Yesterday things began to really wind down around here. Students are headed north, south, east
and west to be with family and friends.It’s a wonderful time of year. We have a few students coming in to complete tasks for next year or just pursuing their own interests. For the most part though, our busy, bustling instructional technology center is still, a quiet pause that seldom occurs in this corner of the university. I treasure these moments in time. I even have a couple of days left to leisurely complete some work items I truly enjoy doing before the holiday season begins for me. Then I plan to just kick back and enjoy my family and friends Ahhh, what a luxury. I look forward to every moment.
As I think about my classrooms, It seems that the real learning takes place in those moments in time after lessons when teachers and students can truly talk about and begin to understand and reflect on how they learn and think and what this means for them. Real learning that makes you really apply something to what you know or make a relevant connection or take that leap of understanding about a subject, and best of all, to have the desire to pursue learning on your own. What does it mean? How will we know it in our classrooms? How can we build on it?
Too often this reflective piece goes missing in our classes. We say we don’t have time even though we all agree that time is needed for this.We reallydo have to take the time. Blogging is so perfect for this. I’m going to talk out loud about some of the techniques I’ve used in my classroms. I have found it helpful asking my students to explain exactly what they are thinking inside their head when they begin a lesson. I can still remember the first child I asked this long ago. He had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I found a student who understood and relayed his thinking “outloud” for the others to hear. Then gradually the others “got it” and began joining in. This talking about what was going on inside their heads as they began an assignment, instead of immediately trying to get the right answer or even worse the answer they thought I wanted, began to become more
interesting to us as a class. As I used this technique more I got better at using it to keep the thinking process alive, sort of fostering an “openness to continue learning” rather than just getting this assignment done.
Now I find myself many times during my blogging sessions asking students questions of this nature:
- What is going on inside your head when you think about what you just read?
- Do you agree with what you read? Why or why not?
- These are great examples. Can you think of others?
- Be on the lookout for more like this and be sure to share with us.
- How could we use this outside the classroom?
- How would you do that different?
- What are you thinking right now?
- Compare that to something else and give me your opinion.
I think it’s important to share back what is going on in my head. I try to make it short. I try to verbalize the questions I have asked myself. I share my thinking with them. Now that’s just one little piece on reflecting. I have found so many good reflecting pieces on other blogs this morning. I’ll share a few…
Finding time by Ewan McIntosh is terrific. He explains so well why he chooses to work through blogging. This one really has me stretching my mind. When I read a good post like Ewan’s it inspires me to try to write more succinctly. Follow his links in this post - top notch reading. Ewan shares his thinking and he does it so well.
Jo McLeay
gives a moving description of what blogging has meant to her. I always find her posts so worthwhile . She gives a view of how “all of a sudden the world just seemed to open up!” I still get chills each time I reread it.
John responds to Ewan and his post about ‘Finding time’. He notes how classroom teachers blogging cannot work in the same way as those of us who are not in the classroom full time. A teacher’s working day just doesn’t have the time to be doing any
research, thinking or blogging. It made me think back to my post What did you blog in school today?
Let’s make that a possiblitity. It’s incredible to me that there is no time in school for teachers to reflect, students to reflect and just simply time to enjoy the learning. Shouldn’t that me a major part of us being accountable? Oh the revisions that need to be made in education.
I’ll save that for another post. John makes time to blog with very interesting and relevant posts about a variety of topics. He gets student voices heard, too! Just go browse his dynamic work with the poetry project. Plus he even finds time to comment on one of my at-risk student blogs to tell him that the student’s blog had helped his thinking and thanked Keith, the student, for getting his head buzzing with ideas. Now that is not only empowering to the student but John modeled the reflective piece. Wow!
Chris Sessums’ blog is fast becoming one of my favorites.I have been reading and rereading many of his posts. There are so many posts I’d like to refer to but this one I love, Innovation and risk-taking where he thinks out loud about a story he tells about a friend who does not consider hereself a risk taker or an innovator, but Christopher says she is. He tells the story to illustrate that if you want to make a difference in the lives of others you have to take risks. You have to make sure the risks are justified. Then he ends the post with these thought-provoking questions:
How do we get students to feel that they are or can be innovators? I have a feeling that there is no one simple answer. Is it a personality thing? Are you born with it? Where do you learn it? Is it based on a Maslowian hierarchy? Can we measure somebody’s innovation level? And once we know a student’s innovation level, what do we do with it? Howdo we improve upon their ability to take appropriate risks?
Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is this an idea worth investigating?
Hmmm.. I think I’ve been thinking out loud long enough. I seem to be spending a lot of time in Scotland lately. Really good things are happening there. As a matter of fact, many good things are happening all over the educational blogosphere. Make your new years resolution to Seize the time!
I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season!