Learning In Progress: How To Self Engineer A Learning Community?

Learning is a human-centered approach that is filled with rich authentic opportunities for both educators and students who co-learn and explore learning together. It involves a community, a culture, and an environment that is based on trust, empathizing and valuing each other. It is learning how to learn together by collecting data to set goals for the community's next steps.

I am starting with the students' end of year reflections focusing on what worked for us this year. The students and I became mentors together, by focusing on feedback for growth for our learning community. My learning is motivated and inspired throughout the year from the students' feedback.

Learning is a human-centered approach because it is filled with emotions. Our environment is a community of active listeners valuing all perspectives and thinking. We spent lots of time learning how our brain develops and how our emotions affect the learning process and our community. Deep learning is a complex process since it is more than just meaningful real-world connections, it is about building a community. Our community focused on self-regulation and self-management of the learning through thinking strategies, agency for learning, developing competencies, connecting and reflecting on all discomforts along the way. The students differ from year to year and our classroom experiences are enriched by dealing with the unexpected uncertainties towards learning. All the complexities and tensions that occur during the year are the best learning opportunities for us. The complexities of emotions from the students and I are stepping stones to unravel the tensions toward inclusivity at becoming flexible thinkers. Through individual and team consolidations of collected data about real experiences of setbacks were pruned and strategies were developed for responsible and equitable practices. Self-management and self-regulation are important and most effective when students interpret and analyze together the data for accountability to move forward. Team members reflected and reconciled with each other to ensure individual development for self-regulation. It is self-engineering the classroom and school experiences that deal with emotions and finding strategies to assure learning contributions are valued and achieved.

On my last blog post, I share some of the processes of documentation using the Ladder of Inference Changing The Narrative Together!. In that post, I share how students identified their learning abilities and how they progressed by self-managing their learning through their abilities to progress individually and as team members. As we progressed the students continued to focus on their learning abilities, how to deal with emotions during teamwork through team roles that they have created to self-regulate and took ownership.

The students took roles during teamwork on improving their abilities to think and learn together. They chose their own roles based on the problematic biases that they were encountering to self-regulate and self-manage as a team and a community. We reflected on the following problematic tensions:

A short screencastify video of students celebration

The students connected their learning to the school community by reflecting on how the school improvement plan aligns with our classroom practices.

After a staff meeting, Mr. Sean Kelly the principal of All Saints high school added teachers reflections on the wall displaying the SIPSAW (School Improvement Plan Students Achievement and Wellbeing) based on the board strategic commitments. From the school board Strategic Commitments

https://www.ocsb.ca/commitments/

Teachers reflections about classroom practices in relation to the SIPSAW

The students aligned the classroom practices with the SIPSAW

This was such an important practice for the students, as it valued their community connection to the learning skills that are being achieved by them. This has impacted how their learning experiences mattered as part of the large learning community where all leaders and teachers from the school to the board had the same vision for learning.

The visions and the commitment of "Be Community, Be Well and Be Creative" An example of the classroom alignment to the school plan

I can only share an image of a student's reflection due to privacy.

For the students to engineer their learning it is more than just ownership it is a shared responsibility and accountability. It is a journey from academic to assessment, project-based learning, thinking strategies to competencies and of course emotions that affect the intrapersonal and interpersonal relations within the classroom community.

Learning is a human process that connects our actions to our emotions impacting everyone. Focusing on accountability and creating culturally diverse perspectives where students with all abilities co-design, co-create and collect data to become their own researchers and engineer their next steps to be collaborators and negotiators for learning.

I finished reading Clarity by Lyn Sharratt on how teachers and students are researchers and authorship of their choices for classroom collaborative practices.