One more reflexión

I think that my growth and understanding about being a reflective teacher through blogs has been very subtle. It is hard to be reflective and be public all at the same time.  I think that many of us at the beginning of the year in our cohort could hardly bring our selves to write enough about critical issues and to share with others what caused us frustration and joy.

Many times blogging also has been times of half thoughts, and fussy ideas emerging. Yet it has been nice to share with the cohort and other people my wonders. Like my wonders about students fascination for poetry (that I did not have at their age) or how exciting it is for a math unit to come together and see students understand. Often I have found that the responses are just what I need to push my thinking or to encourage me. However as one of us put in a blog last quarter, it is an interesting world that we enter, and the challenge might be to stay connected with so much happening.

I think that part of this growth being so public is that I have to push my thinking in ways I would not usually want to. There are ideas that I found myself grappling with such as how we want to develop our community or encourage students to participate. To articulate my thoughts and respond to others has been an interesting task. I have found however that educators are mostly going to give a helping hand and support that I would not have found, if I did not challenge myself to do so. I think that like Sonia Nieto said in her book What Keeps Teachers Going that, “To survive and grow, I have to find colleagues who share my anger, hopes, beliefs, and assumptions about students and teaching.” Blogging and tweeting are just another platform that I can continue to use to develop as educators and learners.

Table Top Movie Maker

Experimenting and finding all sorts of possibilities for students to incorporate literacy, and technology skills to Table Top Movie Maker. Brick Maier created an easy and fun way to assess student’s ability to cooperate with other students, write a narrative and present it. Without inducing anxiety! With collaboration of Veritably Clean, Becoming and Educator, and Uncommonteacher, we created this Table Top.