Category: Reflections (Page 1 of 2)

Reflective Journal from the 490 Practicum – Who am I as a Teacher?

13 June 2021 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

During my EDUC 490 teaching practicum, I was placed in a Grade 8 mathematics classroom and DP Todd Secondary School. The experiences I’ve had in the classroom over the past 4 weeks have expanded my conceptualization of changing, or adapting, pedagogy to fit different learners in different environments. Having taught grade 11’s in Chemistry for my previous practicum, it became quickly apparent that some of my pedagogical approaches would need modification to fit the needs of the Grade 8 students at DP Todd. In general, some of the primary factors that affected pedagogy included the mathematics curriculum, the age and maturity of students, classroom management, the school demographic, the distribution of diverse learners and abilities, the mathematics department, attendance, expectations, the block semester system, the time of year, Math 8 being a required course, the effectiveness of student-choice, and student-centric approaches. Exploring and adapting categories such as these helped to expose some of my strengths and stretches which I am refining and working on in my teaching practices.

As a new teacher in training, I found myself entering classrooms with initial expectations based more in theory than practice, which of course is an inevitable consequence of academia. The teaching process then becomes one of inquiry—what actually works in practice? how does theory transform into practice? what factors of teaching will have the largest impact on student learning? how does a classroom change day-to-day? how long will something really take? Although my educational expertise is at an early point on a continuous growth curve, I would classify one of my growing strengths as the ability to recognize the power of relationship building in classrooms and how to apply it towards student growth and development. The first week of practicum was by far the most difficult. Because of the block semester system in place this year, the students had been learning around one another for at least 6 hours per day since September, making my position as an outsider exploitable for the initial days. To me, it was fascinating to experience how strongly getting to know the students, and having them get to know me, changed our practice over the four weeks. Something as simple as knowing students by name became immensely influential over classroom management practices, for example. Rather than simply calling students out by name for ‘misbehaviour,’ names were a powerful tool for personalizing the learning, individually focusing/redirecting attention, and integrating distracted students into the lessons. Furthermore, getting to know students allowed me to diversify the lessons. As mentioned, the distribution of learners in a grade 8 math class is larger than might be found in an elective academic course (say, Physics 12); as such, getting to know the students provided me with informational tools to tailor lessons to fit diverse needs. Throughout my practicum, I used a lot of exit slips that asked students to report feedback on their learnings and interests. Through these, I was able to quickly identify the students who were in debilitating fear of being singled out to answer problems in class, those who needed more challenging problems to stay engaged, those who really benefited from hands-on activities, those who took art seriously, those who “hated math,” and more. In the Pythagoras unit, I demonstrated some of the art that can be done with fractal trees using the Pythagorean theorem to help engage the artistically driven students. I created sets of extension problems for most lessons that were both relevant to the learning goals of the unit and also incorporated learning that was done in other units previously covered. One of the ways I knew these extension questions were effective was that, on several occasions, I had students stay in at lunch to work through them or take them home to complete (I did not assign any homework during my practicum).

As a new teacher, I am becoming better at my classroom awareness; however, it is something that has been a stretch in my practice so far, and a focus for improvement. The importance of multitasking, planning, and broad awareness are some of the characteristics of teaching that I am becoming more familiar with. My multitasking skills have never been something to brag about; in fact, I sometimes pride myself on my ability to ignore others to keep a singular focal point. In the classroom, however, I need to know what I am teaching, how it is being received, how I am positioned in the classroom, who is paying attention, who is responding to open questions, who is in the classroom, who is doing nothing because they forgot a pencil, what time it is, and so on—not only for the sake of learning, but for safety.

During practicum, one of the stretches I’ve been concentrating on is positioning myself in the classroom so that my classroom awareness increases. During lessons, I would often be standing at the chalk board writing out problems or examples while speaking. I might do something like write three problems on the chalkboard in increasing difficulty with the intention that everyone could get through the first, most could get through the first two, and few could get through all three. The distribution in difficulty gave me the time to move around the classroom to check student whiteboards (where they were working through the problems) and sit with students who needed guidance without a bunch of students finishing immediately and becoming bored (this was also an ongoing stretch to execute effectively). When sitting with students, I found it far too easy to forget the rest of the class and singularly focus on the student(s) getting my help. Having a concentrated focus was effective for a specific task, but it meant that I didn’t always notice what the rest of the class was doing during these times. One of the ways I have been working on my classroom awareness is how I go about positioning myself at students’ desks. For example, if a student sits near the front of the classroom, I worked at sitting across from them so that I faced the either the majority of the students or a portion of the room that required more attention. This required me to practice writing and drawing upside down quite a lot. Another issue was the chalkboard where I often led lessons from. The units we covered required me to make a lot of 3-dimenstional drawings, create problems in real-time, and perform all the mathematical calculations in front of an audience. Because of the focus required to smoothly execute my explanations or thought processes in writing, I found myself, on numerous occasions, face-to-face with the chalkboard, talking away to it as the classroom full of students watched the back of my head (or ignored the back of my head, I wouldn’t know). I have since been working on position myself such that my body and vision is in an intermediate state of facing the classroom and the chalkboard simultaneously so that my awareness is maximized—something that is getting better with practice but is still far from consistent.

One of my favourite lessons during practicum was when students designed and built staircases out of popsicle sticks and hot glue, using the Pythagorean theorem as a design element as part of the Pythagoras unit. This was the first group project that I had given to students, apart from partnered labs in Grade 11 chemistry, and I found the experience valuable. The planning of the project took a lot of preparation to set up. The materials required were not fully available at the school, so I ended up purchasing most of them myself; furthermore, creating expectations, criteria, and an assessment rubric that both ensured students met the learning intentions while giving them a strong element of choice and freedom in their designs took careful consideration. Once set up however, the lesson planning was complete for roughly three days of teaching and the quality of learning was consistent. The reason this was my favourite lesson was that it was also the first time I had assigned a task and had every single student engaged and working on what they were supposed to without needing redirection. It allowed me the opportunity to comfortably circulate the room and inquire into the different ideas and processes of each group. It was interesting how great it felt to teach students who were doing something that engaged their interests because behavioural management became a trivial task and conversations about learning (projects) were far more accessible across all students.

This project was selected primarily because it was accessible to the diverse range of learners. Every student demonstrated investment in their designs and the complexities and intricacies they chose to include (or not include) were limitless. This student-agency led to creativity and a self-driven propensity to go beyond the minimum requirements of criteria; something nearly every student did. Students were asked to create a blueprint that demonstrated their use of Pythagoras as a design element; this required them to show how right angles can be determined using Pythagorean relationships and display all appropriate calculations. They needed to include sketches and calculations demonstrating right angled triangles in their design, create a physical model with popsicle sticks and glue, and finally a reflection which compared the theoretical model (blueprint) with the physical model (actual staircase). Overall, the reactions and feedback from this project were positive and the work developed demonstrated student creativity and individuality. It was also a valuable learning experience for me as a teacher because it illuminated a lot of problems that I did not account for prior to the experience. Although my planning was thorough and complete, the project required students to attend class and actually work on their projects in the allotted time. There were students who decided to miss days during our projects, another who started with a partner on the first day and was then gone for a week and a half, and finally a group of students who began their project together before deciding on the last day that they absolutely refused to work with each other for another moment and required alternative options. I facilitated the needs of all through adjusting groups, allowing students to borrow and take materials home to finish, extending due dates, and, in one case, providing a written unit test on Pythagoras that acted as an equally weight substitution to the project (the project took the place of a unit test for the rest of the class). Below, I have included the document provided to the students as the project guidelines in addition to some images of student projects.

