Evidential Miscellany

Rubric Outcome 8 - My portfolio reflects growth in planning; 13 I can ask a variety of questions and respond effectively in micro teaching.

For full marks, RO 8 states: "My portfolio leverages a wide variety of types of evidence that demonstrate growth and strength in my planning." I think you can see in this video - and glean from my description below - that this evidence contributes to the variety of that which shows growth in planning, as I demonstrate an early skill at questioning here. Furthermore, in the full video, my ability to pace the class in my planned PPT is apparent; just when the lecturing is becoming oppressive, I release the class to work together and talk about a problem question, and then, emboldened by their own conversation, they come back with points to discuss. This is an important way to get less confident learners to speak their voices and develop and articulate their thoughts, as in teacher led discussion, only the strongest students will tend to respond to me. I think a great deal of this reflects my need to work on using age appropriate language.

RO 13 for full marks: "My questions and responses encourage learning"

I taught this lesson the day after our ECUR 325 lesson on questioning. I started the lesson with a barrage of questions. In retrospect, it is almost funny to me, but what I was doing was trying to give students as many questions as possible in my first attempt. Go big or go home, I guess. You can see the questions I started the class with in the screenshot from the PowerPoint below (the full PPT can be seen on my social studies grade 8 page). I like using PPTs with the questions on the board for students to be able to see, read, and mull over while they come up with responses and discussion.

This early example from my teaching career shows that my questions and responses encourage learning.

The point here is, I want to have fun with content*, and let students feel comfortable in the classroom to express that they might not know, and/or are apathetic towards the subject matter.

I have open ended subjective lead questions leading to a hook question: "Do you benefit from the treaties?" to more essential questions like "Could you describe your relationship to place?", leading back to guide questions like "Do you have a special place in nature?" I then asked if students were bored, because I wanted to show them that I understand that the topic might be a bit dry, but that I wanted them to trust and follow me into the content. The lesson actually went quite well, as you can see in the video from the end of class, some very promising insights were offered and articulated by students!

*Regarding all the question mark/exclamation point combos ... I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to meet the high drama that's in my head, but it's maybe interesting that when I conceive of ideas for a dialogue in class, I sometimes hear the voice delivery in characters (maybe I should take a drama class). Here it seems to me that I was hearing a Billy West style, 1920's-radio-announcer-yelling-into-a-microphone kind of performance (animated by John Kricfalusi, of course), which I as a student would have found hilarious. Fortunately for all involved, I don't quite have the capacity to do that - at least not yet. I should thank the students for not giving me too hard a time with the question "do you have a relationship to the land?" as only a few of them giggled at that, which I suppose I could have made less of a target for teenage snickering.

Rubric Outcome 8 - My portfolio reflects growth in planning.

For full marks, RO 8 states: "My portfolio leverages a wide variety of types of evidence that demonstrate growth and strength in my planning."

My work through Adam Young's class demonstrates the kind of learner I am and the style of teaching I would like to do. That is, I think the best practice of pedagogy is inquiry based learning (IBL). I want to be sure to acknowledge that I do not believe IBL is the only way to learn, or should always be used; different learners will benefit from different routes to knowledge. Rather, I think that learners should have the choice to carry out their own inquiry based learning, or follow a more structured path, however I feel about IBL.

My degree work in history was very much inquiry based, very, follow your nose, if you will. I was a rather average/poor student before university. I don't blame anyone or anything, but I can say that since I've followed my instincts and passions and devoted my energies to enquiring, I've been a better student. I think in my own learning I have seen evidence of IBL in my better academic achievements. When I feel as though I've achieved something in a course, I can generally trace the trajectory of my questioning of instances of history or science or whatever it may be.

In my Educational Foundations 315 (EFDT 315) class with instructor Adam Young, I appreciated the clear build of the syllabus, and how I could see my way to developing my learning and understanding in the class planning. The following is how I worked my way through his course, and what I learned about place based pedagogy.

One of the most important things I would tell all college students is: read your syllabus. Read it again. Draw it on the inside of your eyelids, then go to bed and read it in your sleep. I still forget to do this.

The above was a pretty major project, and luckily was split fairly evenly between myself and fellow TC Darius Simonot. Darius did the bulk of the writing for letter, justification & outcomes, while I provided the ideas and the resources, and did the final edit and compilation with photos.

Through the work in my EFDT 315 class, you can clearly see the development and growth in strength of my planning. I am a holistic teacher and learner, seeking to bring in elements from the environment and community to engage students with place and one another.