New Educational Era

   Students’ progress depends on a wide range of social and developmental competencies, such as the ability to monitor one’s own learning, persist at challenging tasks, solve complex problems, set realistic goals, and communicate effectively in many kinds of settings.

   This is a new educational era, where learning may become disassociated from age groups. Education can now be individualized and self-directed; educators become supporters who are primarily facilitators and mentors rather than lecturers. Educators work on distributed sources of content (virtual) and take place in a variety of physical settings.

   Teachers now days are looking for a different assessment, a different teaching method, documented by a portfolio of digital badges and real-world projects, rather than traditional grades or certificates. Yet, most schools continue to use standardized achievement tests, focusing exclusively on reading and math, as their primary means of gauging student progress with the existing K-12 education system.

   The world of education is currently undergoing a massive transformation as a result of the digital revolution. New technologies create learning opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges which allow all ages to pursue learning on their own terms.

   Educators should be able to adapt and incorporate the new power of technology-driven learning for the next generation of students. To be effective in this changing environment requires that the builders of the new education system understand the customization, interaction, and control of the technologies driving the changes in education. Education must provide people the knowledge they want when they want it and to support and guide them as they learn. Develop the ability of computers to give learners immediate feedback and to engage learners through simulation in accomplishing realistic tasks. And put learners in charge of their learning, so they feel ownership and can direct their learning where their interests take them.

   The vision of an educational system that can integrate all the different elements we see developing, is the key for the new educational era. But computers can carry out all the algorithms taught through graduate school, and yet mathematical reasoning is more important than ever. Therefore we should spend time teaching students to solve sophisticated problems using computers rather than executing algorithms that computers do well. Memorizing information is becoming less important with the web available, but people do need to learn how to find information, recognize when they need more information, and evaluate what they find.

Source:

A New Educational Era: http://vibrantlearning.aam-us.org/resource/resource-2/

A New Era for Educational Assessment: http://www.jff.org/publications/new-era-educational-assessment

Rethinking education in the age of technology: the digital revolution and the schools: https://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/Collins-Rethinking-Education.pdf

Cross-Curricular Teaching or Phenomenon Based Learning

When professional educators combine their energies and reinforce the same deep learning, the stream of information is clearer for the student, the learning activities are more fluid, and the student's reservoir of knowledge and skill fills faster.

Education, now days, doesn't meet the deeper learning needs of students. Fortunately, it can be accelerated by consolidating teacher efforts and combining relevant contents. Cross-Curricular Teaching implies that students will follow a particular stream of inquiry to the headwaters, rather than simply sampling all the possible streams.

Educators need to understand and accept a few requirements:

1. Deep learning engages the whole student (and teacher), heart, mind, body, and soul.

2. It requires enthusiastic partners within students, parents, and community.

3. It requires intensive preparation. As the rapid development of society, teachers need to update their knowledge and way of teaching students.

4. Assessment must mirror learning. Teachers should evaluate students reflecting mastery of learning objectives rather than mere assignment completion.

5. Collaboration is necessary. Students must be taught how to collaboratively gain knowledge and skills in order to be expert learners and demonstrate their learning by applying and creating.

In order for all this to happen in a sustainable way in our schools, deeper learning requires that groups of teachers pool their talents, resources, time, and efforts to maximize coherence, relevance, and connections among the content areas.

Teachers should work with other grade level teachers and find common topics to prepare to teach subjects jointly rather than separately. Teachers must start collaboration with another teacher from a different department. The task of all educator teams is to provide a rich, rigorous, and relevant flow of knowledge and skills, and then find a way to lead the students to this water and then make them thirsty enough to drink deeply. Students and teacher teams focusing on learning deeply have the force to achieve learning beyond the traditional education dam and shoot out over the spillway to not only understand the torrent of available knowledge, but to also add to it in phenomenal ways.

The Blooms Taxonomy meant that the first step would be to seek knowledge, comprehend it, apply it in real life scenarios, analyze and further synthesize with other concepts and subjects. With Phenomenon Based Learning, this linear progression turns into a roller coaster ride, which has become a challenge for teachers and students.

The learner starts with a phenomenon or a real life scenario, analyses the linkages with different concepts and subjects, identifies the gaps in knowledge and understanding, seeks out that knowledge, comprehends it for each subject area and then synthesizes it. So essentially what was a process of construction has now been broken into deconstruction and then construction. First deconstruct the phenomenon into different concepts and processes, understand them and then reconstruct them into the original phenomenon and probably draw parallels with other phenomenon.

This educational methodology is more student-centered because they will do it in his or her own manner, the number of linkages and the pathway chosen will depend on their prior knowledge. Educators can use a number of resources and online platforms to engage their learners in a discussion on what subjects and concepts need to be learnt so that the phenomenon can be understood.

Phenomenon Based Learning is an opportunity to integrate the best of learner centrist approaches and it is the way forward as it is closer to how learning happens in real life, an unexplained phenomenon starts off an inquiry, becomes a lifelong pursuit and results in new knowledge and understanding. Phenomenon-based structure in a curriculum also actively creates better opportunities for integrating different subjects and themes as well as the systematic use of pedagogically meaningful methods, such as inquiry learning, problem-based learning, project learning and portfolios. The phenomenon-based approach implements a versatile utilization of different learning environments.