The Pythagorean Staircase ProjectDownload

A selection of Math 8 Student Pythagorean Staircase projects at DP Todd Secondary School.

Reflecting on Experiential Practicum 391

22 March 2021 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

My EDUC 391 practicum experience at College Heights Secondary School was both a positive and robust learning experience. I had the pleasure of teaching two units of the Chemistry 11 curriculum to a fantastic group of young individuals. Throughout the three weeks, 391 teacher candidates (TCs) were obligated to meet in groups of three to discuss and compare the progressions of our practicum experiences; these groups are called “Triads” and the three members are fixed. During my Triad’s weekly meetings, I learned about noteworthy characteristics like successes and issues that my peers faced in an English 11/12 and K/1 class. Although anticipated, it was fascinating to hear about the main areas of focus required for different age groups and subjects. For example, students in the K/1 class were highly diversified in terms of learning abilities, maturity, and socialization. Several students had Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and required specific supports to facilitate their learning. Consequently, there was an emphasis of focus towards ongoing classroom management. In the English 11/12 class, I learned of a student who was taking this class for their third and final time. This particular student read and wrote at problematically low grade level but had been actively turning their academic focus around in the recent year(s) and took agency over their learning with the goal of successfully graduating from high school. According to the teacher candidate (TC), this particular student supported themselves with a decent paying job that they enjoyed and hoped to continue with after high school; however, their continued employment was probationary on the student’s attainment of a high school diploma and this English course was a strict requirement. Because senior English is a requisite for graduation, the diversity of academic abilities across students is large and therefore required the TC to put high emphasis on differentiated learning in their teaching. The demographic in my Chemistry 11 class was certainly not homogenous; however, because Chemistry 11 and 12 and elected courses and require higher academic competence, the student diversity in both academic abilities and IEPs was lesser than my peer TCs. As such, I put high emphasis on personally knowing and understanding the concepts being taught so they could be presented to the students in dynamic and multifaceted formats to satisfy the diversity of learners in the classroom.

The students I worked with in my Chemistry 11 classroom ranged greatly in their individual strengths and focus; therefore, it was especially important for me to provide multifaceted formats for learning and to be able to confidently handle all types of questions and confusions associated with the chemistry concepts. What went well during my practicum was my ability to quickly create connections with students as individuals, obtain feedback on their learning, and then use this feedback to adapt lessons going forward. It quickly became clear to me that building relationships and trust with students was going to be a tool that could increase learning efficiency. Through simply knowing students’ names, classroom management became easier. For example, when certain students became talkative during lessons, I could use their name in examples or analogies to gain their attention without directly telling them to “stop talking.” Because the students already had familiarity with each other and my CT, I used something called “Name Tents” to expedite the processes of making individual connections. The Name Tents serve two functions: they act as an identifier and as a communication tool. Name Tents are folded pieces of paper (in a standing tent-shape) where students write and decorate their names, and then display them at their spaces. On the inside of the “tent” is a location for student comments and teacher responses. Near the end of each class, I provided students with a prompt to comment on in their Name Tents (I.E. What is one thing you would like me to know about you? If you could have a conversation with anyone—dead, alive, or fictional—who would it be? What from today’s lesson worked well for your learning? Etc.) which I would respond to and return to them the following day. After a single use of the Name Tents, I went from teaching in a classroom of strangers to having students stay after class and engage me in excited conversation over like-interests (music, cars, “The Peaky Blinders”). An advantage of this activity, in addition to building relationships through individual communication, was that the focus of the prompts could be shifted away from personal inquiry to educational inquiry and a tool for students to report feedback.

Template of the communication section of the Name Tents. Students write their “comment” to the day’s prompt. Below is where the teacher responds to the students comment. Often these back-and-forth’s would continue longer than a day around a single comment.

To help exemplify how I obtained and used formative assessment and feedback to enhance learning during my practicum, I will describe some of the tools I used during the bonding unit. The delivery of content for this unit was done through note packages that I created using information from multiple textbooks and additional resources. As far as note packages go, I created them to be as dynamic as possible. They included fill-in-the-blank sections, images, drawing sections, diagrams, analogies, textbook-definitions, student definitions, predictions, pattern recognition, practice problems (with extending questions) and more. Within these notes, I wrote prompts that would have students get into assigned, numbered groups of three and go to a corresponding numbered whiteboard in the room and work through problems. The use of whiteboards was based on the Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces (VNPS) methodology in Thinking Classrooms proposed by SFU professor of education, Peter Liljedahl. His methodologies also include a “visibly random groups” component that was not utilized because of the current COVID-grouping restrictions in classrooms. The nine circumferentially located whiteboards provided me with an efficient route to circulate and acquire feedback on student understanding and provide differentiated learning assistance. It also allowed me the opportunity to use groups of students who were successfully completing problems as peer-learning resources for groups who were having difficulty and waiting for assistance. During the lesson on polar covalent bonds and molecular polarity, the student work displayed on the whiteboards revealed that I had underestimated the time it would take to cover this concept. In addition to using feedback from whiteboards, students were asked to complete a “Muddiest Point Card” (below) as an exit slip at the end of class.

Muddiest Point Card used for feedback on lessons during 391. These cards prompt students to explain the least clear components of the lesson–the parts of the lesson that were “clear as mud.”

Over that weekend, I used the Muddiest Point cards to create a focused assignment that had students progressively work towards conceptualizing polarity. The assignment had students clearly demonstrate an understanding of symmetry and used familiar concepts like directional force to conceptualize how electronegative atoms pull electron density. It also had students use molecular modelling kits to build the molecules they were describing geometrically. The assignment was marked formatively and returned to students with no grade but a great deal of feedback. Students were subsequently provided an “Understanding Check-In” which was a formative quiz based on the material from the whiteboards and assignment. Students were asked to treat this like a quiz when writing but understood explicitly that they would be marking it and that it would not affect their grade—rather it would be used to help focus the upcoming review for the summative unit test. I created the quiz such that each question addressed a specific component of their learning (symmetry, Lewis structures, bonding based on electronegativity, partial charges, etc.); it was then easy to tally up each section and weight the review appropriately. Review materials included conceptual checklists of everything we had gone over, practice problems, Phet simulations, educational videos, molecular modeling kits, Plickers multiple choice questions, and a lab that I co-created with my CT to have students apply the theory learned, but summatively assessed them on two curricular competencies. The Plickers application was a particularly valuable formative tool because it provided and saved immediate graphical class data of student answers and survey questions which was easily used to adjust weighted focus of learning.

Throughout practicum, phrases like “it’s not what you say, it’s what they do,” and “pre-assessments, formative assessments, and feedback are only valuable if they are applied to the learning” continuously occupied my mind. Tools like the Name Tents, exit slips, Plickers and others mentioned above allowed me to robustly adapt my teaching to fit the needs of the class and individuals. Although I am only just beginning the practice of extracting and using classroom data to facilitate education, I believe that I effectively implemented ongoing, bidirectional learning and that it had a positive result for the students, and myself as a developing educator.

During practicum, I spent a lot of time working towards refining my pacing. Even prior to starting practicum, I predicted that the pacing would be a component of teaching that would need to be worked out through experience. Although I am very capable of estimating the time it would take me to lecture a presentation to a group of people, teaching includes more unknowns than I was able to predict prior to starting. I also began my first day of teaching without having any clarity as to what these Chemistry 11 students did know, should know, and could know. For example, I anticipated teaching the concept of polarity would take no more than 30 minutes for the majority of the class to understand; in reality, it took several days with a great deal of different learning tools.

