LOOKING BACK: My Learning Journey Reflection
So here is the final piece of the puzzle from my previous 2 posts. The first 2 posts today were the tools that I used to organize my own thoughts. They helped me make sense of the course, of my learning, and of what I hope to achieve from it. I don't believe that my reflection would have been so profound if I had just begun to write. These exercises help me remember key pieces of information that I had learned through the duration of the course, but also they helped me make sense of them by making me identify connections.
The Process of Reflection: Connect/ Elaborate from Generate-Sort-Connect Elaborate (please see below)
I began by drawing a center circle and deciding to put the course’s title in the center. I started to generate all of the words that I felt represented the key concepts of what this course has meant to me. In a natural manner, the words started out organized. As I found one word another one would come to mind and so on. The first 2 words that came to mind were the names of the books we used in class. I feel that I always classified everything in terms of the book it originated from. Perhaps because this is how it was divided when I was doing my double-entry reflections each week. As I was working on sorting the words, I found myself connecting many words to both books. Certain words (orange) I felt had been overarching skills or goals that didn’t really pertain to any book in particular, rather they were objectives that had been identified as goals from before I started this course. The pink lines flowed from the Making Thinking Visible. The yellow lines flowed from the Thinking for Understanding. One pattern I noticed was that both, yellow and pink, connected to the overarching goals coded in orange. It reminded me of the Thinking for Understanding (TfU) framework with the understanding goals and throughlines. I decided to put the Habit of Mind in green on top, because I thought that they were connected to the course but had a more central role in the manner that we understood and internalized the learning. It wasn’t what we learned as much as how we learned it. Therefore, I put it in green on a color/category of its own. I connected HOM to the two books, because it impacted the manner or context in which I read and understood the concepts presented.
Reflection from Generate-Sort-Connect-Elaborate and 3-2-1 Bridge:
As I look back and consider the thought and questions that I came in with, I cannot help to see the difference in my perception of what was essential in being a great teacher. This course has moved me away from focusing on the content, towards a more developed view of focusing on the development of the learner. I really like this shift, because I feel that up until now, my focus had been misguided by policies and deadlines and did not prioritize the overarching goal of education of developing lifelong learners, a passion that made me go into this career in the first place. As I connect to the me before through these exercises, I can see how far my vision for my own students and myself has shifted. The intention with which I model and teach thinking is a stark contrast to the original manner in which I taught my lessons before. Although I have always considered myself a great teacher, I can see how it is impossible to be a truly effective teacher without integrating the essential content learned in this course, with regards to the power of thinking visibly and the development of the self-awareness that is ingrained in the reflective routines and Habit of Mind exercises.
Through the exercises included in this course, the collaborative work, and reflective work, I have deepened my understanding of my own complex role as a facilitator. I have developed an appreciation of the cognitive process that goes on in my student’s lives. I have begun to include the thinking routines in my everyday instruction. I have begun to think about my own lessons in terms of overarching goals and understanding goals. Another major change in my own instruction has been the use of anchor charts. Looking through my own work in creating my Story of Learning, I realized how in the beginning I was more focused in proving that I had read the chapters and as the course developed, my focus shifted to proving how well I had understood the essential concepts included in the chapter. Although I hate to admit it, I am not an avid reader. The exercises gave me a purpose for the reading and made me a more efficient reader. Having this experience has helped me understand how a thinking routine may help those students like me, become more engaged and retain more of the information presented. Having intention, purpose, and awareness have really been underlying themes for most of the course.
I have also begun using the HOM as part of my underlying character development curriculum. I have begun identifying a particular Habit of Mind that I feel the class as a whole (including me) can work on, and used it to bring awareness to the importance of the habit as a learner. I use a generative question to introduce the habit of mind and develop it from there. The first habit of mind I introduced was persisting. The reason why I chose this one first, is because I recognized it as a skill that is always present in successful people. Many great artists and inventors are only great because they persisted in the face of defeat or failure. I want to instill in my student the power of persistence in their own lives.
As I depart from this class, my focus shifts from the how will this class affect how I teach? to a, how can I continue to improve and develop as a learner and facilitator? How can I continue to grow and be open to learning? I feel that more than anything, this course has helped me become aware of my own learning and has pushed me to be more conscientious of how and what I instruct in my class. I see myself as a model for my student and understand what an impact the manner in which I address challenges and new material impacts the manner in which they will address their own challenges.
Having this awareness has made me understand the
huge responsibility and power that I have in guiding the students to become autonomous, analytical, responsible, and conscientious citizens. My next step is to find a learning community that continues to inspire my own growth/development as an educator, and one with which I can collaborate in constructing a better understanding of the learning process.