Category Archives: musing

mindsets, musing

Living with Gratitude

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Thanksgiving, as a holiday, has a bad reputation in many ways. There are those who point out that it celebrates the colonization of the First Peoples … and they’re not wrong in saying that. As such, I think it’s important that we acknowledge that the origins of the holiday come from a place that we’re trying to heal as a nation.

The opportunity to practice gratitude, however, is one I don’t think we practice as a society often enough. We are quick to say when something bothers us, when something has gone wrong or someone has done something we don’t like; we are less inclined to speak up when something is going well. We take the good times for granted and complain about the bad.

So today, I want to reflect on the things I’m thankful for as a teacher. My school has an incredible staff on it, many of whom are doing a lot for students both inside their classrooms and outside of them. We are able to offer many extra-curriculars because staff are willing to sponsor them. In my departments, I love that we can disagree respectfully, and still listen to and learn from each other. The Humanities department has such a passion for making the transition to grade eight easier for our students, and the English department works tirelessly to give students an opportunity to express themselves creatively in a variety of media. (On that note … post your #Tweetsmuir scary stories!!)

I’m immensely grateful for my students – for all of my students. Yes, there are those who share similar passions for reading, writing or medieval history, who work hard in class and love learning, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with them. Yet I’m equally grateful for the opportunity to work with those students who are passionate about different things, who don’t enjoy the subject(s) I teach and who would prefer to be almost anywhere else. These are the students who help me grow as a teacher, who drive a lot of the learning I do. They inspire me to try and become a better teacher, to offer more opportunities for learning and more ways to do it.

Finally (well, not finally, but the last one I’m going to talk about here), I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with Ms Boparai and the other student teachers. They help keep me connected to the current research around education and learning, but more, they force me to consider my own practice and reflect on why I do or believe what I do. They are creative and keen and the students enjoy the opportunity to work with them as much as I do. I learn a lot from them, and they cause me to (productively) examine my philosophy and practices.

So … although I may not appreciate the origins of the Thanksgiving holiday, I do appreciate the opportunity to reflect on the many blessings I have. Practicing gratitude is a mindfulness technique, though one we haven’t tried yet. I am grateful for the reminder to focus on the many ways those around me contribute to my life. Thank you.

HUM8, learning reflections, musing, thinking on paper

Community, connection and comprehension

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The goal of pretty much any teacher is to encourage learning in her students, though teachers may disagree about what type of learning and how it should be encouraged in their students. Personally, I believe that no learning can occur without an environment of community and connection. I’m not saying that everyone needs to be best friends with everyone else, but I strongly believe that we can’t learn unless we feel safe, unless we feel like we can take risks and be wrong without someone judging or making fun of us.

This is why I spend so much time at the beginning of the year trying to build a sense of understanding and respect between us all – and I include myself in this. I am a part of the learning community of our classroom as much as my students. I was reading a book by Dr. Brene Brown called Daring Greatly, and she talks about how when people are at a distance, it’s easy to judge them or stereotype them, but when we come closer, when we get to know people, that prejudice falls away. Once we get to know people, once we try to understand them, we are much less likely to bully or hurt them. It’s not that we necessarily want to be great friends with them, but we can understand why they do the things we do and have more patience.

Most of the time, I feel like I do a pretty good job creating a sense of community in the classroom – helping students feel safe enough to take the risk of being wrong when they share ideas, opening up space where students will reach out to help each other rather than sit back and watch them struggle, making it possible for students to guide their own learning without a fear of failure, etc. Sometimes, though, something happens in the class that makes me wonder if the sense of community that I have been seeing actually wasn’t that. I wonder if the part of the class that I don’t see or hear includes the safety that I so want for my students.

Honestly, I don’t know that there is any way for me to find this out for certain. All I can do is ask my students: Do you feel safe enough in this classroom (with me? with your peers?) to be willing to take risks and try new things?

