At the beginning of this week, I started to think about my “vision of the future.” I re-read my blog postings of the reading reviews, and I leaned towards setting my vision on fostering reading at school by providing tools and platforms to students to share about their reading using information communication technology. However, my observation at my school yesterday, Nov. 12th, 2015, changed my whole plan.
Yesterday was the Surrey School District (SD36) Curriculum Implementation Day. It was a non-instructional day and the Surrey Teachers’ Association (STA) has provided us with the agenda for the day as well as supportive resources that we could study. My school is a small school, and yesterday, there were only 11 teaching staffs at the school: 9 classroom teachers, one learner support team (LST) teacher who is also our professional development committee (Pro-D) chair, and myself. We all gathered in the library at the beginning of the day, and briefly went through the supportive resources that we had received via email from the STA. Our Pro-D chair suggested we study the articles and resources being sent out by the STA, and also, explore the B.C. new curriculum on its website. One of the staff asked if we need to gather in grade groups and work collaboratively as suggested in the agenda, however, all staffs agreed that we will work on our own pace and it is individual’s choice to work collaboratively with others. Hence, there was no afternoon session set for collaborative work. I had observed that there was two or three colleagues work collaboratively for a short period of time in the morning, but for the rest of the day, colleagues (including myself) worked independently in their own classroom, exploring the new curriculum on their own and at their own pace.
As I explored one of the documents titled “Curriculum Framework,” a session in there caught my attention: “How? Structures to support investing curriculum.” Moreover, in that session, there are two terms that spark my interest: Edcamp, and collaborative inquiry. This is the first time I heard about “Edcamp,” I was curiously to know what it is, therefore, I spent some time investigating it. The following video that I found provided me with a clear picture of what Edcamp is.
Video courtesy of http://www.edutopia.org/edcamp-organizer-resources
That is what I would like to see happening at my school, my “vision of the future”: colleagues work collaboratively together, to reflect our teaching practice, inquire new pedagogy or methods, share our ideas and support each other.
“It is ironic that, with all we know about
the benefits of collaborative, inquiry-
based learning for students, we struggle to create the same rich learning opportunities for teachers.” (Schnellert & Butler, 2014)
At this moment, the following are the goals I have in mind:
- to encourage and support peers to build their personal learning network (PLN)
- to advocate collaborative inquiry model as a professional development activity
- to provide opportunities and forums, either meeting after school or using social media, for sharing idea
I plan to create a Powtoon video to advocate PLN as well as collaborative inquiry within our school community. However, I have never used Powtoon before, there is inquiry that I need to do on “how to use Powtoon” prior to creating the video for my final vision project. Plan might get changed as I go through the process, but at least this is where I am starting.
References:
Adams, P., and Townsend, D. (2014). From action research to collaborative inquiry: A framework for researchers and practitioners. Education Canada, 54(5), 12–15. Link: http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/action-research-collaborative-inquiry
Edcamp Foundation. http://www.edcamp.org
Powtoon: Brings Awesomeness to Your Presentations. http://www.powtoon.com
“Resources for Organizing an Edcamp.” Edutopia. 24 Mar. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.edutopia.org/edcamp-organizer-resources>.
Schnellert, L., and Butler, D.L. (2014). Collaborative inquiry: Empowering teachers in their professional development. Education Canada, 54(3), 42–44. Link: http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/collaborative-inquiry