I am a 10th and 11th grade English teacher at Cape Elizabeth High School. I am in this class right now as my first course in pursuing a graduate certificate to become a school librarian. In my department, I probably use technology more than a lot of others, but I definitely feel like a novice in this class, and I think my technology comfort level is a lot lower than many others in this class. I am eager, though, to learn new ways to utilize technology, both in my current role as an English teacher, and in pursuing my new path. Right now, I am teaching in person four days a week. My students are in two cohorts, but even the students at home are Zooming in to class live every day, so I teach every student live four days a week. Doing the in person teaching at the same time as the Zoom teaching is challenging, but I'm getting used to it.
In terms of strengths, I feel like I am strong in my content area. I am organized, I have strong relationships with my students, and I am eager to learn new things. I have high standards for my students, and I think I do a pretty good job of getting them there. I break things down a lot for them, and I do a lot of modeling. I try to really encourage critical thinking and creativity, and I prioritize rich discussions and respectful disagreement.
I would like to see improvement in a few areas. First of all, I would like to improve my comfort level with technology and the ways in which I use technology. I know there is a lot out there that I could be using, particularly in this moment. This course has certainly exposed me to a lot and really made me rethink how I view and use technology. I would like to see improvement with my learners in their intrinsic motivation (getting away from being so grade motivated) and in their independence. I would also like to see more ownership of work with my more struggling students.
Here are five areas I am interested in exploring:
1. Creating some sort of 10/20 percent genius hour type of situation
2. Fostering a richer independent reading curriculum and/or book group curriculum
3. Creating a more racially and ethnically diverse curriculum
4. Using technology to improve writing conferences and/or writing feedback
5. Finding better ways to use peer feedback for growth
I think I am leaning towards some sort of genius hour. I feel like I could potentially loop number two, the independent reading curriculum, into number one, as perhaps part of the genius hour would involve students reading books they are passionate about. However, I'm not completely sure this is the direction I want to go in, and I'm not totally sure how I would use technology for this, so I am still mulling over 4 and 5, which I also may be able to combine together into some larger project about writing that integrates technology.
Most of my ideas seem to primarily align with these essential questions:
How might we use cognitive principles and conceptual models of technology integration to design effective instruction and assessment?
How might we use technology to enhance real world, collaborative, learner centered education.
In both scenarios, I am trying to figure out ways to encourage more ownership by students. With the genius hour, again, I am less sure of the technology piece, but with numbers 4 and 5, I am thinking of ways to use technology to redefine the feedback experience for improving writing and to increase peer collaboration in the writing process.
Hi Lauren! Thanks for sharing. These are five great areas for exploring. I think having a diverse curriculum is so crucial to developing people who are open to diverse ideas, and I think that starts as soon as there are books in the classroom. There should be books which "look like me" ("me" being every student), but there also need to be books which look like everyone, regardless of class makeup.
ReplyDeleteI also love the idea of the genius hour but I think it's something we should be devoting more time to, instead of seeing if/where we can jam it in. Why can't we develop our learning outcomes for our students and offer up a wide diaspora of things for students to pick from that will help them meet whatever those learning targets are? Along the way they can team up with their classmates or use technology and work collaboratively with students around the world!
Finally, were I to try and marry writing and technology, I would propose this: if you could, find another teacher in the same age range on social media or whatever digital services you subscribe to. Work with that teacher to come up with the parameters for a collaborative project where both classes are writing a fiction story, but the caveat is the classes can't write their entry until the other class sends their work over first. So for example, your class writes the first two paragraphs, then you email it (tag the class on Twitter, Facebook, IG, etc) to the other class, where they work on the next few paragraphs, but they have to use what your class wrote to inform their writing. They send it back, and your class has to do the same thing. This could repeat as often as you and your collaborating teacher see fit!
Thanks again for sharing!