How We Think

 Reflect on Your Findings

• Did your findings confirm or challenge your goals and strategies?

Our findings for the first goal were confirmed when the students felt safe enough to share their trees with us to use as data. We gained a new perspective through this goal on how we achieved it. We focused on highlighting how our background has made us who we are. This made students feel appreciated and safe. Our activity reflected exactly what we wanted, making us achieve goal 1 perfectly.  Our second goal was challenged, we asked them throughout our presentation how they were doing and if they enjoyed it but we don’t have much data to prove that we had encouraged their ideal needs. With this knowledge, we would have had a reflective question in our survey about how this fit their learning style and what they wished would be changed. With this knowledge and data point, we could make future lessons better that would apply to students' needs. 

With our third goal, it was okay. Our data was right down the middle with their feelings about it. They were laughing a little not everyone was engaged. However, people rated the activity around 3.8. So we were slightly challenged by our third goal. Knowing this now we see that this is a goal that needs to be engaged with every session. We also acknowledge that this is not the only way we could have approached achieving this goal. We feel that other useful ways to engage in people's well-being could be asking questions about how their week has been. Our findings confirmed goal 4 with our identity trees this was a positive way to enforce individualism and confidence in people's self-confidence. Showing that everything that makes up who they are creates who they are. Similar to goal one we achieved this and gained the perspective that we have achieved this perfectly through our activity. Creating a safe environment through our trees that reflect on people's backgrounds and make them who they are.

• What new insights did you gain about your tenets of learning?

The first tenet of learning is valuing student's well-being and opinions over curriculum outcomes. This promotes open communication and critical exchange among peers. Creating a comfortable and supportive classroom fosters an educational environment where students are seen as individuals with unique experiences and perspectives, leading to a more enriching learning environment. Students reflecting on their experiences and acknowledging their different backgrounds can create a safe and welcoming environment that allows them to take risks and make mistakes, allowing them to participate in challenging activities in the classroom. Our observation of students' participation, body language, and facial expressions demonstrate that they feel comfortable engaging in challenging activities. This aligns with the idea that a supportive classroom atmosphere, where students are recognized as individuals with unique perspectives, leads to a more immersive educational experience. As students reflected on their diverse backgrounds, they were able to cultivate a safe space that encourages risk-taking and learning from mistakes, further enhancing their engagement in the classroom. These connections affirm the importance of creating a welcoming environment that values student input and well-being.

The second tenet of learning is reflection and growth. We believe reflection and growth are essential to student's awareness of their progress. Students expanding their power dynamics eventually connect with peers and acknowledge their values as individuals and as a community. When students embrace their identities and positionalities, they can develop storytelling where they can make connections between their personal experiences and their academic work. This ownership of their learning and self-awareness will eventually lead to a growth mindset where they will be questioning past actions they did in the past and present. This can result in more involvement in school and even taking action to change the systemic norms. But also nurtures emotional growth, which can lead to a holistic learning experience. The positive feedback regarding the tree activity highlights the value of creating safe spaces where students can express themselves. This practice makes learning more meaningful and encourages open communication. When students feel heard, they are more likely to engage actively in discussions, leading to richer exchanges of ideas and a deeper understanding of one another. Overall, embracing reflection and growth promotes emotional and academic development, encouraging students to question their past actions and seek ways to contribute positively to their environment.

3. Implications: What Will We Do Next?

Step 1: Reflect on Future Goals and Strategies

• What goals or strategies will you continue using, and why?

We will continue to utilize all of our goals because they identify key points that help create an ideal learning environment for students. Without having an open and welcoming environment for students, they are less likely to retain the information that they are taught. Unless we identify the students' experiences and help establish this atmosphere, students are less likely to contribute to the learning process. Additionally, giving students the opportunity to feel like they are valued helps to establish a rapport with teachers and staff. For our last goal, it's important to educate students about the historical context within power dynamics to help them fully understand the educational system and other students' perspectives. After our presentation, we saw the impact that these goals had within and during what we presented. While this was the first time working at the front of the class, sharing parts of ourselves contributed to other students sharing stories and contributing to an atmosphere of students feeling whole and well. Another aspect that this created was enabling students to be vulnerable with other students by sharing what is important to their identity, (the tree activity for example).  

As for our strategies, we feel like our strategies contributed to the learning atmosphere for our project and are things that should be employed within the classroom moving forward. Students' reflections can help identify similarities and differences within a classroom and make connections for students. By working together, students can develop an understanding of each other and implement suggestions in a group setting that help bring the students together. Additionally, giving students time to assess their well-being will help them to self-regulate and be able to express their feelings. Also, within this frame, incorporating our last strategy will aid students in reflecting on their educational and cultural experiences and how that affects their learning and world. New aspects that we saw during our presentation was students being able to utilize our strategies as a strength in recognizing their individuality and perspective. Within this frame, students can objectively look at learning material and creatively work together to complete discussions and assignments because they feel their voices are being heard and that teachers and staff value their individuality.

• What will you revise or do differently?

For our time we would have wished it to be longer, so we could have more discussion in our lecture. Students loved our discussion so to keep them more engaged we ould have had more discussion with our extra time. We got some feedback about wanting more structure in our meditation so we would have a guided meditation. Additionally, having a discussion before the meditation as opposed to having a post discussion would help to address any thoughts that came up for students and prepare them for the guided meditation.

We would have asked our peers to close their laptops for all activities. We noticed a high engagement when students closed their laptops which made us want to do it for our whole presentation Having a few more people provide examples for talking about a personal experience would help to give more context to the different types of examples that they could come up with, (as it's an individual's experience, not a class experience).