To be or not to be....

Well let me start off by saying that I know this blog is going to begin as a bit of venting session, so if you don’t feel like hearing the confessions of a teenage phys-ed major then skip along a paragraph or two. Anyhow this venting stems from a bad mark, poorly worded comments, and a very frustrated student in the 21^st century stuck in 18th century literature trying to understand how the context has anything to do with my life as a whole, or the “big picture”. What caused these feelings, one name; SHAKESPEARE. Yes, that prolific playwright and noble English gentleman was bringing more grief then I had expected. Although I didn’t take the course as a way to find an easy way out, expanding my mind and working hard only to receive poor grades was difficult, and not in a bragging way, but not something I was entirely used too. Generally my hard work has been rewarded, with good grades, faster running times, peoples ability to see and reward my good work. However this wasn’t happening, the limitations of 1500 words, and a genre I was unfamiliar with left me feeling like I wanted to end the scene in this play that was my course.

However as I began to reflect more on what this course meant to me in a greater picture, I began to gain an understanding of high school and elementary school students frustrations. In that this course showed me how frustrating it can be to not understand a subject even though you try hard. That this  is frustration reflects how many students feel a lot of the time. How they feel left behind in a system which keeps pushing forward and fails to look at the student’s needs. (I however acknowledge that this is very different in a University context, but this experience has given me further insights that I may not have had in high school as I very much played the ‘game’ of education, and did well in succeeding in this!)

So after my poor mark, and my day of feeling glum I decided that feeling sorry for myself would not change the problem, that in this moment as a learner I had been taught that there was work to be done, and a problem to be solved the next time I put pen to paper or more accurately fingers to keys. But this ability to get over a poor mark did not come without a lot of coaching and support as well as conversations with my grader and even my professor as to how I can improve. This then brought the question up to me, “what about those kids who are too afraid to ask for help?” And thus, what is my role as a teacher to make them not only engaged in my teaching, but also willing to look for ways to improve and make themselves better. Because, I truly believe as noble and fantastic it is to teach students ‘real world’ problems and solutions, I think it is even more important to fill their tool box with resources, passion and drive to find the solutions to problems, and even search for problems to in turn seek the answers.

But how? If William Shakespeare needs to be taught, then William Shakespeare needs to be taught, however it comes back to how this is taught. How are student needs put at the forefront of learning and teaching? How does changing a lesson plan, or a final project to better reflect the needs and abilities of students while still be challenging and adhering to curriculum, but not causing so much frustration that they want to quit.

The answer quite simple, as I have alluded to in blogs past is to get to know your students, and from this become inovativve and creative in the way you teach, and how you teach it. This is where 21st centruy education comes into play. I wonder what Hamlet's Facebook page would look like? Or what Hermia's journal entry would look like after all the going-ons in the forest ! I think that as a teacher it is our role to take things that are seemingly boring and maybe irrelevant and use these to teach life skills through them. Teaching students bigger picture things, like how not being loved by someone does not mean that we should tell them we will "be their spaniel" or that power structures in these plays can lend themselves to historic learning. I think that we have the power to make things exciting and change the views of those who otherwise despise the subject matter. And take away the sense of hatred for the subject and turn it into a way in which they can take something they see as just nothing. Even sometimes if the lesson that is being taught is simply that with perseverance and dedication you can get through things that seem challenging.

The bottom line being that teaching is more than just about embedding life skills by highlighting how communication is used, or how collaboration is important. That sometimes life skills are going to be what the students take out of the lesson whether or not we intend them or not. That we as teachers sometimes need to realize that what we embed in the lesson may not be what we had intended and if this goes well it is not something that we should lay claim too. We must admit that our students had success without our planned involvement and that learning took place without us, and at the end of the day, THIS IS OKAY! Teachers and educators need to get away from everything being about them, and turn it onto the students. We focus so much on taking the focus away from curriculum and putting it on student needs but there must also be a switch from teacher self-centeredness. That we, like the students are there to learn, to make mistakes, and to gain a deeper understanding of the world around us. Each day is a new day, full of new, exciting and challenging things, and if we can let students explore this without impeding their visions. If we can do this through teaching curriculum with the intent for them to take something out of it we may not have expected, and if we can teach with the mindset that we want to change students’ lives, then WE CAN !

So to be or not to be? How does my experience relate to leading by example, taking ourselves away from the centre of the classroom, and allowing kids to explore. It suggests that even in the darkest moments of education, even when students, or we as educators feel down out and frustrated, there is always ALWAYS something to be learned, gained, and experienced, and it is by harnessing this within ourselves that we can simultaneously allow students to see the importance of seeking solutions even in the problems they do not wish to face. 

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So what's wrong with taking the back streets?