During the first week, it quickly became clear that a great deal of classroom efficiency was lost when transitions within lessons were sloppy and that the energy and mental state of the class greatly influenced learning efficiency. On my second day of practicum, my CT offered me some suggestions for material to get through and I created a lesson plan containing 8 or 9 components to fit into 1.3 hours in hopes of satisfying her recommendation. Not only did I not reach my pacing goal, but the learning also felt rushed, superficial, and ineffective—it felt terrible. Afterwards, I refused to attempt to cram lessons like I did that Tuesday, for the sake of the students and my own sanity. During student labs, I realized how the way in which the classroom was arranged influenced temporal efficiency. For example, by effectively spacing laboratory components, like materials, equipment, and waste containers, in the classroom, I could reduce the bottlenecking effect where students would waste time waiting. During each subsequent lab, I worked on refining the classroom layout and on techniques to keep students engaged and on track.

As I continue my development as a professional educator, I will increasingly become better at pacing. The use of timers, increasing familiarity around teaching certain concepts, viewing pacing through a holistic lens, and the physical set-up of classrooms are all items I am working towards refining in terms of increasing my ability to precisely plan lesson pacing.

As this semester concludes and the next begins, I approach the 490 practicum. During 391, I produced multiple assessment rubrics and had the opportunity to play around with several different assessment approaches; however, assessment was not the focus of the 391 practicum, and I was therefore not responsible of the overall assessment and reporting. Furthermore, there was a somewhat explosive situation that arose in response to students receiving their interim reports during my practicum. It demonstrated a strong disconnect between the function of holistic assessments based on proficiency scales and the percentage and grade-based reporting system on interims. As this experience appears in other writings, it will not be detailed here. The takeaway, however, is that I was able to observe how the practice and development of certain assessment styles could robustly represent learning, but without explicit understanding among the students, parents, and teachers, assessment can halt learning in its tracks and provoke anxiety, anger, and ego. I am curious as to how assessment strategies that are unfamiliar to students are best approached from the start and how evidence of learning is best documented by teachers for parents, students, and admin.

Coding with Scratch – Workshop Reflection

12 February 2021 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

I was first introduced to the Scratch platform through my reading of Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play by Mitchel Resnick (2017), Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab. In his book, Resnick exemplifies the function and potential of Scratch using techniques like presenting transcribed interviews with Scratch community users and learners who have benefited and grown using the platform. During my readings, I obtained a sense of the learning potential that the Scratch platform offers. It seemed to be an explorative space for people to discover or develop their passions as projects through play and tinkering in a collaborative community of peers with like- or complimentary intentions. A clear benefit of Scratch is that it acts as a powerful introductory tool for those unfamiliar or inexperienced with logical thinking and programming languages and allows them to create algorithmically without first obtaining a prerequisite competence in programming.

Resnick modeled an ADST educational pedagogy of cultivating creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers and Play, where free inquiry was imperative to learning development; however, I could not help but notice some looming constraints with his model when mentally applying it to the school district I live in. First, to effectively use Scratch, there needs to be the technological resources available for students. It astounds me that there aren’t sets of laptops or computers available for all classrooms in 2021—stepping back into the classroom for practicum has been a wake-up call to the disconnection between the emphasis on 21st century learning in the B.Ed program and the restrictive prehistoric state of resources that actually exist in classrooms (sorry, the leap from overhead projectors to document cameras don’t satisfy the needs for modern learning). Second, I find free or guided inquiry based learning theoretically more difficult to implement in senior science classes. My upcoming experiential practicum (EDUC 391) placement is in a technologically dated Chemistry 11 classroom and is somewhat pedagogically constrained by the pace and quantity of content required for students to understand in order to participate in Chemistry 12. Although I can see clear potential benefits of using platforms like Scratch in a Chemistry 11 classroom, I am constantly weighing the time required for students to develop competence in computational thinking through play with respect to the actual chemistry they will get to explore, and what quality of curricular relevance will be achieved during that time. The implementation of Scratch in a cross-curricular or project-based setting is largely feasible. Moreover, the introduction to computational thinking needs to start in primary grades, not begin in senior classes.

Yesterday, I participated in a workshop titled “Coding with Scratch.” It was a great introduction to block-based coding with Scratch, which is a programming language that allows users to develop algorithmic coding designs using block-instructional code. The advantage of block-based coding is that it allows beginners to programming a way of exploring computational thinking through play and design without memorizing a text-based language or being constantly frustrated with syntax errors. One cool and important characteristic of computers is that they always do exactly what you tell them to do, and if it does not work, then the error is in your algorithm and is always exposed.
The pace of the workshop seemed moderate and inclusive for the diversity of attendees. The instructions were guided, but the time allotted to develop the block algorithms were open enough for me to explore the program from several angles. I could perform the same task using multiple methods or alter the task to become more personalized and exploratory. This seems to be at the heart of Scratch—through simple instructions and the opportunity to play, engaged exploration became inevitable and the learning expanded beyond the instructions in a very natural manner. Furthermore, I found the process to be as difficult as it was easy. For example, following the instructions to get the cat and ball to do what was intended was simple; however, having the cat run after the ball and catch it was difficult enough to be engaging. Programming has no limit on complexity or difficulty, thus, it is an incredible learning space for students to stay engaged–with Scratch, even the most inexperienced beginners have the opportunity to design without the steep initial learning curve, while those who are experienced or expert programmers can simply put their skill set towards solving more complex problems.

Personally, I could see myself animating organic chemical reaction mechanisms for demonstrating the geometries and pathways of chemical reactions. To be successful in organic chemistry, students really need to refine their skills on rotating 3-dimensional objects in their heads—animating reaction mechanisms in Scratch may help to facilitate students to visualize and conceptualize such abstractions. Therefore, the next logical step in my professional and personal utilization of Scratch is to try the process out for myself. I will need to pay attention to how much time I spend on designing my ideas, how effective they are with respect to my intentions, what aspects of learning was emergent, and be mindful of what is accessible for technological resources in the average SD57 classroom.

References:

Resnick, M. (2017). Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play (Illustrated). The MIT Press.

Digital Footprint

24 January 2021 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

When I consider the word footprint, I think of a trail of data which is inductive to some past event. Footprints may be intentional or unintentionally and can be covered up or fabricated. The data extracted from a footprint may be robust enough to provide clarity to an assumption or be partial and context-less leading to broad or false assumptions. Theoretically, I could look at a footprint in the snow and inductively reason information around their formations—potentially, the size and brand of boot, tread pattern, tread wear, if that person were turned-out or pigeon-toed, if they walked on their toes or heals, their estimated weight, how long ago they were formed, their location, direction, and speed, and so on. Footprints are a type of map of the past, and the data gathered is simply data; however, the way it is used can have far reaching implications in both the positive and negative.

Today, we live the age of technology and the landscapes we leave footprints across expand beyond physical space and into the realm of the digital. So, what does this mean? What are digital footprints? Who makes them? Who can see them? Who can use them? What are the risks and benefits?

Digital footprints have been defined as “…a trail of data you create while using the Internet. It includes the websites you visit, emails you send, and information you submit to online services” (Christensson, 2014). Furthermore, digital footprints can be categorized as active and passive. An active digital footprint refers to a data trail that is intentionally and knowingly submitted by the user online—this could be posting in social media, sending an email, uploading files, pressing accept on a websites request for collecting cookies, and so on—where a passive digital footprint is a data trail left unintentionally—this could be websites that collect and track IP addresses, access location or proximity data, collect metadata, and more (Christensson, 2014).

