Oct 1st Entrance Slip

I have always found any discussion of ethical consumerism and when to buy items vs. when to make them and, what the benefits of each of these options are to be incredibly complicated. There are so many variables to consider. If you are trying to decide if it is ethical to buy an item, you need to think about where each material came from how it was made and, how the whole piece was made. For a toque you would need to think about where the dye for the yarn came from, if the labour practices for making it were acceptable, if the environmental practices were acceptable. Then you would need to look at what material made the yarn, look at the labour and environmental practices for that. Then look at labour and environmental practices for how the yarn was spun. Look at how the yarn was dyed. Look at how the toque was knitted. Then look at the ethics of the store selling the toque. All of this does not even consider that many of these processes likely happened in different places and there may be ethical issues with the way the materials were transported. This is a drawn-out way of saying that it is challenging to get a truly ethical consumer item. So, it seems that what this article is advocating for: attempting to make or grow at least some of your own items is a good idea. It’s not applicable to everything though. There are times when I need to buy something because I do not have the specialized skill to make it myself (i.e. I could make my own rope to wrap a gift, but I would not use a rope I had made myself to go climbing). There is also the consideration that sometimes the convenience of modern consumerism are a necessity. This reality seems particularly relevant to me right now given the speed of this program and the number of classes we are currently taking.

So, often when I think about the issues discussed in this article I can quickly jump between many different facets of the issue all of which seem deeply challenging to solve and not actually come to any conclusions. I think the thing to do is to choose one thing to focus on. I am guessing for the author of this article that focus would be making or growing things when she can. My mother grows food during the summer and then cans much of it in the fall. Many people are attempting to buy more Canadian made products right now. I think focusing on one thing, and then perhaps if you get really good at that thing adding a second thing, is more sustainable than trying to solve everything at once. To me it seems much better to spend a lifetime being more sustainable and ethically conscious in a few ways rather than spending a few weeks or a month trying to do it in every way and inevitably giving up.

The craft technique I tried was the 7-strand braid. I realized that I (somehow) don’t have any string in my house so (after a brief attempt to braid my hair that failed when I realized I didn’t have enough fingers to keep 7 sections of my hair separate and to braid at the same time) I decided to cut a wide piece of ribbon into 7 sections. I was surprised by how well the actual braiding went for me. At the after-school program I worked for during my first degree we would sometimes do bracelet making crafts that remind me of this. I often found this type of craft challenging. It sometimes would seem like knots were magically appearing where I didn’t want them to be without me knowing how they got there. I also did not do a great job of cutting my ribbon into sections of equal widths which I was worried would make the braiding challenging. So, I was pleasantly surprised that this went smoothly for me.

Sept 24th Exit Slip

When I sat down to start writing this exit slip, I started by trying to choose weather I wanted to focus on writing about the activity we did where we tried to measure the garden or, the one where we tracked the sun. I immediately decided I wanted to talk about the activity where we measured the garden. This immediate reaction made me question why I was more drawn to this activity than the other one. For me I think a big part of it is that that activity felt like a challenge we were being offered. I am a person who really enjoys a challenge. Particularly this type of challenge where we were all trying to do it and were all doing it in different ways, but where it was not a competition is something, I enjoy (although I do enjoy competition as well). The particular nature of this activity made it so that we were able to compare our results and methods with other groups in a way that was more about learning and, interest in what others had done and less about being right. The fact that it was challenging and that I had the chance to try it myself made me more interested to see what others had done than I would have been if I hadn’t tried it myself first. This being said tracking the sun with our bodies was also an interesting activity and I wouldn’t be surprised if many people enjoyed it more. If you simply asked me if I would have preferred to examine the movement of celestial objects or measure the area of a section of land I probably would not have guessed I would be more drawn to measuring the area of the land. So, I think that the reason I resonated more with the first activity had less to do with the natures of the activities and more to do with how they are set up.

I am not saying that I think the way that the first activity was set up is objectively better than the set-up of the second activity. It was just better for my preferences and my personality. When I begin teaching in a classroom I will have many kids with many personalities. Some who may prefer an activity that feels like a challenge, like the first activity, and some who may prefer and activity that highlights wonder and curiosity about the way our world works, like the second activity. So, it is important that as a teacher I make sure my lessons include variety. Even two activities that were outside and made use of the natural world had large differences and would each would appeal more to some students than others. So, it seems to me that it is not enough to say, “I had one lesson that was outside and physical and one that was inside and more wrote.” and to claim that your lessons are varied. Instead, I think that I should be incorporating lessons in different locations but also some that are challenges, some that are competitive, some that are contemplative, some that are discussion heavy, some that leave time for silence and personal reflection, some that are more physical, and some where you have to move less. In general, I think a big thing I took away from this class was a reminder of the value of having variety in lots of different ways when you are teaching.

Sept 24th Entrance Slip

When I think about how I would use a garden as a co-teacher particularly in high school math what comes to mind is how the garden could be a tool to answer the question of relevance. I believe many students struggle to grasp the relevance of what they learn in a math class and instead treat the subject as something they simply have to check off of their list of requirements to graduate. This mindset is something that I’m certain is not helpful to learning. I think that curiosity, inquiry and interest are much better motivators for students learning. This is partially because I think that students who want to learn will be much happier doing so. However, it is also because of the more practical reason that “I want to pass grade 10 math” is not verry good motivation for completing an assignment that is only worth 5% of the grade. It seems likely to me that students who are not motivated by curiosity would have a hard time being motivated to learn fundamental concepts at the start of the year and may end up unable to grasp concepts further on in their education. I think it is important for students understanding of math that their motivation for developing that understanding comes from a sustainable place. This is why the question of relevance is so important in a math classroom. It can be easy for students to see math, particularly high school math, as something that has no application to their lives. I believe teaching in a garden could help with that. 