Hello Readers, I hope this blog finds you well !
We, Brock University students are nearing the end of our first six week block of school, and man has the time ever flown. I can say that forth year has started with a bang, and I am grateful to be enjoying it. Being invested in academics and athletics certainly helps to speed things along. My time in 4P19 has provided me some deeper insights into the practice of education, and I am excited to allow these lessons to further my love of teaching, and spawn it further ( I realize this has a suggestion of laying eggs for frogs, but I in a weird way intend it to mean the same thing as I hope my own education acts as a fertilizer for me to grow as a teacher). Anyhow...on to the good stuff !
Many of my blogs have spoken to the importance of knowing students, knowing how to present to them, how to engage them and how to put aside personal bias when trying to meet students where they are at. The notion of backward design for instruction is one that strikes a cord with me.

The notion of getting to know our students before we even begin to pull apart and evaluate curriculum and the structure of a unit, to be brutally honest, just makes logical sense. How can you expect a student to learn well if their basic needs are not being met. Maslow was right on when he suggested that in order to get to higher levels of living we first need to have our needs met. But as a teacher sometimes I think we remove ourselves from the notion of physiological needs, deeming that sort of thing to be more of a domestic sphere problem. That although we want to care for our students because it may seem to fit with best practice we don't actually have any power to help these students. This is where our fault lies, not only can simple things be done like bringing healthy snacks into class for all students to share as to not only marginalize those that seemingly "have enough". But it also means being a good role model. I think this is one of the most important things a teacher can do to promote healthy lifestyles and thus exemplify how students can meet their psychological needs. 

Teachers need to practice what the preach, they need to be leaders in their communities, promote healthy eating not only by word of mouth, but by food in mouth ! They need to get away from trying to be cool, and just be, and allow this to have influence on their students. Teachers need to seek to understand how to better help there students learn while ultimately realizing and seeing this as a challenge, but one they are committed and excited to achieve. Once we, as teachers know our students we can then, as the backwards plan suggests work to understand the tasks, and assessments, we can begin to look at how we can integrate our students into greater contexts, understandings and love of their desired fields. We need to get away form the notion (as this theory suggests) of finding ways to fit our students into our lesson, and let our lesson fit our students. Get away from classroom discussion of case studies, and inspire students through real life situations. If it takes Sally 20 minutes to get 10 km on her bike, and Jimmy 30 minutes to get 17km on his bike, who is going faster? Well doesn't it make sense to start engaging our students in physical activity, getting them excited. If it takes each of these people X amount of time to get somewhere, then it's time we start getting somewhere and get our students riding bikes, Integrating physical education into math, and English into fine arts. If we want to develop 21st century skills and we want students to be quick thinkers then we need to move away from stale textbooks and mothball eaten resources, we need to get active, make mistakes, get messy (ride on the magic school bus?). Maybe it's the red hair, or my love of lizards but my last reference to the Magic School bus is one I actually strive to exemplify, Ms. Frizzle's commitment to her students learning is one that should be commended ! Her ability to harness their desire to learn, even when they seemingly didn't want to but turning every experience into a positive one is exceptional. How can we harness this? How can we make our way into the human body, head to the stars for solar system exploration, thanks to technology (even though my own jury is still out on that in terms of validity) and every growing community supports these things are possible. So let's get our students active, in every sense of the word ! 

With all of this being said, growing in a love for learning and helping our students do the same I think there is one thing I want to make note of before wrapping up; an addition to the backwards teaching. Know your students is with out a doubt extremely important, however even before this occurs I think it is crucial to know yourself as a teacher ! What makes you tick? How many pushups can you really do? What is your favourite subject? Are you biased to one particular pen colour? Is there some sort of hidden curriculum that you continue to try and push? At what point did you decide that you wanted to be an educator and why? 

As teacher we need to start to question our motives and make sure that we are teaching for the right reasons. Not to fufill some fantasy of teaching that we lost, or reclaim our role as "cool" in a high school setting. We need to make sure that our own personal issues do not interfere with our teaching, but we need to recognize when they are and therefore ask for help from other teachers, our administration and our support networks at home. We must remember that as educators, we are not an island and we are not absolved of all the hardships of the world, and most importantly we must remember that teaching is not meant to be easy. I have said this many times to myself but I truly believe that when teaching becomes easy, when my lesson plans become so ingrained that I could do them with my eyes closed, this is the time that I need to reevaluate my teaching and admit that I am doing something wrong. Allowing the difficulties in teaching, not to lead to burn out, but to lead to inspiration for new and exciting and magical things for my students. I anxiously await the first day of my teacher career, but I also say this knowing that each day will be the first day, as each day presents a new and exciting avenue of education to explore !