I have been out of the blogging scene since last August. I have lots to share since September from my learning with the students to professional participation within the professional community.
Every year the steps of change in my teaching practices are trial and error that are critical to the students learning process. Giving the students the rein to self manage and be self-aware of how they are learning is the key to progress in the learning process.
Every year the steps of change in my teaching practices are trial and error that are critical to the students learning process. Giving the students the rein to self manage and be self-aware of how they are learning is the key to progress in the learning process.
Their lives are blended with emotions on a daily basis, from happiness to sadness, disappointments, boredom, anxiety, enthusiasm, and even tranquility. Sometimes they are feeling oppressed and compliant and sometimes they are liberated and leading their own learning. Bringing awareness of social-emotional learning throughout the learning process it develops students' leadership for self-management and self-awareness.
Learning is a human process what we say and how we act is important. The actions that the students are trying to convey matter and are expressed through communication from body movements, actions, and conversations with them. The students are eager to have an experience filled with healthy relationships, compassion and a sense of purpose. How do we take the steps to have them feel the process of their learning?
Since 2016 I have been exploring with the unlearning process and unpacking biases to create change with the students for learning. https://learningprogression.blogspot.com/search/label/Unlearning It gets trickier every year and I have to be vulnerable by being a learner with the students. They give me beneficial advice on being a learner along with them.
The students require consistency during the day grounded in longterm conceptual learning where they also see the value to the real world connections. Retrieving and making these connections including learning strategies are important than just being assessed especially the chance to get and give feedback. Thinking about their own thinking and giving them time to retrieve not to assess.
The students spark my learning by connecting on their journey and what they need to move forward together. By showing them we care and allowing all the emotional challenges and disruptions to the learning validate why we are educators. We need to inspire students and change our practices to be more responsive learners with them.
Since I have not blogged since August, I am going to share the session that I presented at BIT2019 for a quick update on the iterations for SEL, collaboration and conceptual learning that has been developing since September this year.
The images on the slides all connect to external links. Many guiding questions are also shared that I have developed with the students and continue to develop. The images that don't have external links are, the screencastify of the assessments that were shared with parents. Feedback reflections on Flipgrid with the parents and the students about students' progress are not linked. The slides are very explicit about SEL, collaborative cognitive process, developing identity, building empathy, cognitive biases, guiding questions and of course self-management by reflecting and collecting their own data.
There is so much to share about how the process was developed together this year. Throughout the day I try to remember to take pictures to share the process on Twitter.
Thanks to Fair Chance learning https://www.fairchancelearning.com/ I also had an opportunity to share at TransformEd Ottawa on December 9th about the process that is co-constructed with my learners. Thanks to all colleagues who tweeted and shared about the process. I have captured a few tweets that reflect on my learning with my students this year. I am missing a few tweets from that day.
Until teachers become aware of our biases, and how these attitudes and opinions emerge through the language we use, we can fall into what’s known as the bias confirmation traps. In class, we spent the time learning by nurturing self-awareness and guiding each other to see how our biases interact for better understanding from me to them and among each other.
We don't know what barriers every child is carrying unless we are building a community, sharing with confidence and having the power of trust of openness. Speaking to impact each other, trusting, connecting and being passionate with each other.
We spend lots of time reflecting together and setting our next steps by facing the challenges and how they are occurring. Together we are making decisions and always giving gratitudes and understanding for empathizing together.
Social-emotional learning is connected to our pedagogical learning process. The emotions are bridged to all learning experiences. Patricia Fiorino has partnered up with me exploring Middle School SEL and shared the Illinois SEL Standard with the students to guide their reflective practices. Her blogpost when Patricia visited with us.
It is important for the students to feel and experience the classroom culture of seeing connections and differences, appreciating the mindset of gratitude to build relationships. That is when teaching and learning will happen.
The students need to recognize their own emotions and the emotions of others:
- Understand their feelings, their causes and how they have influenced them
- Express their feelings and trying to inform their team members by inviting empathy from them during teamwork
- Regulating emotions than having them regulate them and finding strategies for what they need as well as others in their team.
As mentioned in the BIT2019 presentation, collaboration to be designed for students to share unique skills and knowledge. During collaboration, interpersonal and intrapersonal relations are opportunities to give and receive suggestions. The students engage in meaningful conversations by seeing multiple perspectives. By also applying thinking tools like the causal model, the ladder of inference and the Prop Pro model From Rotman I-Think as well as thinking tools from Project Zero to develop divergent and explicit thinking representing many perspectives. (Links are on the BIT19 presentation)
Students co-creating a causal model about causes and factors for emotional learning and strategies to explicitly practice
The Ladder of inference to collect and interpret data for next steps
All voices are equitable for decision making on how they are learning
The students decide to take breaks as part of their process for learning
Sharing gratitudes
We have to sustain and make social-emotional learning sticks. The students learn about the brain and how learning takes place. Pruning or unlearning is a process that eliminates connections that are not behaviorally relevant or useful. It is the reductions of unused synapses to allow newly learned information or skills to integrate with past knowledge and experiences.
As teachers, we are the drivers of neuroplasticity change through the designing of knowledge building, creating rich learning experiences and guiding effective interventions to reach every student.
It is our responsibility to decentralize the classroom and our words and actions need to match those of the students to be able, to tell the truth, and face students' needs. We need to read each others' body language, collect data to inform us and the students inform themselves for better instructions and own success. We need to design learning that guides and suits students' feelings and emotions of how and why to learn.
How can I give myself a position to learn from the students? How are we investing our time in actions that line up with our professional learning? How to be a real learner than just teaching as employment? Everything is rooted in gratitude, how are we giving the time for the gratitude to each other?
