Weekly Blog Post #7

February 27, 2018

Dean Shareski, a community builder for Discovery Education and author of "Embracing the Culture of Joy" was our special presenter this week, and provided us with a lot of really useful information to consider when moving forward into our careers. I will highlight some of what he had to say.

Making relationships with your students is more important now than ever. Teachers now need to really be addressing, recognizing, and understanding that the lives of students are more complex and multifaceted than ever. It is key for being able to help students to learn the material you are trying to provide for them that you are able to understand this. Students need to find the joy of learning, rather than just worrying about satisfying all of the quantifiable aspects that school tries to measure. Students should have a sense of wonder and curiosity if their learning is going to be authentic and if they are going to be engaged in the lessons. This also goes for teachers themselves, who need a sense of playfulness and curiosity when trying out new things in the classroom to see if they can find anything that can bring in extra value to the classroom.

The second part of the presentation that Dean discussed was that teachers need to be critical of the questions they are asking, and even making the point of asking questions that don't have concrete or easy answers. This has been brought up before in other classes, which shows its importance. I tried this out even during my last student teaching placement, and I got my students to try answering some "essential questions" that I created rather than having them complete a final test for the unit. I think that it worked well, but the assignment needs to be tweaked if I try doing something similar again. Getting students to work through problems such as this will help promote lifelong learning within them and actually will allow them to learn new perspectives they may have never considered before. It will help them to foster their own curiosity, and to challenge the world around themselves rather than becoming complacent with the world around them. Aspects of mindfulness should be taught and practiced by our students, where they need to slow down and work through the process intentionally, especially since their own worlds become increasingly more busy as they grow up.

Community is the last aspect that was discussed during our presentation. "Learning is inherently a social experience" according to Dean, and it makes complete sense. Many of the "facts" and key information that the curriculum asks us as teachers to get the students to learn can be figured out on their own with enough work, since all of that information is available online now. But, when students are able to take advantage of the other people in the room with them, the depth of learning for everyone will be enhanced. Multiple needs to be able to contribute should be available in order to take advantage of the knowledge and insights from everyone in the classroom. Everyone learns in a different way, and sometimes learning is that much more impactful when students can bring their own strengths into the room. Sometimes teaching someone else something helps students to learn it even better themselves. Celebrate those students and their interests and expertise. Collaborate and grow together. The shared community feeling that can be created really can help everyone involved feel part of the larger group, and really enhance the possible levels of joy for their own learning.

- B