Final Project Brainstorm

During our in-class work time today, I crafted the following statement: I believe students learn best when they feel connected to their classroom community and/or learning environment and are given authentic opportunities to collaborate and/or communicate with their peers in a structure that is responsive to their lives.

Although a short exercise, I know what I have written today is fundamental to what I believe about learning because this statement has appeared in different forms throughout my ASTL coursework. I am thinking of the graphic novel project I completed in Learning Theory and Student Engagement, in which my main character (who is based on my first year teacher-self) comes to the realization that the more time she invests in building relationships with her students, the more engagement she sees in her classroom. And again, when I look to my philosophy of assessment from my Education Measurement and Assessment course, my belief in relationships are echoed once more: 

You have to connect, before you can correct. A colleague shared this statement with me over a year ago and it has stuck. Like this colleague, I am someone who believes that before any learning can occur, one must first get students to care about the act of learning. In my opinion, all students have the capacity to be successful, so long as they have access to the support they need to get there. To be sure, the support that students may need to be successful will likely vary based on their individual differences and circumstances, however I am certain that what must come first before any additional support can be given, is to start building a strong relationship with students (Mason, 2021, p. 1). 

This class has helped me reconsider how I can build spaces for connection and community through the use of digital tools. Like Wesch (2010), I believe learning occurs when the content and/or method of instruction is meaningful and authentic to students’ lives. Given that I am starting a new position at a new school this upcoming Fall, I am determined to create a living structure that supports my ability to build community and strong relationships with my future students and their caregivers. As of right now, I plan to improve my instruction by stepping out of my comfort zone of Google classroom and learning more about Google sites. 

My thought process here is that I can use this summer to create a user-friendly website that I can share with my students and their caregivers as a resource hub to stay connected throughout the school year between school and home. Given my belief of providing authentic opportunities that are responsive to my students’ lives, I want to be mindful about how much I set up/ structure prior to the school year. My main goal for the summer then, is to create a structure that will be ready to share with others while also being transparent about the *very likely* possibility that the structure may change as the year progresses as I learn more about (and bond with) my students and their caregivers. What this means, I do not yet know. But, like Wesch, I am willing to put myself “in the wonderful but awkward position of not knowing exactly what I am doing but blissfully learning along the way” (2010, p. 7).