This image was taken from directly from http://cognitio.ng/blog/digital-footprint-marvel-or-menace/ and is under a creative commons license.

As of 2019 in the US, 90% of adults were determined to use the internet on average, with an average of 100% of young adults (aged 18-29) using the internet (Pew Research Center, 2019). In American adolescents (aged 13 to 17), screen media use averages 6.5 hours per day, and in tweens (12 years of age), 4.5 hours per day (Joshi et al., 2019). To help with conceptualization, if there are 24 hours in a day and the average teen is asleep for 8 hours, goes to school for 6 hours, and spends 6.5 hours on screens, that leaves 3.5 hours remaining in the day for everything else, including eating, bathing, and chores. It is a safe assumption to say that, during the 6.5 hours of screen media use, teens are actively leaving behind digital footprints, but I would argue that both passive and active digital footprints are being formed for a far higher percentage of the day.

During my Observational Practicum in the first block of the B.Ed program at UNBC, I observed a constant flow of information and communication between students during class time in high schools. My snoopy eyes fell upon one teen’s smartphone screen that was displaying the popular Snapchat app (is it still popular? I don’t know…) and I observed more unopened messages that I personally receive in a month. The student would then quickly scroll through the snaps and quickly snap an image of something or someone in the class back to the sender, or senders. My observation revealed to me that students were communicating with rapid image exchanges during class and that many of the images being exchanged were of other students who did not know they were being observed. This exemplifies a level of caution and consideration that needs to be understood by citizens and students when simply existing in today’s world, regardless of one’s personal use and intentions with technology—simply by being around devices connected to the internet, digital footprints can be created and stored in many different formats (audio, video, text, location, heart rate, etc.).

This image was taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambridge_Analytica_and_Facebook.jpg under a creative commons license.

Digital footprints both potentiate benefit and risk to users and bystanders. Social media platforms are generally used as active digital footprint creators where users intentionally upload and observe information related to their interests and intentions. These digital footprints can catalog memorable life events, share information like opinions, news, or media, and record exchanges between people. Media platform giants, like Facebook, also may collect user metadata as passive digital foot printing and use it to help personalize ads and recommended media; the flip side is that they can also use it to influence elections and economic growth or decay.

The largest caution to take to heart when conducting one’s self in public and online is that what one says and does may become a digital footprint, and that the digital footprint may be—and likely will be—immortal. This means that digital citizens must not only consider the immediate implications of their words and actions, but what that could mean to their potential futures (Buchanan et al., 2017). Teens love to provoke and test boundaries, and for the most part, we forgive them—that’s why students are suspended from school for fighting rather than being charged with criminal assault, for example. But with a fight, a lesson is hopefully learned, and life moves on, and the past stays in the past; with digital footprints however, that fight may be recorded on video and that video may come up in a future job interview, a med school application, or become I viral phenomenon that labels you for the rest of your life. Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is awfully familiar with digital foot printing after images of him in brownface from an “Arabian Nights” costume party, decades previous, resurfaced as a weapon against his political campaign in Canada’s previous federal election. I am quite sure that when he dressed up, Trudeau had no intention of offending anyone, nor anticipation that the immortalized images would come back to bite him, but the contexts of the past are different than the contexts of today, and the internet neither knows nor cares for timelines—it cares for sensationalism (warranted or not). I use the Trudeau example because it tells us something important—that no persons, even world leaders, are immune from the past once the data is in circulation, regardless of context or time.

This picture is a silly, but accurate representation of my time during acting school in Vancouver and will outlive me and my good friend Scott. It is part of my (and his) digital footprint. It is forever. So be it!

As a future educator, I take digital footprints seriously. Facebook was the first social media platform I began posting my thoughts, exchanges, and images to, back in 2007 near the end of high school. I have since gone through all of my social media platforms with a torch and incinerated as much damning evidence as I could. But what of the images of others I appeared in? What of the writings about me that I cannot delete? It is not that there was anything was seriously troubling, however, much of the language and images posted back then was that of a teenage boy making jokes, and not something I care to have stapled to my professional forehead. Currently, I consider my digital footprint to be something I expect others to access if they really try, and as such, I conduct myself as if anything could resurface one day. I no longer post personal information about myself or what I am doing in my personal life because I refuse help my future enemies out by providing any additional weapons. I am not paranoid; I just do not care for the risks of posting personal information anymore. I post to Twitter when I am asked to by the B.Ed. program instructors but otherwise stick to “liking” or “retweeting.” Apart from that, my digital footprint is something that helps me every day. My Netflix algorithms predict a fantastic set of films to watch constantly, I am always shown videos of amazing musicians work online, Amazon gives me pretty decent deal notifications relative to my interests, and my authorship on a scientific research paper will be permanently archived into the history of human knowledge and discovery. As an educator, I will communicate information on a broader scale and organize lessons with more efficiency and, because of the digital footprint it will leave, I will reflect with ease.

References

Buchanan, R., Southgate, E., Smith, S. P., Murray, T., & Noble, B. (2017). Post no photos, leave no trace: Children’s digital footprint management strategies. E-Learning and Digital Media, 14(5), 275–290.

Christensson, P. (2014). Digital Footprint Definition. TechTerms. https://techterms.com/definition/digital_footprint

Joshi, S. V., Stubbe, D., Li, S. T. T., & Hilty, D. M. (2019). The Use of Technology by Youth: Implications for Psychiatric Educators. Academic Psychiatry, 43(1), 101–109.

Pew Research Center. (2019). Demographics of Internet and Home Broadband Usage in the United States. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/

BALANCE #OneWord2021

17 January 2021 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

My one word for 2021 is BALANCE. As the new year sets up, I find myself swimming a sea of new challenges, obstacles, hopes, ambitions, cautions and ideas. As the pandemic persists, I have noticed that the general fatigue of coping does also. We, as a global society, have been dealing with COVID-19 for more than a year now, and although cases and deaths continue to rise around the globe and in my community, people continue to regress to complacency with their safety and the safety of others. I see and hear the unethical words of institutions, educators, public figures, and common folk pushing their ideals and policies as truths in areas of health and science while lacking in expertise or informed knowledge (or choosing to ignore it). Firsthand, I have witnessed forms of mass hysteria arise in parents of students in public schools from rumor and withheld information around positive cases—it truly ruined a large chunk of my Christmas break. But I do not despair, even if my feelings are occasionally dismal. 2021 is just beginning and I do hold hope, ambition, and excitement for the growth to come; but, in order to make this year the best yet, we all need to recognize that balance is central to our own well being, and therefore, the wellbeing of those we interact with and influence.

During my first year of college, I entertained an unbalanced practice of study. Intentionally, I would push myself to study and work on my schooling until all hours of the night and morning—several times I would find myself awake for 40+ hours at a time. I had idols in the realms of scientific and human exploration and wished to mimic my perception of their tireless work ethics with my own studious practices (method actor at heart). My thought process was that, if I continuously worked, my knowledge would linearly rise over time and so would my competence and status. What I found, however, was that learning is not linear at all, and that by working on something for too long, the rate of my ability to learn, retain, and understand would pass some threshold and begin to decline (like an inverted parabola if you think graphically). Since, I have adopted a balanced practice of learning. For instance, I shut down my work at least an hour before I go to bed (at a reasonable hour) to allow a wind down period; I eat more than once a day; when I feel the onset of mental fatigue, I change my activity completely by going for a walk outside, nourishing myself, visiting with a friend, playing or writing music, or anything else that is completely independent from study before returning to it; if I am tasked with monotonous memorization, I will employ the Pomodoro Technique; if my partner (who is an elementary school teacher) and I have been working all day, I will insist dinner conversation is void of any work-talk; and the list goes on. The result of employing balance in my life and studies was very considerable—the time I spent working decreased while the quality and quantity of learning went up! Sometimes we cannot help but ruminate and obsess over aspects of life that press into our souls and shadow our judgement and sight—at times it feels wrong to do anything but ruminate or obsess. But the reality of it—as I have experienced—is that these balancing variables, that often feel as though they take time and energy from the objective at hand, actually provide the strength, roundedness and refreshed tools and perspectives to tackle the problem effectively and healthily.

