Randa Abla Cherfan

Now What?

goal

/ɡəʊl/

Learn to pronounce

noun
the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.

My goals in life are dynamic, they keep changing and evolving.... What’s next?” I keep being asked this question now that my degree is coming to an end. I think about what lies ahead and what changes can this experience bring to my community and myself. Everything I learned from my courses included a project or an assignment that I could apply in my daily teachings at school. Reaping the benefits of this degree can only be achieved by putting my learnings into real life practice. I would want to keep on applying my new learnings to my daily practices at school, at home and in all aspects of my daily life.

In the scope of my career, my future goals fall under three main headlines:

• Integration of technology in my teachings

• Inclusion

• Keep learning

These goals will push me to keep growing and keep improving as an educator and a learner. They will also allow me to put to practice the learnings that I have acquired during MAED journey.

Integrate technology in my teachings:

In the current times where technology has grown to be ubiquitous, it has become a must to integrate it with education. After taking my graduate certificate in online teaching, I learned about the affordances that technology can bring to education especially for our digital native learners. I compared the brick-and-mortar schooling to the online schooling. During covid pandemic, I also explored many applications that enhance student engagement and promote equity learning in a fun way, and sometimes serving as good assessment tools. I aim to integrate technology in my pedagogy through using educational digital tools such as loom, flipgrid, kahoot, quizlet, google forms, flippity, canva, Piktochart to name a few. I will advocate the integration of technology to other colleagues and educators at school. I will train them and aspire to become a reference in .These tools can facilitate the learning process, reach a wider audience of learners, and foster more engagement from their part.

Set up Inclusion committee and train educators

Learners have individual needs, yet they are part of one community. In an inclusive spirit, I want to help prepare our teachers and set up our classrooms to receive and educate all kinds of students based on their individual learning requirements and in line with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. I will delve into finding various pedagogical tools and methods to implement in class that will reinforce the UDL guidelines. I will promote tools like the UDL wheel and UDL teacher's guide, and aim to create a simulation tool for teachers to provide them with options of teaching techniques in line with UDL principles that cater for specific learning challenges. I will also join the school’s newly set up inclusion committee. Our goal will be to set up a common learning environment; an educational setting where students from different backgrounds and with different abilities learn together in an inclusive environment. This will be achieved by guiding teachers to detect students with learning difficulties and define their difficulties, propose the necessary changes to bring about in their pedagogies and classroom design to cater for these students, raise awareness on our different needs to all the education community and create a space for parents to share their experiences and empathize with one another through regular gatherings. I also want to promote PBIS and coach my colleagues on applying the system in their teaching practices, in order to optimize the learning experience for our students and bring out their strengths and potential rather than have them hide them due to challenges that can be dealt with.

As the term indicates, inclusion means including everyone. It also involves raising awareness to all the learning community not only teachers. I will work on raising students’ awareness as well as all stakeholders who are in contact with students with difficulties as well as the parents of the subject students. We will organize workshops for the students’ community and frequent informal meetings with the concerned parents to de-dramatize the situation and share experiences.

Keep Learning:

Learning is a lifelong process. It is not limited to in-school learning. I plan to keep on learning with every passing day, from my students, from my kids and from every experience I go through. I intend to stay up to date about the latest pedagogical approaches used with challenging learners as well as the technological developments that can be of value in the field of education. I will reflect on that and publish my reflections on my newly developed website. This being part of the learning process to help me better understand education and the impact of various practices.

In addition to that, I intend to start learning Spanish, to add it to my repertoire of languages (Arabic, English and French). I believe that languages are an asset and language literacy can help us better understand different cultures and barriers. Learning another language will also enable me to reach more and connect with ESL students and build on their knowledge in this language to teach English, a practice that I also apply with Arabic and French speakers. I will start by using Duolingo, and eventually will take courses either online through Italki or face to face through language centers in Riyadh. I will also benefit from the fact that I live in a nationality diverse compound and have many Spanish speaking neighbors, and will organise gathering a with them with the purpose of conversing in spanish, as I believe that the best way to learn a language is through practicing it and being exposed to it regularly and . Finally, I will try to make trips to Spanish speaking countries to immerse myself in the experience!

I am eager to work on implementing all these goals as they will push me out of my comfort zone and raise my potential, all whilst being achievable goals. Once accomplished, new goals will be put in place to push me to keep on growing as a parent, as a learner, as a teacher, as a community member etc. as a whole person.

"In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn"

Phil Collins