Habitual Pedagogy
Day 6 (of 187) – September 11, 2018
Oh my goodness… what a day. Not only am I writing my “second” daily blog of learning today, I clocked in more than 12-hours on campus… teaching, learning, and leading. No complaints. I loved it. I truly enjoy having my DOOR OPEN, as mentioned in my last blog entry, and having students and staff drop in to say hello, discuss course work, or share ideas. It’s an ideal workplace situation. I am totally stoked about starting and e-Portfolio with our Teacher Candidates and learning-by-doing what it means to facilitate this shift in teaching and learning. The best part is knowing that someone on campus has a collaborative expertise on this. This was a perfect storm. I will let you know how this goes. In the meantime, I was prepping for my night course EDUC 601 – Educational Research and Design. Well… all I can say is REDO please. I can do better.
I don’t want to be my toughest critic but I think I am. The students seemed OK, but they don’t know any different. I walked away from tonight’s class and thought… Why am I doing all of the blabbing? What do I know? How can I facilitate learning to help them know (without me dumping MY THOUGHTS on research)? We have a book… and what are their thoughts? I will admit, we were trying to get two weeks worth of “content” done tonight because we did not have class last week. UNBC’s classes officially started last Wednesday (and we’re a Tuesday night course). It was a “sit and deliver” on the course syllabus and Chapters 1 and 2. The students thrived when I just gave them the space to figure our their research problem and discuss with others. I so bummed that when push comes to shove that I would resort to what I know… HABITUAL PEDAGOGY.
A PowerPoint, my vague summary of the chapters, and me speaking about the BIG IDEAS of the chapters these students have pre-read before my class… Can this get anymore disappointing? OK. I’m doing my job… but not well. I know I can do better. I want a new HABITUAL PEDAGOGY that is student centred and student led… in higher education. I want students to be sense-making… collaboratively and cooperatively. I want to create a learning community that thrives on growth, experiential learning, and play. I am being a bit rough on myself. I’m not sure what I expect from my first class of any course in higher education. The syllabus run-down is really just me sharing my vision and expectations for the course. Nothing too exciting. But I could have done better on my chapter summaries.
That said, I was encouraged by how students from my previous classes are already talking to me about what they are planning to do in our class in the next coming days… to collaborate and bounce ideas. I love that. I was heartened by how quickly my night class gelled and gracefully engaged in small group discussion to talk about research and their research problem. We’ll see how this goes. No one was scathed and I am judging pretty early in the term (i.e. after the first class). In hindsight, my first class of other courses I taught at SFU had a “slow start” and would only gain momentum by Week 6. We are only in Week 2. I should be kinder to myself, but I do understand why it would be difficult to adopt BC’s New Curriculum with HABITUAL PEDAGOGY. I am a huge supporter of BC’s New Curriculum and 21st Century Learning… and here I am defaulting to “lecturing” (even though that’s my job title). I am learning as I am doing. Can’t wait for tomorrow.