This image is free for commercial use under the Public Domain license and was taken directly from https://pixy.org/5785282/

Going into this semester, I am excited to finally teach a class. I am motivated to explore my own understanding of balance in a classroom and apply some of my ideas and frameworks to the most unregulated age (“the hormone years” as they say). I am looking forward to exploring assessment as a continuum and experiencing the gaps in my understanding when theory is applied to practice. I hope to learn from the experience of the practicum teacher while making my own successes and mistakes in a scaffolded format. I wonder how closely my practicum teacher will follow the new BC curriculum opposed to being comfortable with the ways of old, and how that will align with my duty as a student in the B.Ed. program. For now, I am tired of writing and need a walk and you have likely been on your computer too long—so go smell a flower, or make a meal, or sing and dance to some groovy tunes.

Digital Citizenship: Conduct in the 21st Century

24 November 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Digital citizenship (DC) is a concept integral to acting as a functional member of society in the 21^st century and is it therefore imperative that it occupies focus in education with clarity and understanding. In general, DC refers to the responsibility and etiquette of one who uses digital technology (computers, the internet, etc.) to interact and engage with any aspect of society. Because there are differing views in academia as to what DC is and includes, formal definitions are variable. In an educational context, some authors have defined DC as “…a transversal dimension that involves the values, skills, attitudes, knowledge and critical understanding which citizens require in the digital era” (Frau-Meigs et al., 2017). Furthermore, a general but clear aspect of DC is to “…make safe, responsible, respectful choices online” (Common Sense Media, 2011).

In the traditional sense, citizenship is often viewed as a legal membership bounded within a nation-state which provides civil, social, political, and economic rights and responsibilities to legal citizens (Choi, 2016). As a citizen of the digital world, such boundaries and societal norms are eliminated or disjointed because DC includes concepts like globalization and multiculturalism that emerge from a global network of information sharing like the internet. It includes self-representation and interaction through one’s digital identity on a platform that is lousy with misinformation, nefarious intention, permanent records, unrelatable contexts, and unregulated volumes of opinion (this is a “with great power comes great responsibility” moment from Spiderman’s Uncle Ben). Unlike the 20^th century, where those who wanted no part in the technological movement had the ability to stay out of it, global citizens of the 21^st century have no say over being integrated into a digital world—you can ignore the internet, but the internet will not ignore you. The dichotomy of the digital world is that is simultaneously a source of greatness and horror. It has given power to the people through the democratization of information and performed functions such as having broken down ancient systems of belief used to suppress and control marginalized groups while, at the same time, formed whole new factions of misinformation and rebirthed dormant ideology without context. The problem with a digital world, without digital citizenship, is that the rules for this new age are not yet discovered because they are rewritten daily; therefore, in order to use such a tool while protecting oneself and others, one needs to understand how to be an appropriate digital citizen.

I have tried to provide some indication to a spectrum of good and evil potentiated by the digital world, but why is digital citizenship important to a classroom? The internet and social media can be wonderful tools for connection, information sharing, learning, community building and more, but it is also a place of sexual harassment, catfishing, cyberbullying, psychological torment, and physical threat—particularly in school settings (Brailovskaia et al., 2018; John et al., 2018). DC is an antidote to many of these issues through understanding the risks, applying positive mental health to digital use, gaining experience in safe, informed settings, practicing self-regulation, and more.

Although digital literacy can be incorporated into any curricula with an educator worth their salt with digital technology, there are developed curricula in use. As of 2018, an organization named Common Sense Media has been a leader in the DC field providing curricula to 76% of all public schools in the US (Gleason & von Gillern, 2018). On the Common Sense Media website, educators, students, and parents can find resources that can be applied to K-12 education where it “[a]ddresses topics of concern for schools…, [p]repares students with critical 21^st century skills…, [s]upports educators with training and recognition…[, and e]ngages the whole community through family outreach.” Personally, I would make a concerted effort to explore digital citizenship by integrating it into all classes I teach. I hope to teach in the sciences, and as part of the science curriculum, the scientific method is taught and maintained throughout scientific education. For those unfamiliar with the general basis of the scientific method, it is a set of principles (ie. Replicability, falsifiability, correlation vs causation, ruling out rival hypothesis, extraordinary claims, occam’s razor, etc..) that exposes why and how we are wrong with our hypotheses (informed and educated guesses)—a result could be positive, but that means that your hypothesis was not proven wrong, not that it was fact. Just as the scientific method is capable of putting our biases in check, it is a method for detecting misinformation and navigating the chaos and negativity on the internet. In this sense, the negative aspect of the internet is in fact a tool to use the scientific method against for learning! Other ways to engage DC is to build positive health in the classroom to provide students with the confidence and ability to handle misguided and ill-intended content on the internet; furthermore, to make good choices and gain awareness towards what is personally exposed on the internet and devices…and what that means.

References:

Brailovskaia, J., Teismann, T., & Margraf, J. (2018). Cyberbullying, positive mental health and suicide ideation/behavior. Psychiatry Research, 267, 240–242.

Choi, M. (2016). A Concept Analysis of Digital Citizenship for Democratic Citizenship Education in the Internet Age. Theory and Research in Social Education, 44(4), 565–607.

Common Sense Media. (2011). Digital Literacy and Citizenship in the 21st Century: Educating, Empowering, and Protecting America’s Kids A Common Sense Media White Paper. In Media (Issue March, pp. 1–16). Common Sense Media.

Frau-Meigs, D., O’Neill, B., Soriani, A., & Vitor Tomé. (2017). Digital Citizenship Education. Overview and New Perspectives (Vol. 1).

Gleason, B., & von Gillern, S. (2018). Digital citizenship with social media: Participatory practices of teaching and learning in secondary education. Educational Technology and Society, 21(1), 200–212.

John, A., Glendenning, A. C., Marchant, A., Montgomery, P., Stewart, A., Wood, S., Lloyd, K., & Hawton, K. (2018). Self-harm, suicidal behaviours, and cyberbullying in children and young people: Systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(4).

An Afternoon with EdCampUvic

9 November 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

I just finished attending an EdCampUvic conference via zoom, which is a form of professional development for teachers with some key differences from what a typical professional development workshop consists of. This specific experience was with the education cohort of the University of Victoria; however, it conceptually generalizes to the EdCamp organization which is simply broader in scope and attendance. When I think of a typical Pro-D day—in terms of format—I have expectations I will receive information that may contribute to my professional interests by choosing from a selection of given topics where contributing professionals are scheduled to share their knowledge and resources through a presentation, speech, workshop, and so on. A key difference utilized in the EdCampVic program is that it is participant-driven rather than presenter-driven, and thus, learning and engagement is distributed through conversation (where participants have equal opportunity to contribute) rather than planned presentations. For instance, it is the participating educators who collaboratively determine the topics of engagement through polling prior to the workshop. Furthermore, it is open to educators of all levels and specializations, and, in the interest of maximizing learning, educators are free to enter or leave any of the open sessions throughout, so their interests and needs are best met. This format follows a model of differentiated learning, which is an educational style that promotes opportunity for learner’s individual differences within a curriculum. It is education tailored to fit the variance of needs and strengths of a body of learners within a curriculum.

