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New Culture of Learning
Initiating change in any capacity in life can be deemed scary and stressful, but it is crucial for our growth and adaptation to our ever-changing world. As an educator, we play a critical role in transitioning into these different modes of change. Douglas Thomas speaks about preparing students for relevant jobs. He mentions that we have taken 200 years to perfect how to teach jobs of the 19th century, but of course, those jobs are not needed anymore (Douglas, year). Our mission should be to ensure we are preparing students for the jobs of today. Learning different trades, technologies, and focusing on their talents is what students need today, to be successful tomorrow. We must also engage them in methods of learning that motivate them to accomplish their goals. To cultivate this change, I have been working to find ways that will be beneficial to the transition of change in my classroom. I will be creating a blended learning environment that will begin with incorporating it into our ELA content and will eventually translate into all course subjects. Another change I plan to implement is to incorporate my students’ imagination and interests into their learning. Daniel Pink identifies three factors that lead to increased performance and personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose (Pink, 2010). The perspective I have gained from A New Culture of Learning will lay the foundation for a more productive and creative learning environment for my students. I will be building on new ideas I have discovered in this text, especially focusing on how each student needs learn. Learning is not one size fits all, and it is certainly not solely focused on content that curriculum delivers.
Blended Learning
Imagination and Play
Personal Satisfaction
Blended learning will enhance the way my students learn and how I teach them content. I have had the opportunity to construct a timeline for my innovation plan, identified how I will influence students, parents, and administration to buy into my plan, and how I will execute it. My next steps are to cultivate my course for student use and develop how I will establish a significant learning environment that sets my students up for success. Providing a blended learning experience will benefit my students because they will have access to all course materials at all times. This allows them to refer to any resources they need, move at a pace that is reasonable for them, and also give them a sense of responsibility for their learning. This will also benefit the instructor, because time will be utilized to strictly remedy misconceptions, instead of wasting time with lectures that should be available to them at all times.
We lack the fun and imaginative side of things because our sole focus is cramming in as much content as we possibly can. We must give students the space to be inquisitive, inventive, and to make and learn from their mistakes. Although I cannot achieve this if I am stuck to simply teaching to a test, it is imperative that I encourage them to use their imagination and creativity to solve real-world problems outside of strict content areas. In their book, A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas and John Brown explain that play and imagination can invoke more questions, instead of answers (Thomas & Brown, 2011). They describe this phenomenon as being engaged in productive inquiry; here once we discover new information, it becomes apart of our engrained information, and leads us to asking more interesting questions that will help us acquire even more useful information (Thomas & Brown, 2011). ). We have stopped allowing children the opportunity to experience learning. So my ultimate goal, is to make learning enjoyable for my students, like it was for me as a child.
Daniel Pink (2010) states engagement must be self-directed this is critical to our students in their learning experience. Guiding them in their autonomy of learning will be beneficial because they are able to hone in on their interests and specialties. If students become experts in their interests, they can then become a guide to getting their peers to master the same content areas. Next, he discusses mastery as having the urge to get better at stuff (Pink, 2010). If something interests students, they will incessantly work toward mastering it, so they can feel that sense of accomplishment. Lastly, having purpose is essential to increased performance (Pink, 2010). Students do not particularly want to do work that has zero use or relevance to them. I will be making more of an effort to engage students in all three factors because we must motivate them in ways that they can relate to in order to motivate them to move toward success and true learning.
Creating Significant Learning Environments
Providing students with a significant learning environment will completely change how they view learning in life. Once a classroom environment becomes student-centered, students become responsible for their learning, and this will include them focusing on their interests and bringing them to the forefront. This will also impact my organization, in a number of ways as well. Working in a low income, Title I school, many students have a hard time focusing because they are thinking of the problems they will have to encounter once they return home. It is easy for their mind to wonder because they are not having to engage in their learning, instead, educators are just talking at them, while regurgitating information they want students to memorize. Although, if we can have students submerge themselves in the learning process and engage them in different modes of learning, we may be able to motivate them to continue their learning independently. As we produce a space that is reflective and inventive, it also engages them in the COVA approach so they begin to gain ownership of their learning, and it becomes more meaningful for them. Once students are more engaged and motived in their learning, they will begin to perform better and they will want to succeed.
Challenges
The main challenges I will encounter throughout my innovation are ensuring students are engaged and internalizing how to learn any area of content they encounter in life. As students transition into testing grades, play, imagination, and student interests are put on the back burner. Due to the lack of individuality in the content being taught, the curriculum loses the interest and motivation of the student to internalize what is being delivered. This is partly because the relevance is not translating over to their life. The curriculum is nonnegotiable by the district, but if we relate the content to their real life and personal experiences, they will be more inclined to participate in the conversation. Dr. Harapnuik mentions that using technology is not simply about its use, but understanding when, where, and how it should be utilized when having to solve a problem (2015). This sentiment also holds true when analyzing how students should learn. It is imperative that we give them the tools they need to solve real-world problems, because most times, these problems will not be solved utilizing information that was memorized. Each problem will have a different solution, and students must acquire the skills to analyze how they should approach the problem and which tool from their tool belt will provide the most reasonable outcome. The focus is teaching them how to learn, instead of what to learn; so, it should be less content-focused, and more skills focused.
References
Harapnuik, Dwayne. (May 9, 2015). Creating significant leaning environments (CSLE). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ-c7rz7eT4&t=284s
Pink, Daniel. (April 1, 2010). Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Thomas, Douglas. (September 12, 2012). A new culture of learning. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of Constant Change. CreateSpace