Bridging Connections.
Artifacts. Experiences. Understandings.
To start, my teaching philosophy truly represents who I am, both in life, and in the academic environment: meticulous, detailed, organized, and well informed. Most would say that I am OCD, and to say that I go overboard would be an understatement; one day, this will become my downfall! In saying that, however, there are many factors relating to the various considerations in my academic readings, field experiences, and life experiences that have challenged, affirmed, and shifted my perceptions of teaching and learning. Even though my obsessive compulsive behaviours have remained, many elements of what I used to think about teaching and learning have changed…for the better.
I used to have it in my mind that I wanted to teach at the academic level. After having completed a PhD in Classics, with several opportunities to TA and teach sessional courses, I discovered that I truly loved teaching, and was impartial to the research side of things; thus, I made a change to education. I took note of, and admired the standardized setting of a university class in terms of lectures, marking, and expectations; if the work was not done, a grade of zero was expected. Along with this, I came to love the regurgitative nature of post-secondary teaching, for you are hopefully passionate about your disciplinary subject, and the students are expected to understand it in the way it is presented. This, to me, was teaching, and I loved the prospect of it. It did not take long for my perceptions of education, teaching, and learning to not only be challenged and affirmed, but to also be completely transformed.
Palmer (1997) makes a very valid point early in his introductions, that teachers should not forget to intertwine the three important aspects that make a good, and effective teacher: “emotion, spirit, and intellect” (p. 15). Those three parts seem to fluctuate a lot in a university classroom, and are rarely at an even level, which I think contributes to students being disengaged from the material. I can attest to this within both my personal and field experiences. While coaching hockey, if I do not show my players that I am empathetic, passionate, and know the game of hockey inside and out (i.e. emotion, spirit, and intellect), they pick up on these cues as if they were contagious, losing interest and disengaging. I have learned, throughout this program, how to design lesson plans and performance tasks to keep students engaged in a meaningful and authentic way, while evoking passion for the subject matter that I am teaching; bringing balance to Palmer’s (1997) effective-teacher triumvirate. Most of my teaching pedagogy embodies the academic theories surrounding designing and planning performance tasks with the students at the centre of the learning process.
Wiggins’s (2005) UbD design template does just that, and I have incorporated this framework within all of my lesson plans. In doing so, I start with a desired outcome, and design a performance task best suited to my students’ interests and abilities in order to meet that outcome. I am not only meeting the curricular outcomes, but I am catering these lessons to my students’ needs and making it relatable to them in order for the work that we do in the classroom to be as meaningful as possible. This academic concept, and theory, of backwards design can easily bridge over to coaching hockey. By first having a desired outcome in mind, and building practices around the players interests and abilities to meet that outcome, my player are more likely to stay engaged, show up to practice, and win the next hockey game.
One gap that I noticed between my experiences and my understandings, is balance. Just as Stiggins (2005) discusses the need for balance between formative and summative assessment, there is also a need for balance between work and life. I put a lot of detail into my lesson plans and assignments. As one can imagine, with that level of detail, a lot of time goes with it. Throughout my last two field experiences, I typically run roughly four hours per night designing one lesson plan. As Ewasiuk (2012) can attest, “I [am] married to my career, and divorced from my life” (para. 5). To combat this gap, I hope to balance my time better, and design and plan well ahead so that I do not feel overwhelmed or rushed, which could lead to poor designs and disengagement.
As a last note, I have discovered that more hands make light work. By saying this I mean that by collaborating with my fellow colleagues on what types of lessons to design, we can collectively create a list of all the potential items that we could use.
References
Ewasiuk, S. (2012). No one tells you that...my life as a first-year teacher. The Alberta Teachers’ Association Magazine, 92(4). Retrieved from
http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA%20Magazine/Volume%2092/Number-4/Pages/No-one-tells-you- that.aspx
Fisher, D., Brozo, G.W., Frey, N., & Ivey, G. (2015). Pearson teaching strategies series: 50 Instructional routines to develop content literacy (3rd
ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
Palmer, P. J. (1997). The heart of a teacher: Identity and integrity in teaching. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 29(5), 14-2.
doi:10.1080/00091389709602343.
