The Value of Failure, and Thoughts on Celebrating Excellence

Failure

After watching this TED talk below, and also reflecting on other readings, I feel enlightened about the value of failure.

Failure provides the opportunity to learn, and to stretch capacity. There is tremendous gratification in learning when the process is continual and student-driven.



Genuine Excellence

Often in education and in sports, we provide standardized awards for participation. I feel we have gotten away from the celebration of excellence, since it can be viewed as exclusionary. I feel that we can and should celebrate excellence. The real question is, what is excellence? To me, excellence is celebrating and releasing the talents and abilities of students. ALL STUDENTS HAVE UNIQUE TALENTS AND ABILITIES THAT SHOULD BE CELEBRATED. Our classrooms and schools should go further than conventional recognition for traditional achievement (Honour Roll, school-sports achievement, etc.), and celebrate the unique qualities that each student will add to our society. The important thing is this recognition must be GENUINE, and MEANINGFUL for each unique student.

A Reflection of Differentiation in Coaching to Teaching

As I was preparing for my rowing coaching practice, I was able to reflect on how the design of my workouts differentiates for each athlete's abilities.

In the winter, I coach every member of the Regina Rowing Club on the Concept 2 rowing ergometer. This is different from the "on water season", where the group I coach becomes more specialized as athletes approach their focus competition. 

One workout I use is called an Accuracy Workout. This involves each individual pulling as accurately as possible, a pace relevant to their best all-out pace. With this particular workout, all athletes, from the biggest and strongest, to new, young or old, and inexperienced participants, are all on the same level, since everyone has the goal of being close to their own individual pace.

This workout is further differentiated, where new participants will do technical practice, and then complete 1 x 5000m instead of 2 x 5000m. Also, when rowers are particularly young, I have them complete 2 x 4000m instead, so they can finish at a similar time with everyone else.

This particular workout has made me think about how I will differentiate based on varying abilities in the classroom, be it reading/writing, mathematics, or physical/social differences. While no classroom and differentiation are the same, leading a classroom where all students feel included, and are challenged and excited to learn at their level, I think will be one of the most important challenges in my teaching career. Finding the "Art and Science" of this differentiation is something I will try my best to learn.

Completion! Now Onwards and Upwards...

I have now completed all components to receive my Bachelor of Education Degree in Middle Years Education from the University of Regina. Whooohooooo!!!!!

 A couple of celebratory songs....

Major Project: Option A - A Comprehensive Online Unit

I decided for my major project to do a thematic unit on the Story of Stuff through Google Drive while integrating technologies. The goal was to have a mostly paperless thematic unit that covered a number of subject areas.

   

 A link to my Thematic Unit can also be found here.

Summary of Personal Learning

I played with some different presentation options for my Summary of Personal Learning. I downloaded Camtasia on my laptop, but even with the recommendations of having a script when recording the presentation, I found the lag that would sometimes occur with uploading and my script of what I wanted to say about my learning, created awkward pauses in my presentation. After several takes and attempts at editing, I decided to instead use Voicethread to present my work.

I took some screen captures of each of the three parts to my presentation: my Twitter page, this blog, and pictures of different apps or websites I would like to integrate once I start my teaching career. I found that after I made a script for my Voicethread, it was much easier for me to talk in a consistent manner about each part of my learning from this semester.

I attempted to embed this Voicethread, but for whatever reason when I did so it caused my widgets, previous blogs and some display items on the blog to be removed. See this link to view the project.

It is recommended you listen to this with headphones, as the audio at times can be variable.

7 Lessons from High Performance Business and Sport, Applied to Education

My twitter feed is used for a few reasons. I follow talented people in fields of education, coaching (particularly rowing), as well some select sport and celebrity vices.

After reading the article from this tweet, I thought about its applications to the education field

7 High Performance principles for sport and business http://t.co/8htS7YA0CF
— Martin McElroy (@mcelroy_mjp) December 3, 2013

1. People and purpose - while points on talent ID and recruitment do not seem applicable in elementary and secondary education, how the talents of students can be maximized is applicable, as is the collaboration with other educators, both within a school setting and outside the school walls through social media. I also find the statement, "why is more powerful than how" of significant interest. To me, this speaks to Saskatchewan Curriculum points on Deeper Understanding, and supports inquiry learning.
2. Invest in understanding everything - I thought this point discussing preparation and practice is relevant regarding "the process of learning", that is, if assessment is authentic, the student experience is invested in learning, daily, this will determine in advance what the outcome (cumulative assessment) should be. Like in high performance sport, such as Usian Bolt's Olympic 100m and 200m victories were due to his preparation beforehand. In education, success in student assessment (if the assessment is valid and reliable), should be represented the same way. "Invest in understanding everything" for educators is to strive to be engaging for all students to excite them for learning.
3. Innovate, adapt, change - no classroom is the same. In fact, the same students, will change during the course of the year, be it maturity, changing family environments, etc. Also, teachers need to change and to continuously learn to serve students properly. 
4. The paradox of failure - we learn best when giving the opportunity to fail in a safe environment. Are all students in the classroom being challenged to stretch beyond their current capacity? Many teachers design their assessment and lessons in a way that limits learning. If focus is on deep understanding, and assessment is not the focus of a numerical value, and instead its primary focus is to inspire students to learn more, and learn from mistakes/misunderstandings. Where such classroom environments exist, where students feel safe to take risks, to be "wrong", rich learning can occur.
5. Restlessness - this point to me builds on the previous point, which involves further challenging all students to take their learning further.
6. Responsiveness - essential. Building a relationship with students, and learning WITH and from students in a classroom, puts the teacher in the role of learning leader/facilitator. Being able to know what works, what doesn't, and to adjust as needed, empowers students, and therefore further engaage them in learning.
7. Balance - the art of teaching. What to do when, where, why, and how? How much, and how often? What way? What worked, what didn't work? These constant decisions, where there is often a continuum of possibilities, is required of teachers and students alike.

Posting a Wordle on Blogger

In refining this blog, I decided to add a Philosophy of Teaching Page. With a simple google search for "word art", I stumbled upon Wordle. After creating a wordle and saving it to a public gallery, I received a code to embed the wordle. It can then be posted, such as this:

I found this blog from The Edublogger, as well as this link, that explained step-by-step how to make the wordle larger by taking a screen shot and editing it in Microsoft Paint before posting it as an image. This is what I did on the Philosophy page of this blog. 

My shortest post that took the longest to write

After reviewing two of my previous blog posts here and here, I have taken a lot of time to reflect on my growth this semester as I complete the requirements for my degree. Here are some of the lessons I have learned along the way. I hope to take these with me into 2014, as a teacher and a human:

1.     Learn when it is “good enough”

·        Not everything I put my name to has to be perfect. No one is, all the time.

2.     Health and balance are intertwined

·        Consciousness towards my physical, mental, social and spiritual health will give me the strength to persevere through challenging times.

3.     Teaching is an art and a science

·        A saying that is often applied in my coaching profession, the science of teaching would be lesson/unit plans, assessment, theory on classroom management, and curricula. The art of teaching is how to deliver all the roles of the teacher through my authentic self.