Restorative Action – Week 5

I’m already falling behind on my journal reflections. My bad. I have the deepest respect for those who are attending school and balancing their life, work, and learning. I find myself doing the same and I want to honour the work of my Educ 471 by doing the same… journal reflections from the instructor’s perspective.

I love this photo… I’m sure the Christine in the photo would really hate this photo but it captures the kind of work my students are accomplishing in my class. It’s been a META project, if you will, where we are trying to best exemplify the ideals of BC’s New Curriculum in this class as we are learning about curriculum development ourselves.

What you see here is are the 3 core competencies… communication, thinking, and personal/social. I love that the students are seeing personal relevance in this course in addition to being active contributors to the course. I am proud that these students have embraced some of the ‘unusualities’ (made that word up) of this course.

I also took the opportunity this week to say sorry to my students (re: Twitter fiasco), acknowledge my strength as a teacher practitioner, and this course is being designed with BC’s New Curriculum in mind but it’s transforming as we are doing. I am taking a risk and what I am doing may not be the norm to any other Educ 471 course.

To see what is possible is to attempt to see what is possible… to nourish students as creative and critical thinker, to create space for students to collaborate and communicate during class as sense-makers, and to enable students to define and personalize their learning within the context of the course. I am learning with them.

Thank you Educ 471 students for being part of my teaching and learning experience. Coincidently, this week I had multiple moments of gratitude for past students I remain connected to (via social media) who share their gratitude, passion, and expertise with me… it’s way to cool for words to describe. Feeling restored.