicum. I became inspired to incorporate media literacy with respect to science articles into my classroom and began planning all of the ways that I could!

My initial idea was to have a Science in Society presentation project. Students would choose a science based article and would present the content of the article as well as the reliability of the source to the class. After realizing that I only had 10 weeks and 30 students, I couldn’t determine how I could incorporate all of the presentations into my schedule. This resulted in me creating a research report for the students, which I will explain in more detail later!

The process of scientific research reaching the public – what I wanted my students to understand! [Click to see details!]

To begin our journey with science media literacy, I had a class called Communicating Science. The purpose of the lesson was to introduce students to what they should look for in a reliable source as well as why readers should be skeptical of articles. I began the lesson by polling students on their beliefs of climate change and then showed the students two videos – one for climate change, the other claiming that climate change is not impacted by humans. I polled students after each video to determine if their views could be swayed by a single video (specifically the “climate change is not real” which they were shown first). After the students were thoroughly confused by conflicting data, we analyzed the two videos and their sources, in terms of accurate data representation, citations, logical graphs and images, etc. The students came to the conclusion that one video was more reputable than the other thus more convincing. We then discussed reasons why readers must be skeptical, such as the loss of scientific meaning from journal research to front page media, conflicting evidence but only showing one side, or even falsely reporting what scientific research has found. I walked students through examples of each and allowed students to discuss the implications of falsely reporting science. After, students were to write a reflection on the importance of communicating science and their views on media now. Students seemed to be more skeptical and willing to have a more open mind about personal research into a topic before believing everything they read.

As scientific articles would appear on my social media or if a student brought one in, we would discuss the reliability of the source and the content, just as a Socials Studies class may frequently incorporate current events. I wish I had done this more frequently and made it part of the routine, but I found that I was limited for time and this is something I strive to incorporate more into my future classrooms.

After Spring Break, I assigned my students my own version of Science in Society. They were asked to find an article in a popular media source that was based on science and technology, and to critic the article as a reliable source of information. They were also going to discuss their findings in small groups on the reliability of different sources and then write a short reflection on the different sources discussed, but we were really running short on time before I left and I had to cut out the discussion and reflection. My students also seemed really stressed at the time so removing this alleviated some of their stress and helped them focus on the report rather than the additional work.

I just finished marking the reports and I have to say, I think this has been the most important lesson I have taught my students. The reports were very well done. They analyzed the text well including figures, graphs, in text citations, and some even played detective to learn more about the author and if they were credible. I also got the chance to see what students were interested in, which made me wish I had done this project earlier in the semester. Almost a quarter the class had articles on space exploration or astronomy. Had I known this earlier, I would have allotted more time for this unit as they are very interested in it.

In my future classes, I will always include this at the beginning of the year, just as I would teach safety. I would also extend the Science in Society report. First, I would have students analyze an two articles of my choosing and then discuss it together to ensure that students understood the difference between a “good” and “bad” article. Then I would have students write the report on the topic of their choice and would include the discussion and reflection. I think that it is important for students always reflect on the learning process as well as the importance of communication, not only between each other but also on a large scale in the media. In senior courses, I would love to try the presentations out, with one or two a week. I would still incorporate reflections and would encourage discussion as much as possible. Teaching science and media literacy has become a new passion of mine and I look forward to continuing this practice in future years as well as learning more about being an effective literacy educator!