Although I had the opportunity to join and leave any session as I pleased, I stuck with one which was titled “Cross Curricular Inquiry in High School.” The open discussion format—which facilitated the experiences and ideas of both seasoned, expert educators, and teacher candidates alike—was immediately beneficial because it promoted relationship building and external awareness—aspects often absent in formats that facilitates a presenter and an audience. This way, I was able to express some of my ideas, experiences, questions, and concerns about applying cross-curricular instruction when I enter the teaching profession and I obtain dynamic feedback in multiple forms and perspectives. Moreover, my viewpoint as a teacher candidate may have—and hopefully—promoted thought and perspective in the more advanced educators in the session, allowing them to explore their wealth of knowledge through a different lens. An observation that stuck with me throughout the experience was the fact that discussions often took life of their own and freely explored the space of the intended topic, while constantly diverging into other topics, stories, resources, philosophies and so on. No matter what the divergence was, it fit nicely with the cross-curricular topic because it really examined the interrelatedness of knowledge and subjects and how robust learning can be when constraints are lifted. It also supported differentiated learning because it allowed participants to engage in any way they felt comfortable, including speaking, asking questions, posting resources, writing, and silently observing.

It is not hard to see how this format would benefit a classroom setting. I am entering into the profession of secondary education and in such a setting, allowing students to discover and select their interests and curiosities through low-risk, conversational discussion, would be extremely beneficial for learning in general, but more precisely, applying it to place- or community-based learning and cross-curricular education. Imagine a scenario where you ask students to engage in place-based learning in an outdoor setting. There are plants that have stories, are used as medicine, that have molecular physiology, that follow mathematical patterns in growth, and that are homes and food to other organisms—that is just one word, plant. If you constrain the learner by making only one subject (ie mathematics) open to observation, the student may have to abandon the object that spiked their learning curiosity. The fact is, most things are connected or interrelated in some fashion or another and by allowing for more dynamic and robust curricula (ones that are collaborative), the educational quality follows. Through my observational practicums, I have observed that teachers often don’t want to step on their colleagues curricular toes meaning that they might intentionally exclude learning about some topic because another class covers it in a different year or subject. This observation demonstrates how important building relationships and collaborating with colleagues is when trying to develop a cross-curricular program—you need others on board too. Getting others on board is often difficult because change is always of that nature; however, when I asked for suggestions in how to begin implementing cross-curricular education, I received some excellent feedback. From Christine, my Pedagogy, Curriculum and Teaching instructor at UNBC, I received feedback that really resonated, which was that you need to be disruptive and build relationships. To be disruptive alone can cause negative outcomes and a lot of stress, but if you are constantly doing your best to demonstrate how effective the change could be while building positive relationships and respect among colleagues, the problem is solvable. Another educational professional noted that you can start without colleagues on board by practicing cross-curricula within your own class to set an example and demonstrate success that will attract others. Going forward into my career as an educator, I hope to take this advice and develop systems of teaching that incorporate cross-curricular learning which includes place-based learning and department collaboration through example.

Learning Progressions!

5 November 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

Regardless of the setting or environment, learning is a process that develops with experience and time, it is not a discrete phenomenon (even though learning Kung Fu like Neo would be awesome). No matter who is learning or what is being learned, the process occurs in non-linear stages at variable rates. Take any learning goal, such as learning to play the guitar, learning how to use polar coordinates, or playing on a floor hockey team in gym class, and consider that it is not really a single goal at all, but a complex of many building blocks, and each building block is its own complex of subunits—and that this regression is infinite. Well these building blocks are the skills required to achieve the learning goals and each level of regression is a refinement of a skill at some level of precision. If we use the analogy of building a house, we can think of the general characteristics (foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, etc.) as the skill sets that need to come together and coordinate to become the final product as something that provides shelter and a place to call home. As we regress lower in the analogy, the general characteristics—lets choose electrical—are comprised of many subskills that need to be learned in order to do electrical work (have and know how to use the proper equipment, knowledge around electricity, building code regulations, etc.). We can carry this regression indefinitely—in order to attend electrician school, you need to have completed a Grade 12 education to show you have a foundation in math and literacy…to get that you needed to be socialized to attend school throughout and so on—but the right answer to how far one should take this regression is as far as is needed to achieve the goal. The most important point of this analogy is that none of the building block used to achieve the learning goal are independent of one another or linear and are all predicated on developed skills.

With that analogy in mind, learning progressions are a format of education that takes into account this process of learning as a developmental progression where there are blocks of skills that students must master to achieve a curricular outcome. As an educator, learning progressions are the development stages of a learner’s journey that can be refined at particular points of need, from a place outside of, what Vygotsky would call, the Zone of Proximal Development to a high level of competency where the learning can excel. Students are usually not curricular experts upon entering the education system; however, they are full of individual strengths and curiosities that, if allowed to flourish and amplify, can potentiate confidence in that student that will perpetuate their learning in the next skill “block” in the curricular set and contribute positively to the collective. The very act of promoting strong skill sets in students should be the clarifying clue of why learning cannot be a linear process, because the building blocks are not independent nor necessarily hierarchically linear.

Today in groups, during our Theory in Context class in the B.Ed program at UNBC, we were asked to quickly explore ideas of how learning progressions would be considered if developing curricula based on some subject of our choosing. My group decided to model floor hockey through the developmental span between Kindergarten and Grade 9. We decided that during Kindergarten to Grade 1, the curricular focus should be on developing skills relating to working in groups, spatial awareness, and safety, and learning to enjoy the participating. At this stage, competition is not so much the goal as participation because the skills needed to compete safely and effectively have not been developed in most students. Next, over the span of Grade 2 and 3, students would focus more on developing game-related skills, such as developing proper stick grip, ball/puck handling, passing (awareness of self and others), and game rules to higher degree. In Grades 4 to 5, students would play more as teams within their class and/or school and team competition would be introduced. At this level, students should be competent in using the many skills developed over the previous years (coordination, spatial awareness, muscle memory, teamwork, etc.) and able to perform in a competitive setting among peers. In Grades 6 and 7, the level of competition expands to playing against other school and the concepts of comradery and responsibility are elevated. Finally, during Grades 8 and 9, the competition level expands higher to competing in competitions and tournaments across the province and this is where the teamwork, leadership, game knowledge, and technical skills are in highest demand. Now I know what you may be thinking: this seems quite linear, but it is not and here’s why. During this learning progression, the curricular requirements are stages or skills that need to be mastered throughout the learning process. But as we have all experience, students come to class with an extensively diverse set of skills and strengths, so rather than force the bored student in grade 2, who had been attending and playing in a minor league hockey since he or she was 4 years old, to work on stick handling, the student could use their strength to teach and help other students at a lower skill level. This way, the advanced student is developing new skills in leadership because they have the confidence to step up and display their strength for the good of others and themselves. The same could be said for a student far who is in the zone of proximal development for some skill. Vygotsky often referred to the process of facilitating learning, when the learner is at the point where he or she is ready to learn but not yet component, as scaffolding. If the class is averaged around the intended point in the curriculum, the number of scaffolding opportunities for the lower student increases along with the opportunity to learn from multiple perspectives, and thus, so does the rate of learning. Through treating the building blocks of the learning goal—the learning progressions—as a continuous and interconnected process, the students, who are also interconnected and have strengths across multiple domains, have the opportunity to build confidence towards new skills through the momentum given by providing their strengths opportunity to accentuate.

