There are a few key concepts that were repeated and reinforced in both my learning and my teaching, throughout my program of study at UVM. They are: authentic, real-world experience; inquiry; and building a community. I’m organizing my final reflection and presentation around these themes to show the ways my learning spans the boundaries of any one class or experience, to become generalized and widely applicable.
“John Dewey was right. Experience is the best teacher.” - Mary Boyd Ratzer and Paige Jaeger
My curriculum coursework emphasized a constructivist approach, helping our students build their own understandings through authentic experiences and reflection, grounding their learning in their experience of the world, and helping build and widen their experiences. I built my understanding and conviction for this pedagogical approach in EDFS 320: Technology, Schooling and Society, where I read the work of John Dewey and others who have advocated for the power of real world experience and reflection in education over the past hundred years.
Authentic, real-world learning experiences can grow from a wide variety of design techniques I have experiences during my coursework: backwards design/Understanding by Design, research models, Universal Design for Learning, project- and inquiry-based learning, and design thinking. It’s powerful to have experience with all of these techniques, as I am well equipped not only for independently designing learning, but to collaborate with others regardless of their approach. For example, I often work with the fourth grade teaching team at Neshobe to collaboratively plan units around reading, inquiry, and digital citizenship. In this work, I draw on my curriculum design experience to help focus the conversations on the key elements of experiential learning and the tools we will use to help students reflect on and assess their own learning. I also connect my teaching directly to classroom curriculum whenever possible. I am lucky to have classroom teachers attend library with their students, helping to emphasize the connection between learning in the library and in the classroom. Even the simple step of checking with a teacher about what topics and skills they are focusing on in the classroom before I plan a learning experience can make learning in the library more authentic for my students, as the direct connection between the skills I am teaching and their classroom learning is obvious. My strong background in curriculum design has given me the skills to be a more flexible and responsive creator of learning experiences.
I've also learned that it is so important to create learning experiences for my students that I myself would want to participate in. Over the course of my graduate program, my life slowly got busier and busier. First a husband, then a teaching job, then a house, then a baby... As a learner, I have found myself at times with extremely limited resources to engage with the content I am supposed to be learning. As my resources diminish, I need to be empowered as a learner to decide what is highest priority, what will most benefit my learning. When a learning experience is carefully designed with relevant, practical, engaging content, creative ways to apply my learning and frequent opportunities to reflect, I'm much more likely to be deeply invested. It would be impossible to overstate the importance of the practical nature of this graduate program. Each and every course provided authentic learning experiences that were both informed by and in turn informed my library and my teaching practice. For example, I designed a site in new Google Sites just after it was released for an inquiry-based learning unit in EDCI 323: Inquiry and Technology. Not only was I able to use that site to implement the unit collaboratively with the three fourth grade classrooms, but the technology skills and familiarity I developed through the project allowed me to be a mentor and guide when all Neshobe teachers had to change over their classroom websites to new Google Sites at the beginning of this school year.
My standards for the learning experiences I provide every day in my library are much higher as a result of this experience. I want to focus on content and experiences that are authentic and directly relevant to students' lives, I want my learners to feel ownership of their learning and of the library space, and I want to ensure there is time for students to reflect on and self-assess their learning. One of the biggest initiatives I have implemented in my work as a result of this program is passion projects with fifth and sixth grade students not in band. Taking a time that previously was a “catch up” block and making it a chance for students to explore and pursue their passions has been an important experience for me in building a practical understanding of both the possibilities and the challenges in a learning model emphasizing student choice and authenticity. I look forward to iterating our design and support for passion projects over the next few years.
"What would our kids gain from us if, as educators and parents, we did a better job of showing that we too are learners?" - George Couros
In my learning over the past few years, as well as in other media about education, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run across the idea that children come to school curious and enthusiastic and our schools slowly kill that wonder. Much of my learning about curriculum has been ways to teach that open space to cultivate a sense of wonder and a culture of inquiry, to learn in an integrated way. As we move towards a more personalized educational system in Vermont, building a culture of inquiry where our learners are both curious and rigorous in their search for new knowledge seems an ideal goal for my work in the library.
In EDLI 274, we explored inquiry models by undertaking our own inquiry project, as a learner ourselves. We followed the steps of the model we chose and reflected along the way. It was an important experience for me, because I recognized how important those inquiry skills are and have been to me in all aspects of my life, not just school. I’ve thought a lot since then about how and why we teach inquiry---in EDFS 320, I wrote my literature review on inquiry models for elementary schools, and then I took EDCI 323: Inquiry and Technology in the fall where I dove deep into project-based learning. But it was in EDCI 333, Learning Strategies and Curriculum Planning for Diverse Students, that I finally created a backwards design unit that addressed my obsession with figuring out how to teach inquiry. To be realistic, I will probably not ever teach that complete UBD unit in one go---but the iterative cycle of skill building with shorter projects and lessons to practice particular parts of the inquiry process now provides a wealth of resources to draw on. I’m also now in a good position, as the fifth and sixth grades at Neshobe transition to a middle level model, to use the knowledge I have built about the inquiry process to help them create standard expectations for research and all its trappings in the classroom. Next year, it is my hope that passion projects will move into classroom time and become more rigorous and tied to the inquiry process as well.