Stiggins, R. (2005). From formative assessment to assessment for learning: A path to success in standards-based schools. Phi Delta
Kappan, 87(4), 324-328. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/stable/20441998
Wiggins, G. (2005). Understanding by design: Overview of UBD & the design template. Retrieved from
http://www.grantwiggins.org/documents/UbDQuikvue1005.pdf
I used to have it in my mind that I wanted to teach at the academic level. After having completed a PhD in Classics, with several opportunities to TA and teach sessional courses, I discovered that I truly loved teaching, and was impartial to the research side of things; thus, I made a change to education. I took note of, and admired the standardized setting of a university class in terms of lectures, marking, and expectations; if the work was not done, a grade of zero was expected. Along with this, I came to love the regurgitative nature of post-secondary teaching, for you are hopefully passionate about your disciplinary subject, and the students are expected to understand it in the way it is presented. This, to me, was teaching, and I loved the prospect of it. It did not take long for my perceptions of education, teaching, and learning to not only be challenged and affirmed, but to also be completely transformed.
Palmer (1997) makes a very valid point early in his introductions, that teachers should not forget to intertwine the three important aspects that make a good, and effective teacher: “emotion, spirit, and intellect” (p. 15). Those three parts seem to fluctuate a lot in a university classroom, and are rarely at an even level, which I think contributes to students being disengaged from the material. I can attest to this within both my personal and field experiences. While coaching hockey, if I do not show my players that I am empathetic, passionate, and know the game of hockey inside and out (i.e. emotion, spirit, and intellect), they pick up on these cues as if they were contagious, losing interest and disengaging. I have learned, throughout this program, how to design lesson plans and performance tasks to keep students engaged in a meaningful and authentic way, while evoking passion for the subject matter that I am teaching; bringing balance to Palmer’s (1997) effective-teacher triumvirate. Most of my teaching pedagogy embodies the academic theories surrounding designing and planning performance tasks with the students at the centre of the learning process.
Wiggins’s (2005) UbD design template does just that, and I have incorporated this framework within all of my lesson plans. In doing so, I start with a desired outcome, and design a performance task best suited to my students’ interests and abilities in order to meet that outcome. I am not only meeting the curricular outcomes, but I am catering these lessons to my students’ needs and making it relatable to them in order for the work that we do in the classroom to be as meaningful as possible. This academic concept, and theory, of backwards design can easily bridge over to coaching hockey. By first having a desired outcome in mind, and building practices around the players interests and abilities to meet that outcome, my player are more likely to stay engaged, show up to practice, and win the next hockey game.
One gap that I noticed between my experiences and my understandings, is balance. Just as Stiggins (2005) discusses the need for balance between formative and summative assessment, there is also a need for balance between work and life. I put a lot of detail into my lesson plans and assignments. As one can imagine, with that level of detail, a lot of time goes with it. Throughout my last two field experiences, I typically run roughly four hours per night designing one lesson plan. As Ewasiuk (2012) can attest, “I [am] married to my career, and divorced from my life” (para. 5). To combat this gap, I hope to balance my time better, and design and plan well ahead so that I do not feel overwhelmed or rushed, which could lead to poor designs and disengagement.
As a last note, I have discovered that more hands make light work. By saying this I mean that by collaborating with my fellow colleagues on what types of lessons to design, we can collectively create a list of all the potential items that we could use.
References
Ewasiuk, S. (2012). No one tells you that...my life as a first-year teacher. The Alberta Teachers’ Association Magazine, 92(4). Retrieved from
http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA%20Magazine/Volume%2092/Number-4/Pages/No-one-tells-you- that.aspx
Fisher, D., Brozo, G.W., Frey, N., & Ivey, G. (2015). Pearson teaching strategies series: 50 Instructional routines to develop content literacy (3rd
ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
Palmer, P. J. (1997). The heart of a teacher: Identity and integrity in teaching. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 29(5), 14-2.
doi:10.1080/00091389709602343.
Stiggins, R. (2005). From formative assessment to assessment for learning: A path to success in standards-based schools. Phi Delta
Kappan, 87(4), 324-328. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/stable/20441998
Wiggins, G. (2005). Understanding by design: Overview of UBD & the design template. Retrieved from
http://www.grantwiggins.org/documents/UbDQuikvue1005.pdf