Is it really A New Culture?

Change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change. In education that is the constant word that everyone uses. Change. Hardly ever do we, teachers, hear grow or evolve. That is restricted for the students. I submit that students are not the only ones who need growth and change is a word all too often used when those in positions of power want their way. Question to self: am I looking at this wrong?

I tried to use the graphic below to describe my thoughts and give a reflection on the book A New Culture of Learning,yet I failed. This is as much as I was able to create without pulling each strand of hair from my head and knitting a nice wig.

See I am not good at graphics yet. I love looking at actual pictures and taking pictures but creating an illustration is something completely different. It takes a skill I do not possess yet. I am sure my students feel the same way about the demands I place on them. Reading this book, it hit me. Peer to peer learning applies to me TOO! I could really learn from my classmates if I let them know that I needed help. I have to talk to them though. Yikes. Oh how my students must feel.

To address my own problem using this fundamental idea I am going to challenge myself and use an incentive as a reward. I'm thinking shoes would be sufficient. For my students the challenge will be to talk to a peer in class who is not their friend. They will be paired or grouped in sets of 4 by tiers and encouraged to utilize the expertise of their peers first to:

• encourage students to give and receive feedback and evaluate each others' learning

• build an active and cooperative learning environment

• foster positive interdependence and accountability

• significantly increase participation, motivation, and student engagement

• improve communication skills, achievement, and productivity

• give ownership of learning and deeper understanding of new concepts

These are my targets from my understanding of the read, A New Culture of Learning by Thomas and Brown, and how it can be incorporated into my classroom based on my innovation plan.

Another aspect that will be most beneficial is imagination and play. Thomas and Brown (2011) describe imagination as seeing possibilities and generating the questions that frame the learning process. Play is described as the engagement and experimentation that drives the learning process. Both of these become even more purposeful when we as educators remember to move past the individual and drive collectives that can learn from each other. Some students stay to themselves because the thought of being in a group is debilitating. I have seen that first hand in my classroom. What I also saw was that they were not supported through their “Yet” phase and encouraged to survive middle ground; the place between what I know and what I hope to learn.

SO! What is the answer? I am glad you asked but quite frankly I do not know. Blended learning with a sprinkle of project based learning in the ELAR classroom perhaps? Could it be the best way to go in order to properly incorporate a collective environment that gives students a high degree of autonomy and allows them to take ownership at the same time? Learning is messy though. There is no proper way to incorporate a collective environment. You have to create it. Right? The struggle either way will be the lack of chrome books on a 1 to 1 ratio and not enough COWS (computers on wheels) to have a station in every room. Thinking of a master plan however, if my campus allows ELAR rooms to be the central hub for COWS in each grade level versus sitting in the library we could better incorporate and better equip our teachers to follow through on the plan. Availability of essential resources is no longer an issue.

It is imperative that we create spaces which make our students wonder. Seemingly the environment of the classroom is the only place educators and students have any freedom. In every other aspects there are tests and standardized marginalization that prevent growth on an individual scale. Anything that is not growing is dead. Adopting the perspective of creating significant learning environments impacts my campus in fostering the culture we were created on.

As an educator I do not want to weave the knowledge you are learning into everything you already know or understand and say my job is done. That does not benefit anyone but the creator holistic learning and maybe someone doing research on that subject matter. I desire my campus to the incentive of incorporating this innovation plan and the benefits of it as a whole. We have some work to do but with willing hearts and open minds applied to the passion of educating young minds who can really see work in that.

References:

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. Lexington, KY.

Bates, T. (2014, July 29). Learning theories and online learning. Retrieved November 27, 2016, from http://www.tonybates.ca/2014/07/29/learning-theories-and-online-learning/