Inquiry is not just a culture and a process, but a mindset as well. Being a learner is an important part of my identity, but I didn’t really understand how important a trait this was until I learned of Carol Dweck’s work on mindset. It is so powerful not only to encourage our students to develop a growth mindset, but to model constant learning and growth. As George Couros points out, who better to teach learning, after all, than someone who is really good at it? I cultivate this inquiry mindset in my library classes through regular KWLs about various topics, a weekly research challenge, and an openness and engagement with any question a student has. I also encourage my learners to pursue their own wondering questions.
I continue to be fascinated by the topic of inquiry and the importance of constant learning. Just last week I had the opportunity to hear a first grade student read, someone who had adamantly proclaimed for most of this year that he simply could not. Two weeks ago he decided two weeks ago that he was going to be a reader, and now he is glowing with pride at each page he decodes. Just by the power of his will, his mindset to learn, this student had made an enormous jump in progress in only two weeks’ time. The decision to learn, the understanding that we are not just one thing, one way, forever, is incredibly powerful. My next area of growth in inquiry and learning is to learn more about the process and challenges of learning to read, so I can become even better at recommending engaging and appropriately challenging stories in the library.
Kindness matters. - Neshobe School motto
Community. It is what brought me to Vermont---the chance to make a living and a good life in the same community where I grew up. Building community is a major goal of the principal I work for, who specifically recruits former students to teach at Neshobe School, and gave us the motto, “Kindness matters.” And creating community is my greatest aspiration both in my teaching and my learning. Connecting people, building relationships, and fostering communication are the bread and butter of a librarian’s work. My UVM courses have supported my goal of building community in a variety of ways, through helping me understand role a library collection can play in building community to the way physical space creates or disrupts relationships to how to be a leader who empowers others.
One of the most important ways I build relationships in my day-to-day work is by knowing the name of every person in the school, and remembering our conversations about what they are reading. I often have new recommendations of books they may like (even for the adults!). My collection development is driven in large part in response to the reading interests of my readers, but I also actively use the collection to provide not just mirrors but windows into others’ lives, as a way to build empathy. The diversity statement I wrote in EDLI 200 has been an important guiding document for me as I curate this resource for my community.
I bring this same focus on community into my library in a variety of other ways as well. In several courses we’ve talked about using both the physical layout of space as well as technology to empower students in the library. I encourage my students to see the library as our shared space, not mine alone. They are trusted with self-checkout, no fines, and no strict due dates. They have created most of the signage in the library to help themselves and other students find books. We talk about the school as a community of readers, and create and share book talks with one another throughout the year. Students in the upper grades connect across classrooms and grades around the Dorothy Canfield Fisher award nominees, which many teachers now read each year as well. My students and I connect with other classrooms and schools throughout the year too, particularly through the Global Read Aloud with my primary students, where each class partners with one from another part of the country, and we connect each week through a picture book study and a variety of activities using technology tools like Skype, Padlet, Twitter and Edmodo.
However, the course I’m currently taking has made me acutely aware of a serious need in my school community. In a recent project I became aware that, shockingly, despite the federal mandate through CIPA, there is no requirement in my district that digital citizenship skills are taught in each and every classroom---and no one has told me to teach it, either. It was simply dropped when the technology integrationist position was cut seven or so years ago. Teachers are aware of the proliferation of devices in students’ homes---I was talking with a second grade teacher this week who said that all of her students but one have either their own device or regular access to a device at home. I touch on a variety of digital citizenship issues in my teaching, but mostly through the lens of inquiry and copyright. Our students need support in understanding that they are responsible for creating a kind community on the internet, just like we have to work to create a kind community in our school. Ensuring that our students are talking about digital citizenship and practicing the concepts they learn is one of my major instructional and collaboration goals for the next year.
It is increasingly clear to me that we are better together than we could ever hope to be on our own. My UVM courses have slowly, gently, yet persistently pushed me to grow my personal learning network, an online community accessed through a variety of technology tools, which will support my continued learning after my courses are long done. Beginning in EDLI 274 and EDLI 200, I was introduced to networks like Diigo and Goodreads, incredible collaborative resources that provide access to a wealth of information curated and created by other educators. Courses with Lucie de la Bruere have pushed me to use Twitter for professional learning, and not just to lurk and absorb but to speak up and share my voice and ideas. Both EDCI 333 and EDCI 325 use blogging as a form of reflective writing. I will continue to push myself to reflect publicly on my blog, because sharing your thinking and your process with your community holds you to a higher standard in your learning.
Through each of my classes, I also connected with my fellow students through conversation, feedback on our work, and the wider networks we were joining. My classmates are now my colleagues---perhaps not at my particular school, but in the education community in Vermont (which is not all that big, after all). I continue to connect with them online, and also at conferences and events throughout the school year. This is so important, as great librarians cannot become great in a vacuum. I aspire to excellence in my work, and as a community of practice we can lift one another up.
If you have any questions, please contact me via email. If you are interested in continuing to follow my professional progress, I'm on Twitter (@hannah_fjeld), Goodreads, LinkedIn, and regularly update the Neshobe School Library website.