Curriculum and Assessment

26 October 2020 / Simon Harris / 0 Comments

In his TED Talk titled How to escape education’s Death Valley, Sir Ken Robinson uses the Californian Death Valley as a metaphor to describe the effect of learning conditions on education. Death Valley is considered the driest, hottest part of America where nothing grows until once in a blue moon, mass rainfall floods the landscape awakening dormant seeds that come to life and sprout and bloom into a magnificent valley of life. Robinson says that teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system, and that by allowing the proper conditions of possibilities, expectations, opportunities, relationships, innovations and creativity, learning is as inevitable as life in Death Valley after a downpour. Education that is narrowly focused, restricted, and conformed, however, will dry the learning from the education leaving behind a dormant arid scape of monotony. It is a great metaphor because at some point in time, every one of us has experienced curiosity, the spark the drives true learning, the engine of achievement, the water that brings the desert to life. Nevertheless, sparking curiosity in a collective of individual learners in a curricular framework that provides systematic assessment and reporting to bureaucratic officials in charge of monetary distribution can be a hurdle.

Before getting into curriculums, I would like to consider the differences and values of summative and formative assessment. Formative assessment is commonly an informal and ongoing tool used by teachers orient themselves to where a student is in their learning process. This style of assessment is not meant to be high stakes, but to diagnose the strengths and weakness of both the learner and the instruction so that the education is purposeful and effective. Conversely, summative assessment may be thought of as the formal cumulative outcome of learning intentions following instruction—the assessed product of what the student knows after the learning has occurred. These assessment types are often modeled in the K-12 education system, particularly in high schools as I have come to observe through my practicum experience this past month. The generalized model for what I have observed follows the similar process of presenting a lesson (full of required content based on curriculum), a work block (where students are given time to work on assignments, tasks, practice problems, quizzes, etc.), and finally a unit test that tests the important material of the unit. During the lesson portions, where content is transmitted, the teachers are constantly performing formative assessment by posing questions to the class and judging their answers and understanding, observing levels of attention and body language during instruction, and continuously communicating with students individually or as a collective. During work blocks, students have the time and resources to engage with the material and discover their own deficiencies in their learning; furthermore, they are able to ask the teachers for help or further explanation on individual levels. The teachers use this time for formative assessment as well, noting which students are struggling or motoring through content, so they may make individual adjustments and additionally use the student’s work as a metric for where their understandings are at. Formative assessment also helps orient the teachers to where discontinuities of learning stem from—if no one in the class appears to grasp the material following a lesson, perhaps corrections should be focused on the instruction, not the individual learner’s inability to understand, or visa versa. After the teacher makes appropriate efforts in mitigating discrepancies discovered through formative assessment, summative assessment is issued through the form of a written test so they may show their understanding in a standardized format.

Personally, I see clear advantages and short comings in the way formative and summative assessment are being used in the classes I’ve observed this year and these observations are independent of the educator’s abilities to perform effectively within this framework. On one hand, I see a written unit test being a summative tool that tells the teacher how well students write tests in a particular format; this could be completely independent of what students know or understand because it leaves out human variables like whether a student was bullied that day, whether they ate breakfast that morning, whether they memorized the material or understood it, and so on. Furthermore, we know from behavioural psychology and studies like the Candle Problem, that high-stake, extrinsic rewards and punishments (contingent motivators), like grades, restrict creativity and dulls cognition by narrowing focus. This phenomenon may be contrary to expectations, however, it does tell us that the model of testing, when based on contingent motivators, is best fitted to assess rote or mechanical tasks and that the act of testing creative and critical thought with contingent motivators is in itself a fallacy for achievement. On the other hand, I see an obvious need for summative assessment in that there must be some metric that provides structured feedback into the effectiveness of the educational process and the ability of the learner. But if the curriculum is content driven, then how would one possibly assess a student’s learning that may include creativity and critical thinking, while not narrowing focus through contingent motivators, without getting rid of summative assessment? Change the curriculum.

Curriculum may be thought of as the scaffolding that supports the space where learning can be explored by guided and planned intention. Many models of curriculum exist, and I suspect many of us have knowingly or unknowingly been subjected to several of them. Academic post-secondary institutions often model their curriculum with a syllabus which might include a timeline of headings describing content to be covered through a series of lectures or assignments and eventually leading to a form of summative assessment like a final exam. The largest shortcomings I have experienced with this style of curriculum is that it does not require the learner or teacher to be curious, critical, or even knowledgeable about the body of knowledge being transmitted. For example, I attended a course in genetics during my undergraduate degree where I observed a professor reading directly off PowerPoint slides borrowed from a different professor who had previously taught the course; furthermore, these slides were adapted from a the textbook manufacturer. As slides were read off to the class during lectures, questions from students would occasionally arise around the material and more often than not, students and their questions were deferred to asking again after class unless the answer to the questions happened to be within the slides being read. I will never forget the lecture following our second midterm. The syllabus stated that we would cover a third of the content in lectures before the first midterm, another third before the second midterm, and the final third before the cumulative final exam. Well, due to poor time management, the lecture following the second midterm landed on the final week of classes meaning there were two lectures left to complete 33.3% of the content, and with the miraculous rate capability of pressing the next button on PowerPoint presenter, we were able to cover all the material in the course and endure the final exam that upcoming Saturday morning. In this model, there was no need for us to be curious, there was no need for the professor to hold any knowledge in the subject, and there was no need to attend lectures (because we can all read). There was no formative assessment (as even questions went unanswered), and the summative assessment tested our ability to rote memorize words from slides. When I reflect on that experience, I realize that although the quality of education I received in that course was lacking, to be polite, it easily followed the requirements within the bounds of the curricular model. The information we needed was transmitted to us via prepared slides and we were assessed on our ability to reproduce the content, end of story.

In contrast, during my undergraduate honours thesis, I experienced a curricular model that was far closer to curriculum as praxis. Praxis as a curriculum can be conceptualized as the action of engagement in learning and situation which embodies qualities leading to human emancipation. On praxis, Mark K. Smith writes that “[i]t is the action of people who are free, who are able to act for themselves.” In my honours thesis, I was given that exact gift of freedom—to act and engage in the learning because it mattered and meant something. The research and topic of my thesis was collaboratively decided by myself and my PI, Dr. Sarah Gray. Afterword’s, I was given an intimidating level of autonomy with high stake responsibility in how I used my time and accomplished my work. For example, I was permitted to purchase thousands of dollars’ worth of laboratory equipment and materials on Dr. Gray’s account, but the onus was on me to give purposeful and precise reasoning for every decision I made. As a time commitment, there was a minimum requirement of hours I was to spend in the lab per week (although how and when I allocated my time was up to me), but honestly that never came into my consideration because I basically lived in lab. When performing biochemical and molecular biological experiments, I learned through peers in the lab, reading literature, and trial and error; there was no manual, no instruction, and total responsibility for my work. Dr. Gray had lab meetings once per week where she would sit with a notebook and rapidly absorb and assess where we were in our experiments and work—it was always an intimidating experience because she had high expectations for us and we were highly motivated to provide something useful in the group. That was her method of formative assessment because the quality of our work, efficiency, and level of understanding was exposed weekly in what we presented and how we answered her questions. Furthermore, we were constantly humbled by the little we really knew when she applied her wealth of professional knowledge to our child-like scientific minds—we respected her. The work was by far the hardest and most valuable period of my undergraduate degree. I engaged in the work to a nearly obsessive level because it mattered to me, because it was my own and because it was part of something greater than myself. My engagement was also tied to my respect for Dr. Gray and my peers in the lab; we were contributing to a body of scientific knowledge that would contribute possible solutions to the obesity epidemic and thus the work easily translated to the betterment of human emancipation. The summative assessment of my thesis was centered around my research proposal, the experimental work throughout the course, the final thesis document, and a final seminar where I presented my work to a panel of scientists with appropriate specializations. The onus of the research proposal was on me to create an argument that would permit me to even conduct research. The experimental works were my decisions, and the quality was what I judged to be good enough—after all I was the one who would be defining my work in the end. The final paper was my creation, my argument, my work, and my findings. Finally, my defense seminar was the manifestation of all the work I accomplished and the story it told transmitted through my personality in front of far more qualified scientists. The summative assessment was nothing like a written test, but an extremely high stakes judgement of a years’ worth of knowing, doing, and understanding in a guided framework full of autonomy and creative thinking.