As an educator, I believe that a holistic real-world phenomenon provides the starting point for learning. Breaking down the dominance of traditional subjects and isolation of teaching is an opportunity to more fundamental change in schools. Integrated knowledge and skills about real world issues enhances teacher collaboration in schools and makes learning more meaningful to students.

Schools should teach what young people need in their lives rather than try to bring national test scores back to where they were.

References:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/cross-curricular-teaching-deeper-learning-ben-johnson

http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/trends/1981-edtech-meets-phenomenon-based-learning

Teachers: Keep making a difference!

Teachers should be looking forward to make a real difference in our students' lives... leave a lasting impact on them even if they are the one causing us the most trouble. 

Growth takes time... but we plant the seed in our students’ young hearts and minds so it will grow and bring fruits (although sometimes we might not see it). There are students who actually care, students who are grateful; learning and growing even if they never let us know.

Those long hours and the shed tears we have to deal with... our biggest frustrations and our deepest hurts, and still... we put so much thought and effort into doing our best for our students and being the best teacher we can for their sake. We, teachers, should emphasize the kids’ needs above our own.

In the midst of the busyness, the frustration, the chaos, we should take a moment and remember the real reason why we are teaching; that satisfaction of awake the joy in creative expression and knowledge, the inspiration we become for the students.  We work to influence our students and we live for that moment in which they will tell us “because of you, I didn’t give up”.

It doesn’t matter what’s happening around us.

Teachers, don’t give up, don’t quit, and keep making a difference.

“A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind and touches a heart”

Successful student strengths

Students should have an open mind. They must develop their critical thinking, questioning what they read, and drawing conclusions, but such findings must be based on research. Teachers should use research based approaches with solid basis, and of course, if the student makes a mistake, he or she will be willing to change their ideas based on evidence. 

Here are some strengths we can identify in successful students:

CURIOSITY

Curious students explore and discover new things; they become knowledgeable and learn about many different things. Because of students’ interest in discovering and learning new things, they will always have questions to answer. This is one of the greatest strengths a student can have: the love of knowledge which expands their mind.

WISDOM   

The ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight, is a virtue teachers should reinforce in students. This involves an understanding of people, things, events, situations, and the willingness as well as the ability to apply perception, judgment, and action in keeping with the understanding of what is the optimal course of action. Students should be exposed to new strategies, so we should have them create as many things as possible.

COURAGE                                                

 

Students should have courage to compete, to win, to achieve, to learn, to master challenges, to be recognized, have passion to face a difficult situation and come with a creative solution. If students know they are capable of doing so, nothing will stop them from achieving whatever they want. It’s not only the courage to prove to others what we can do; it is also a commitment to ourselves. 

BRAVE BEHAVIOR

The courage to master their fears and overcome adversity is a brave act from successful students. They earn respect and trust from others and they get emotional strengths, and become more confident when they have to face a problem.

PERSEVERANCE

Every successful student should finish what they start. A successful student is persistent even if he or she confronts obstacles. This type of student quickly develop passion over something, a new hobby, project or interest, and fervently try to find out as much as he or she can about it. Pulling through every situation to feel satisfied with the acquired achievements, they will go on and on until they feel satisfied.

TEAMWORK

The successful student works well with the team, or within a group of people, being faithful to the group and feeling as part of it. They usually attend to the climate within their group and the process by which they accomplish their tasks. These students are able to communicate clearly on intellectual and emotional levels. They demonstrate a sense of cohesion where respect, trust, self-disclosure, support, and openness, are part of the healthy climate around them. These students know how to function so they are productive and accomplish their tasks effectively.

"YOUR ATTITUDE DETERMINES YOUR DIRECTION".

A grieving student in the classroom...

Not everything in the classroom is about happy moments. As teachers, we try to fix things, we try to mold and guide our children through the correct path. Well, sometimes there are moments when teachers don’t know what to do or how to react. During this school year, there’ve been a lot of challenges in the classroom: students with different situations, different personalities, and of course different problems. We all have problems, but what happens when you are young and you cannot understand certain things?

A grieving student in the classroom... made me let go of my own expectations and make an effort to understand what my student thinks. I haven’t ask her how she feels, but she approaches me and tells me things, such as how she misses her mother and asking me why her mother left. I’ve been trying to be as honest, simple and direct as I can, but once she starts crying is when things get a little difficult. I had to seek assistance from the psychology department, counselors and fellow teachers to deal with this situation.

TIME ON TASK

Ok, ok, ok...
I thought I would have time to decorate the classroom as I wanted to and make beautiful Dr. Seuss characters and colorful walls... but guess what, not enough time! I recycled old posters, cut them and made them look prettier.
There are so many things I wanted to do. A word wall, seasons, colors, days of the week... so many things to paste for a first grade classroom! But we have to keep it simple...
Here are some pictures of my classroom...

The window has a brown paper kind of tree LOL

it has ladybugs on it and it is not too complicated!

The animals on the alphabet wall were made with cardboard. They are a copy of the animals on the alphabet letters.

everything else is recycle posters that we cut out and paste them and VOILA! 

There is a wall, which i don't have a picture i'll see when i can post one... with the different subjects decorated and with a space to paste the students work under it. :D

Hope you liked it!

That's it for now.

I'll try to take some pictures of the other teachers decoration! They are really talented!