I believe we all have the ability to view crises that come into our
lives as challenging opportunities or defeating obstacles. At some
point in our lives we all make a decision to adopt one or the other of
these outlooks. I have been given the opportunity to revisit and obtain
my childhood dream and I have set out to make that my new reality.
I have always had, at my core, the desire to teach. It was during this
time I began to realize that “lifelong
learning” was not
just a catchy phrase but a critical belief that is a life changing
experience. I was able to keep fanning the spark of my childhood dream
by becoming a presenter in “The Choices Program”
sponsored
by Credit Union Central of Canada. In this program, I visited many
Winnipeg junior high school classrooms (Grade 9) and presented the
material combined with a frank discussion of why they should stay in
school. I learned as much as I hopefully shared with the students. It
was here I started to formulate that the ability for a youth to make a
connection with an instructor is critical to his or her learning. In
fact, it may be more important than the actual knowledge transference
for it is the cement that holds the knowledge in place. My involvement
as a leader in Scouting showed me that if there is one educator in a
child’s life who makes a strong bond, it will influence that
individual for the remainder of his or her life as well as shore that
same person up against the trials that will come. It was here that I
discovered the importance of making learning fun for both the teachers
and pupils. My career moved formally toward instruction when I was
asked by Red River to teach the Financial Planning course. I also took
the opportunity to enrol in the Certificate in Adult Education offered
by them. I was happiest when teaching and made an interesting discovery
that, while there are undeniable and marked differences in teaching
adults as opposed to youth, there also are remarkable similarities: the
need to connect, be invited to be interested in the material and the
mandatory use of a variety of instructional methods are but three. The
key will always be to build a brain-friendly classroom regardless of
the age group making sure it is a safe environment to foster learning.
In fact, the classroom is really a home for the mind. I cannot help but
see us as facilitators or “cementers of knowledge”,
keen on
ensuring that work isn’t done until it is done right.
Courtesy of Paperworketc.com
My reflection on teaching with technology:
The
one thing that
Introduction to Information Technology for Educators has taught me is
that if I am going to teach young children about computers, I must
temper what I plan to teach. We can become so overwhelmed
with
all the latest advances that it is easy to get lost before we can reach
a meaningful outcome for the student. I recall my amazement
at
“re-learning” hypertext markup language (HTML) to
create a
simple webpage when there are so many advanced editors out there that I
am capable of using. The key was that a child could learn
some of
the simple commands of HTML and have a rudimentary webpage up and able
to be viewed by "millions" of people in an afternoon. The
powerful
sense of accomplishment and the “coolness” of being
published is what will spark the flame of learning and allow the
student to build on his or her knowledge. I would have run
the
risk of snuffing out that spark by tasking the student with needless
features and “bloat” of our modern programs.
The ability to bring
multimedia content to the
fore with information technology cannot be overlooked and I plan to
incorporate that into my classroom whenever possible. It
simply
allows for variety in instructional methods which is crucial to keep
the attention of one’s students. The web is rich
with
information such as that but information is not knowledge.
This
is a huge limiting factor unless I, as an instructor, review and sift
through much of what is presented to young students to glean their
research from. This will be a critical part of my mission as
a
teacher.
