Reinventing My Wheel?

Over the past eight weeks I have participated in a course that has allowed me to question my overall approach to teaching. It emphasized the use of technology with regards to instruction and personal learning theories and instructional strategies. When the class began, I naively wrote a personal philosophy that broke my personal approach into two or three exact learning theories. However, the more time I spent with the materials in this course, the more I began to understand that true educators should not approach teaching as "this is how I do it," but to accept that although learning theories can approach learning in extremely different ways the important step is to use all learning theories to help the educator reach the student and maximize their potential for learning. I am not saying to turn your own personal theory away and start again. I am simply stating that open-minded educators are more likely to access student engagement in a positive way by probing all the possible strategies.

For my own part, I will be making a couple of immediate adjustments in my classroom due to this course. First, I will not attempt to label students anymore, but to merely recognize their connections with material and certain strategies and assess the best mode to reach their individual potential. Secondly, I will be attempting to improve communication between myself and the students so I am able to recognize their level of engagement. I feel that I should respond more to what my class is telling me works, than simple going off my own judgements. Most students will openly respond to your questions and as a teacher I need to continue to respond with what is working. It is important to note that each class is different and you cannot continue to use the same techniques every year. We must adapt to our groups and continue to be open-minded in our approaches.

This process will include two long-term goals for my classroom. First, I will continue to accumulate a wide range of technologies that I implement in the classroom. I am very thankful to have found a group (donarschoose.org), that allows teachers to seek personal grants for needed things within their classroom. Last year I was able to attain new books and furniture, as well as Leap Pad Readers for my students through this online group. I plan to continue to use this group and other potential means to gain even more access to technologies that will benefit my students. Secondly, I am planning to better develop the use of my new smart board with my class through more student interaction. I am hoping to move away from using it mostly as an instructional tool and create its use to being mostly used as a learning tool. This will entail many hours of creating flip charts that harness the ability of the board to be used as a learning tool, it will require my participation in more classes and seminars that expose me to more uses and approaches with the smart board, and I will also continue to collaborate with my fellow educators on information and products already available to me that I can use to create an actively engaged, learning tool centered, classroom.