To stay consistent with the change in what learning looks like, we as educators must change our mindsets. I firmly believe in leading with three fundamental mindsets:
-Empathy
-Adaptability
-Humility
We as educators must have empathy to connect with our students. We as educators must have the ability to adapt to any situation, including the use of technology in the classroom. And we as educators must lead our classes with humility. Make corrections and apologies public while leaving praise and rewards private.
In the resource, Small Significant Shifts for Strong SEL provided in this technology in education course (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z3Vh2DavMol_tSvwBhC1B8MOea04xG5t/view) Steps five and six resonate with my statement as an educator.
Step five: Learn from your mistakes by exploring them together. As the teacher, I find it hard to not be the know-it-all of the classroom. I use to think teachers must know everything, that's why they got the job as a teacher. However, that all changed when I was put in the position of a certified teacher at North Central. While I taught there, in the beginning, I would try my best to establish credibility with my students by expressing my vast knowledge of the arts. However, very quickly I learned I knew a lot less than I thought. I felt the humiliation of letting my students down and tried my hardest to ignore or cover my mistakes. But soon enough, I owned them. When I made my mistakes public, apologized to the whole classroom, and allowed them to help me learn from them there was a shift in the mood of the classroom. When my students saw I make mistakes, they were okay with making them too and learning from them.
Step six: Making the learning process as transparent as possible. By staying consistent and remaining transparent our students can better learn from promoting a safe environment through these elements. The students at North Central are tough, and it's because they have to be. In a constant fight or flight mode, my students needed me to make my teaching as transparent as possible so they felt safe enough in an environment to learn. When students know what to expect, they can better prepare to meet those expectations. I typically did and will continue to do this through the use of visuals and Microsoft teams (or whichever platform the district I teach in utilizes).
Overall steps five and six relate directly back to my original thought of teachers leading with three fundamental mindsets. I know from experience and myself, that I'm prone to slip up and forget to have empathy, adaptability, or humility. A constant reminder at the end of a long day is when I get to see my gecko. Geckos have a great ability to adapt to their surroundings and my gecko Mugler reminds me that I need to be more adaptable in anything I do. Mugler also makes mistakes; whether it's stepping in his food dish, smacking the terrarium glass in the middle of the night, or miscalculating his aiming skills for a solid jump. Geckos to me symbolize the idea of starting anew and adapting to the change we are put into.
As technology progresses, it's important to empathize with our students as they progress in a rapidly changing world. In addition, we need to be mindful and adapt to engage our students with our content. And lastly, admitting mistakes to our students is just humanity as work.
Well said Meagan! I agree with your sentiments on these issues especially about mistakes and how they should be dealt with in the classroom. We talked about it briefly in class, but think about Instagram and how everything always seems so perfect within those photos. No one posts their bad hair days, their failures, or the 15 shots that they had to take to get the one that they actually liked. On top of that, with the virality and lasting effects of the internet, a single error that may have happened can live with a student forever.
ReplyDeleteIf you're ok with admitting your mistakes, you're setting an example for students that they might not get anywhere else. You're letting them know that it's ok to struggle to get where you want and that the important thing is to learn from the mistakes. This honesty also builds into the transparent classroom that you were speaking about.