This course was taught by one of my colleagues and friends: Emily Keeter, the science teacher on my team. If you have not checked out her blog yet, you're missing out! It's definitely not just for science teachers - it's for everyone who wants to learn and grow in the classroom.
Last summer, Emily also taught a course where I read The Innovator's Mindset, which piqued my interest in shifting my planning and instruction. I took this course as a follow-up to that one because I think I could have done better during the last school year, and I want to improve this upcoming year with a concrete plan for how to help students discover their strengths and work toward their goals.
This book is full of specific ideas about innovation for both students and teachers. One main thread of the text deals with school culture and the growth mindset. We cannot say that we value innovation if we also punish mistakes (on any level). When we take risks, there are bound to be mistakes or failures because that is an important part of the road to change. However, as Katie Martin writes, "We can change policies and implement new programs, but if we don't empower teachers and create school cultures where people feel valued and free to take risks, we will miss out on our greatest opportunity to change how students learn...We know that kids and adults learn better when learning has an authentic purpose, subjects are integrated, and the learner has agency and choice in the process" (75). In other words, the risks that we will take will allow our students to create for an authentic purpose that deals with multiple subjects in a way THEY decide. This will hopefully lead to more engaged and interested students!
While I enjoyed reading the book (although it is not without its flaws), the best part of this course was, hands-down, the interaction with my colleagues. I think Emily did an incredible job of differentiating the options for responding to the three books from which we could choose, and her faith in our ability to select the ways that worked best (and NOT just the easiest way!) for us made me want to try new things. This is exactly what is discussed in Learner-Centered Innovation. For example, I decided to do a video blog and create a graphic for two different weeks instead of writing a traditional blog. I am much more comfortable writing, but I knew that if I didn't try something new, I wouldn't know how my students felt when I asked them to take risks. The process of doing something that was challenging for me was eye-opening; I had to ask for help from other colleagues (hi Katie!), try different ways of saving and uploading, work with different templates, and pare down my ideas about the book to the basics. I ended up being very proud of what I did and happy that I had the experience of struggling and failing before succeeding so as to have empathy for my students.
I learned an incredible amount from my colleagues in this course. I have taken classes with several of them in the past, and I am always so impressed and excited by what they bring to our discussions. I don't think we get enough time to collaborate with our colleagues who are not part of our department, and I barely know who teaches at the elementary schools (unless they have taken other courses with me in the past). Hearing how teachers in every subject and grade would apply the same ideas in different ways was very eye-opening for me, and every time I posted an idea about how I would do something in my classroom, their comments made my idea much better. I cannot overstate the importance of continued discussion and time for working together in order to put these innovative ideas into action.
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| Thanks to canva.com and Katie Nelson for making me look like I know anything about creating graphics! |
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