This program has helped me evolve into a better and more effective teacher.  Like a butterfly, I feel as if I am emerging from a cocoon a totally different and better individual.  Throughout this course I have learned many useful lessons and nurtured and developed many good practices and qualities.  Through this I feel as if I have become a better teacher because of it.  Like any experience we have, there are cherished memories we take away from them, creating a “greatest hits” catalog in our heads, in which we pull from in order to learn from and grow as individuals.

 

Sturdy Foundations

 

My time going through the Masters of Arts in Educational technologies, or MAET, program really helped me to look at teaching like I am building a house:  Start with a solid foundation, if you do not have that then the rest of the house will not stand up.  This is something I learned at an early stage in the program, Year One course(s), and has been one that has helped guide me through it.  I feel that this statement is important across all facets of life, if we do something wrong at the beginning we end up paying for it in the end.  This is something I have tried my hardest to accomplish.  But in saying that I want to stress the counter to this that was also discussed, and that is embracing failure. My studies have made me think about both success and failure, thinking about them like two sides of a coin.  If we only embraced and acknowledged one side then there would only be one winner every time in the coin flip that is education. 

Those who say “failure is not an option” close themselves off to many enriching learning experiences, because I feel that one cannot be their best without learning from mistakes.  To error is human, and this is something that we need to embrace.  This is something I bring into my classroom climate, building the strong educational foundation is important because once it is in place then errors can happen on it, be altered, fixed, and finally learned from.  

 

Play to Learn

 

Using this as a jumping off point, giving student experiences where they are not receiving a grade, but instead allowing them to discover, helps them build a knowledge base to start with in any learning situation.  This can be achieved by giving students time to “play”, allowing them to make discoveries and reference previous knowledge before even starting the lesson, yielding better connection to their own learning.  This was introduced to me early on, but really fleshed out when I took the course Creativity in Teaching & Learning.  This course delved deep into what it was to create a learning experience that was supportive and enriching while still being flexible.  I was fortunate to be able to read about and experience “play”, making it all the more powerful to me.  As an educator it is common practice to build our lessons off of recognizable information and patterns, this gives learners a sense of ease because they have something they are familiar with to use as a starting point, “play” does just that but with a twist.  “Play” gives them an experience, forcing them to interact and see what they can do without putting pressure of assigning a task or goal, the idea is simple and the task enriching.  This is something I love to do in my own classroom, giving students time to look at what they can do and find the limits of their own experiences helps build that base to start from, even if there were no previous knowledge to start with.  In short, this just builds a better learner that is more open to taking risks and trying to figure out situations by themselves for themselves.  

 

Like Red Green says, “If the women don’t find ya handsome, they should at least find ya handy.”

 

One of my most important qualities that I got to develop was creatively problem solving.  This was something that was really tackled during my Year One of the MAET program, which encompassed three different courses that blended together harmoniously.  Creativity in problem solving is just as important as course design when it comes to education.  This is something I find to be especially true in the Visual Arts, there are many different routes to take towards one solution.  Reflecting on this brought me back to one of my childhood heroes, Steve Smith, more commonly known for his character Red Green on The Red Green Show, a Canadian spin on Tim Allen's Home Improvement.  In one of the shows sections called Handyman's Corner he would take an already existing item and “improve” or “fix” it, for example he fixed a flat tire by duct taping rods with shoes onto the tire rim.  This level of ingenuity, though for comedic effect, shows a great connection to re-purposing already existing items and tools for something different to creatively solving a problem. This is something I try and embrace as a facet of life, with everything we do there are certain choices that we are in control of that help us reach a goal with a little more ease then another path.  Learning about this and how to harness and embrace creative problem solving was an essential start to the MAET program, it really helped me recognize the ability in myself and figure out ways to nurture it and even share my ability with other.  In my lessons I always try to get students to think outside the box and see what paths and tools they have available to get to a solution, then choose what one best fits them and go for it.  If tools are limited they then need to think about what they could do with the tool(s) in order to reach their goal, this helps them be aware of their elves, their surroundings, and what can be done with these. Without an understanding of one's surroundings and push to assimilate them into their thoughts, problem solving comes to a grinding halt.  