In short, is our environment a learning community, or a classroom?

learning reflections, musing, thinking on paper

Thinking about thinking

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“We must surround our students with an intellectual life into which they might grow.” – Ron Ritchhart, Creating Cultures of Thinking

I just finished my most recent silent reading book – the one above – and one of the things I really noticed as I was reading it was that because the focus in silent reading is, of course, on reading, I was rarely having a chance to stop and reflect formally on what I was reading. It’s not that I didn’t think about it; of course I did. But some of the ideas, some of the challenges that Ritchhart issues to teachers in the book required written responses (at least for me, a person who processes ideas and thinks through writing), and because it was silent reading, I didn’t feel that I could stop and write about my thoughts.

One of the reasons I do silent reading with my class is because I believe we all can use a break in the day, and I want students to have choice and joy in reading what they want. However, I also plan silent reading into the day because I want to show my students that I am a reader. As the quote above states, I want them to see that reading is part of having an intellectual life. This is why I am really resistant to stopping to write more than brief notes in the text (I almost always read nonfiction books that allow me to develop my teaching and learning in a classroom setting): I want them to see me reading, and I feel like stopping to write might make them … I don’t know. Stop valuing reading? Think that I’m “getting away” with something that I won’t allow them? I’m not entirely sure what I think, to be honest.

But maybe taking the time to reflect while I’m reading isn’t such a bad thing. If I want to demonstrate my intellectual life, maybe I need to honour all aspects of it rather than isolate reading from other thinking activities. After all, reflection is a huge part of the “intellectual life” with which I want my students to engage. That quote is why I’m writing my reflection here, where my students can see and respond to it, instead of in my journal. It occurred to me in the process of reading the book that sharing my reflecting process with my students might help them develop their reflection skills as well.

Ultimately, I want my students to see me as a learner foremost, and a teacher secondarily. They have to share their learning process with me … I wonder if sharing my learning process with them would help build the safety and relationships within the classroom so that they feel more comfortable doing so.

inquiry, learning reflections, musing, thinking on paper

Breakout EDU – Student Reflections

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Have you ever played Exit Room games? You’re locked in a room, and you have to solve various puzzles and find clues to escape before the time is up. This can be a useful strategy in education as well, and Breakout EDU has capitalized on it by creating a version you can use in the classroom.

We have been playing these games at various points throughout the year, and I have found that they are useful both in terms of developing the Core Competencies of the BC curriculum and giving students a chance to engage with curricular content. My grade eights have the most experience with both of these types of games, having played several of them, and I’ve asked them to comment below so that teachers can read their feedback and thoughts around the games.

I’ve asked them to talk about the following areas:

  • their personal reactions to playing the games;
  • the usefulness of the games in developing the Core Competencies, such as communication, and critical and creative thinking;
  • the ways the games prompt a focus on learning and problem solving;
  • how they have developed personally in their skills at playing the games;
  • and anything else they think will help teachers make a decision about whether these games may be useful in their own classrooms.

To my students: thank you for providing your honest feedback!

admin, learning reflections, musing, thinking on paper

Self-assessment

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I’m going to be going to a workshop with other teachers on self-assessment, reflection and the Core Competencies tomorrow, and I was wondering if you would give me some feedback about our use of these things in our classroom (think the learning map and your portfolios; self-assessing your work; our Friday reflections; the Core Competency self-assessment you did with your block D teacher; etc.).

Thanks in advance for your help!

learning reflections, mindsets, musing, thinking on paper

The Power of “Yet”

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This week has been mostly focused around our inquiry projects – which are in essence the “unit test” of our work with the Vikings and Franks. We’ve spent two-and-a-half months on this learning, with an entire week just on preparing our projects to share with an authentic audience.

On Wednesday, many students were unprepared. On Thursday, almost everyone had finished and presented their project. Some of them were amazing, most of them met the learning targets. So why am I having you redo them?

Continue reading The Power of “Yet” →

learning reflections, musing

What do you choose to put effort into?

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One of the things I’ve really been struggling with as a teacher is how much support to give. I want all of you to succeed – but more than that, I want all of you to learn. I put a lot of myself (time, effort, passion) into the lessons that I create. I work really hard to try to ensure that everyone is challenged but not overwhelmed, that you are able to learn at your own pace but also held to high standards. I firmly believe that each and every one of you is exceptional. Not “sort of,” not “at certain things” … exceptional human beings. And I want to help you see that as well.

Continue reading What do you choose to put effort into? →