The current BC curriculum, which I am being trained under, can be modeled as praxis if implemented appropriately. It is modeled around three concepts: Know, the content of which students are expected to know; Do, the curricular competencies of which students are expected to do; and Understand, the big ideas of which students are expected to understand. The core competencies are proficiencies developed for students to engage in deeper learning at an intellectual, personal, social, and emotional level. They include critical and creative thinking, communication, social and personal awareness, and responsibility competencies. The Big Ideas are the generalized principles that students will understand—the theory that can be applied to practice. And finally, the content is the stuff that students need to know but here, it is not centric to the curriculum as it was in my genetics class. I was fortunate to ask Dr. Christine Ho Younghusband how she would use the new curriculum when teaching something like adding and subtracting fractions (a content item I figured would be difficult to apply core competencies like critical and creative thinking to—how many ways can you creatively add fractions anyway…). Brilliantly, she said that the content—that is the fraction operation—was not the focus, but a vehicle for applying critical thinking. It made perfect sense after she said that because in the real world, we don’t go around collecting information (adaptations) that may one day come in handy for something; we go around encountering problems and adapt based on what that problem is. So, a problem is not the ability to learn fractions, the problem is a real thing that fractions can solve when critically and creatively applying them in the solution! With this model students can engage with their learning on a more personalized level and develop an education that is directly associated to things that matter like acknowledging relationships to place and community or why taking on responsibility has value in developing moral identity and purpose. Allowing students to discover and engage in their learning is what I experienced in my undergraduate honours thesis and it truly contained the element of human emancipation that is so central to curriculum as praxis. Having personal experience and understanding of how this model can potentiate learning gives me a framework for application as a future educator, and I must say, it’s exciting.

One Month into the B.Ed. Program

8 October 2020 / Simon Harris / 2 Comments

I have always considered myself one who is open and adaptable to new ways of thinking, opportunity, and change; however, adaptability happens to be my biggest learning about teaching and learning so far. Now that the first month of the B.Ed. program has been completed, I reflect that my learning has developed both in categories of expectation–the topics and content we are required to be adequately familiarized with to receive a passing grade–and in unanticipated categories that are emergent as a consequence of this strange year of the pandemic. For example, apart from our observational practicum, all communication between peers, instructors, administrators, and content have been entirely virtual and the virtual platforms used are not universally familiar to all users. Immediately following orientation, the first-year cohort—of which I am a member—set ourselves up on media sharing platforms that allowed for cohort collaboration that is partitioned from the UNBC structure. The app “WhatsApp” was first employed for peer sharing and conversation at a rate of approximately 200 messages per day, which we scanned through for useful information. Needless to say, the time commitment of scanning put considerable constraints on my work-life balance and added unnecessary stress. Later, we transitioned to Stack where personal direct messages, group messages, and topic categorization was available and utilized to efficiently search and participate in peer-wide information sharing and collaboration. Furthermore, I am learning to familiarize myself with peers and professors who I have never met in person, build relationships through my perceptions of their online personas, and effectively collaborate with strangers while accepting their responsibility as professional students towards significant portions of my own academic success, which is predicated on the large emphasis of group work in this program. Interestingly, the unmistakable gain in efficiency of cohort collaboration, media sharing, digital literacy, and communication, that I’ve experienced as emergent obstacles since early September, is directly correlated to, what I would consider, valuable adaptive skills needed as a future educator and learner across the diversity of classrooms and students.

We have been learning of indigenous perspectives on learning and knowing and one aspect of First Peoples Principles of Learning (FPPL) is revolved around the holistic nature of learning—how learning is not mutually exclusive from real life but is reflexive, reflective and relational. Well, I received a K-12 public education under the presuppositions of the old BC curriculum, I attended college and university under similar test-assessment based formatting, and now I am being trained as an educator under the new BC curriculum, of which I am new to (although I’ll admit much of the new curriculum formatting—such as place-based and differentiated learning—aligns with personal educational philosophy I’ve held for decades). Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that the adaptive skills required to align with the new BC curriculum, implemented in the B.Ed. Program, are similar types of adaptive skills that have emerged organically from obstacles related to technology and this online format of learning? Hmm, it is almost as if learning truly IS holistic, reflexive, reflective and relational after all…

This blog post is all about development and change over the course of the past month. Here is an array of maple leaves at different stages of change as we transition out of September and into October. I am changing with the leaves!

Over the course of the first month, we have been expected to engage with our learning and be reflexive, not necessarily display that we irrefutably are on board with everything nor understand concepts to their deepest precisions. We have been introduced to the fundamentals of the teaching profession, including its bureaucratic structure, the nine standards of education professionals are required to uphold, professional ethics, what it means to be FOIPPA (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act) compliant and personal responsibility to the profession outside of the classroom (ie. our online presence and conduct). Perhaps one of the largest advantages to online collaborative tools is the ability to engage and learn from professionals who live and work all around the province or world. We have been privy to the aboriginal professional development day hosted by SD57, to teachers from northern and lower mainland school districts who have shared a wide range of experience and focus. We have been introduced to the online and physical resources available to us, both as teachers and student teachers, from organizations like the District Learning Center (DLC) or the First Nations Education Steering Committee website. Our expectations are to, over time, interact and reflect on these professional perspectives and resources and consider how they may apply to our own developing pedagogies, lesson designs, and frameworks as future teachers. Much of the course assignments and reflections are cross-curricular in nature and require us to use our learning as a whole and build upon past learning. As mentioned, we are being introduced to indigenous ways of learning and how they can be applied to the classroom to fulfill the newly added education standard 9. We are expected to consider the value of different approaches and perspectives and use our developing understanding to prospect towards an inclusive and robust educational future for learning that incorporates the foundations of education, diversity, history, differentiated learning styles, practical application and collaboration.

This blog post is all about development and change over the course of the past month. Here is ANOTHER array of maple leaves at different stages of change as we transition out of September and into October.

Anytime you stretch your learning into new factions of life and understanding, you learn something about yourself. For me, I have learned how different the university curriculums and focuses are between a Bachelor of Science and the Bachelor of Education program, which I would consider more based in the humanities and arts. For instance, throughout my previous degree, I got sufficient at structuring my scientific writing concisely and with precise intent within a rather rigid framework. The rigidity of structure struck me as slightly suppressive to creatively early on, however, later I started to learn that the rules of scientific writing are more like keys of piano where notes are constrained to a specific location as keys, defining the parameters of space in which a pianist may create within. In this degree, the writing assignments are often reflexive and reflective, and are used as tools of developing educational philosophies and pedagogies. I find this style of writing much faster, open, and a useful tool for exploring one’s thoughts. I’ve always liked free writing and I learned to quite enjoy rigid structure as well. So what I have learned about myself this past month is that I do not hold preference for one of the two writing styles, but find them cooperative and functional as a team inside my head.