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What exactly is the best “Technology”?

 

Technology is not just circuits and wires, it is pencils and paper too.  This was an important lesson, pushing the boundaries of my original conceptions.  Most people think of the former when it comes to the term “technology”, but the later has been around for much longer and can create amazing experiences that are just as supportive as use of conventional technology.  But in saying that I feel as if a blend old and new is the most effective way to engage students in learning, and this is something I have worked into my own classroom teaching.  Conventional technologies are great, they open up the student to the whole world.  With the click of a button they can be looking at something they normally could not in person, giving students experiences that they did not have not that long ago.  If I were to not assimilate this into my classroom then I wouldn't just be hindering the student’s ability to learn, but also their ability to widen their horizons.  But we cannot forget our roots, we need to remember what got us to the point we are at now in this technological golden age.  These older tools are no less important than those of now, pencil and paper still hold an important place in our educational system.  With the ease of reach and access to information with modern day tools, one can easily get lost or distracted, that is where the older tools come in and balance the scales.  Though their informational reach is not as long as that of the internet, pencil and paper still gives learners a clean and distraction free space to express themselves.  But only when combining the two do we really see the benefits, each filling a hole or squashing a concern that the other raises.  When teaching lessons I always try to do a combination of analog and digital learning, making students reach into each and use the best parts to create a better learning experience.

 

This lead me to an eye opening experience had during my Year One.  This exercise I participate in was about discussing what the benefits were to of having a smartphone, or more accurately a hand held device with instant access to the internet at any and all times, as well as the disadvantages.  When starting participators first stuck to concrete information: instant access to the internet means instant access to answers to most any question anyone could have, but after discussing this we delved deeper.  Having instant access spoils us and makes it the norm, taking away our ability to experiment ourselves.  Along with that these devices also become time vampires, sucking up our down time where one might sit and reflect internally with their own thoughts, now people pull out their devices and surf the web for to fill that time.  But even now, after waxing semantics about this, I still catch myself doing this.  This personal reflection is something g I bring into my own classroom, by having analog experiences it allows for learners to do some self-reflection, having them rely on their knowledge and build upon that instead of using the internet as a crutch. 

 

Like Burger King, “Have it YOUR way.”

 

Because of these experiences and lessons learned I feel as if my responsibilities have changed, my original baseline for quality has been skewed for the better.  As further discussed and developed in my Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners course, education is a complex and detailed system, its goal is to make people better, but there are those out there that don't want to make themselves better.  This is a situation that we run into on a daily bases, we can coach and cheer on as much as humanly possible but sometime it just doesn't hit home.  This is where flexibility and learning where to accommodate students comes into play.  Differentiating learning can be the tipping point of a student getting it and not getting it.  This is achieved by culminating all the things I mentioned above, as well as many more equally important ideas and artifacts, and figuring out what best fits each learner.  No longer can we just “teach to the middle”, this alienates students and stifles their motivation, making students who thrive and want more into lazier learners, and those who struggle just give up and not want to try.  With Differentiated learning every student it reached, giving them a meaningful learning experience.  

 

Though these qualities, lessons, and experiences are important, they only are parts.  When combined they make a whole, something every great teacher strives to reach.  But in honesty, all we can do is reach.  Education is always changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.  New theories and ideas come along, some trying to fix the problems of the past, and others wish to take on a Stepford style of thought and just sweep it under the rug, thinking that the old saying “out of sight, out of mind” will work.  But like earlier stated, reaching is the best we can do, but that is not a bad thing.  Reaching means that we are always headed towards a goal, always trying to attain it.  We do, at times, get to reach that goal, just to have the finish line move ahead.  But if the finish line were so easily reached then we would have cracked the code on learning and teaching years ago, but alas we have not.  We teachers do not have our hopes dashed by this harsh reality.  In fact it does the exact opposite, it drives us, and without this we would reach the finish line and stop trying to better ourselves.  Continually trying to better ourselves makes the world turn, it makes our culture advance, for without that we would not have those educators who strive to change the world one student at a time.  These teachers are among those I want to emulate, they are the examples of who I strive to become.  They are important because without examples how can we expect to do to the best of our ability and beyond.