The Nature of Beginnings

I pulled this icon from my TEAC 259 course. The icon represents the Chaos Dump used in my class this past semester. At first, I wasn't sold on the idea. I thought it would be viewed as just one other thing to do in class, one more "useless" exercise. Yet, as the semester progressed, I found myself finding more value in its use, and even recognizing my own under use of the tool.

During my first meeting with Roz for my Independent Study ( TEAC 905), we once again set up a CD for documenting our discussion, ideas, and growth. The meeting began with a focus on how my ID would go, what my responsibilities would be, and what course the team was developing would contain.

In the end, very little of our conversation focused on how the ID would progress, but we did develop an outline for further development of learning objectives:

1. "Pedagogy Bootcamp" - the pre-course requirement for students that is an intensive day of preparation for the course to be held sometime in August. 
2. Canvas Shell - to have a rough, working Canvas shell that is both useful and highly visual
3. Journal - maintain a critically reflective journal throughout the course 
4. Conference/Manuscript proposal - work on the art of conquering writing for conferences/journals

We shifted our focus to the meat of TEAC 959. The bare bones idea of TEAC 959 is to develop a course for both graduate students and faculty that focuses on meaningful pedagogy. As we talked through the baseline ideas, Roz asked me to think about what I would have liked to have learned before teaching for the first time as a graduate student. It was a difficult question. I don't know that I have an answer for that yet, but it has been a question in my mind as I think through how  to develop a meaningful curriculum for graduate students and faculty.

I thought the idea of a grab bag might be a useful approach since we will have a wide array of learners with different goals and needs. I thought back to what I know about adult learners, thinking more specifically about the faculty who will come in with a different motivation than most of the graduate students. The grab bag allows a flexibility and autonomy in learning that would appeal to many students because they have the freedom to focus on areas that they self-identify as important and relevant to their current teaching and pedagogy. The grab bags would need some sort of unifying theme, with options within that theme. And, a metric for measuring successful completion of a "task" or learning objective within each would also need to be developed. The idea is not useless assignments or testing, but a way to measure mastery of a new idea/tool/strategy.

We also discussed a sort of final assessment that is based off of an assignment from TEAC 259. The idea is that students would teach a lesson where they implement a number of the grab bag topics they focused on during the semester. This lesson would be viewed by their instructor(s) and peer(s) to display their mastery.

As we move through this process, I must admit at this stage I am on unsure ground. I now think I understand how my students feel with some assignments when they ask for more concrete direction. I find myself wanting that. It's hard to know what is expected when there is little structure and direction. This makes me think about my own teaching and how I develop, present, and assess my own assignments. Perhaps I need to refocus how much scaffolding and support I give my assignments. I want to find a better balance between students having autonomy to use their creativity and critical thinking skills to solve a problem, and leaving them out to sea. For me, balance is the big take away from this first week. It is something I have struggled with in teaching, in learning. It's usually full throttle or standing still. But, I think that balance is a key element in both teaching and learning. Vygotsky's ZPD deals a lot in balance. Knowing your learners enough to understand how far to push them, when they need an extra hand. Maybe this pursuit of balance should become one of my own learning goals.