The garden could be used in lessons about transformations, lessons about geometry, about angles, curves, and about trigonometry. All of these topics have visual representations, examples of which could be found in the garden. By using the garden in this way and by creating lessons where students have to seek out the concepts being discussed in nature it could exemplify how math has bearing on real life. The concept of math simply as abstractions is something that many people find challenging and the garden could be used to take math out of the abstract world and to give it a more concrete meaning. I think using the garden as a co-teacher would have the potential to both make your lessons seem more tangible and, in that way, more understandable and to make the content you teach seam more relevant. By adding relevance to math lessons the garden could help students be more motivated and therefore more successful in their learning.
 

Sept 17th Exit Slip

I found the sit spot activity interesting because of what it made me think about in terms of perspective in teaching. I think it could be valuable to provide my students with periodic changes of perspective. Particularly in a subject like math where many times students are quietly sitting and working on projects our brains can start to feel “cobwebby”. There are big changes that can and should be made to how we teach to avoid this (ensuring our lessons are more varied and engaging etc.). However, thinking about perspective reminds me about little changes that can be made to help with this problem. Changing classroom layouts could be a helpful trick to reignite kids learning. As much as it might not change anything in terms of content or how the content is being taught, I think a small change in perspective could be beneficial to students all on its own. I found that moving to a different location got me thinking in a different way and I would hope that students would find the same if they were given a change of perspective. I also found standing up and physically moving to a different spot helpful for my thinking and this is something that I think could be useful in my teaching as well. There are certainly ways that the sit spot activity could be used to deliver or work on math curriculum. However, I was most impacted by the idea of a change of perspective because I like learning ways to help students that go beyond how to deliver curriculum. I feel that having more varied tools to help my students will make me a better teacher.

I also found the discussion we had at the end of class interesting. It was cool to see how we all took the prompt of the article and the videos we watched last class and had completely different conversations. I appreciated hearing about what aspects of teaching everyone discussed and their thoughts on them. Getting the chance to have many different conversations with many different people about many different aspects of teaching is something I will find helpful when I go into my practicum and develop my own method of teaching. The conversation at the end of class was a great snapshot of all the different conversations about teaching that I can and will have during this degree and I was very happy to hear all the interesting thoughts everyone had. It was fascinating to see where different groups took the conversation despite it being based off of the same original material.

 

Sept 17th Entrance Slip

I found this reading incredibly relevant despite being written a while ago. Because it gave characteristics that reflective teachers have instead of focusing on what teachers should do in any given situation, I think it was able to remain relevant. Because the article is emphasizing an approached that consists of considering students views and beliefs and being considerate of the consequences of how you teach. So, it is still relevant even though the views and beliefs and cultural norms teachers may be working with today are likely different then they were when the article was written.

The thing I found most helpful about this article was that it got me thinking about when to value tradition and the ways that teachers before you have done things and when it is important to make changes. At the beginning of the reading, I found that although the author made good points, I couldn’t fully get behind them because I kept thinking that there were likely good reasons for the traditions and norms in place in many schools. I was wary of pushing back against the ways that previous teachers had done things or of examining those traditions too closely because it felt like I would risk losing the advice and guidance that I could otherwise gain from how other teachers teach. However later in the reading it discussed ensuring you maintain a balance between blindly rejecting tradition and common ways of teaching and blindly accepting them as absolute truth. I think it was helpful that the reading highlighted ensuring you are working based off of evidenced based beliefs. This gave me a clear way to know when to accept tradition and when to push back against it. To me the idea that you should be able to differentiate between tradition that exists because it has never been examined and tradition that is in place because it has proven to produce the best results for students is important. For me this distinction is verry important when thinking critically about how I teach because it will ensure that I do not discard the advice and knowledge of other more experienced teachers without good reason. But, it will allow me to still think critically and be a reflective teacher.

 

Sept 10th Exit Slip

There were two concepts that were brought up in the Frank McCourt videos and the discussions that we had afterwards that really stuck out to me and left me with further questions.

The idea of not acting and of being honestly yourself when you enter classrooms as a teacher is the first thing that stuck out to me. This stuck out to me primarily because during the discussion I had after viewing the video the question of whether this approach leads to or prevents burnout came up. In some ways it seems possible that being completely authentically yourself in your teaching could lead to burnout since it might make it harder to maintain the boundaries you need to have with your students. It also might make it harder to protect your work life balance. On the other hand, not having to act like someone you are not could help mitigate burnout. The energy of having to keep up a facade that is not accurate to who you are could be something that leads to teachers burning out. The reason I believe these questions came up for me is because you hear a lot about the rates of burnout and the numbers of people leaving the profession being high in education. So, I think it is important to consider how we can teach in ways that are best for our students but that also help us avoid burn out.

The other concept that stuck out to me was the idea of meeting kids where they are at, letting them vent or be annoyed, and incorporating that into your lessons. I’m not sure how this can be applied to math. I think it could be beneficial to allow for time for students to discuss their frustrations and anxiety around math or the specific concepts they are learning. However, McCourt talked about doing this in ways that seemed to lead more directly to the students learning (i.e. he got them to tell him what they disliked about a book, so they were discussing the book). So, a question I have is how we could do this in math. Maybe having kids talk about their anxiety around a math concept could cause them to think more about that concept in a way that may help them learn. I would be curious to see if this would be the case. 

Hello World

 Hello!

Here is (another) picture of my dog :)