As our graduate school days come to a close, my greatest thoughts, other than a constant stream of deadlines, is that it impossible to put a cap on something that will never be finished. As I said in my critical friends meeting, "I keep thinking I've finished everything, and then I find something else that I need to include or write about." And of course, in a larger sense, this is because learning always involves infinity. I have become a tremendous proponent of using the design thinking process to understand the world around me. It isn't just how innovations get built and created, it is how we teach and should be how we live our lives. There is no way that I could ever say that I had completely mastered the art of teaching, just as there is no way I could ever say that I had completely mastered the art of living. We identify problems, attempt solutions and then try again, and again and gain. This learning process has been heightened during this capstone project because I am required to reflect and write about this process on a weekly basis, but it is the same thinking I should be doing daily in my classroom. Did that lesson work? Why? Why not? How can it be improved? What goals did it meet? What goals should it meet? There is no end to the infinite loop of instructional improvement and personal growth. I can always be a better teacher; always. In the days of my speech and debate coaching, I would tell my debate team: Do not use absolutes! They are unprovable! When the opposing team would say things like "never" or "always", my students would vibrate with excitement knowing that was the moment they won the debate. And yet, when it comes to learning and teaching, absolutes are the only things that are true. We can NEVER stop improving our instruction, and we ALWAYS need to assess and reassess our effectiveness. As I go over and over my website, my poster, and my final videos, I can pin-point so many ways that it could be improved or clarified. Yet, this is the heart of the innovative teacher program; communicating the idea that learning is an infinite loop - whether you are the teacher or the student there is always more to learn.
3 Comments
james landis
11/27/2017 09:34:36 pm
Jen,
Reply
Nai Saelee
11/28/2017 07:08:14 pm
Jen,
Reply
dan
11/30/2017 06:29:02 pm
Jen,
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorJen has been teaching school for awhile now. She's learned some stuff, but she's got tons more to learn. Archives
October 2017
Categories |