This week is going to focus a little less on technology and more on reflections of my growing pedagogy and experience in the course so far. It has been a wild 5 weeks, I actually can’t believe that is only bee 5 weeks. It feels like it has been a lot longer. It is amazing the growth that I have seen in myself in this short time and I am really excited to see where this program leaves me by the end.
Going into this program I really did not think about pedagogy at all. I had never had to distill my pedagogical theory down. To me, teaching was all the same. We all learn how to be teachers the same way and there is no real wiggle room. I have learned so much, though (even in this small amount of time), about different pedagogies and what resonates with me. A lot of things that I took for granted while going to school are actually things that have been painstakingly researched and vetted in order to make sure it works for students.
What I have learned the most is that connection is everything. Connection to your students, connection to the material and connection to teaching networks. If we do not build connections with our students we cannot be effective teachers, if we do not connect material to meaning then student’s won’t learn as well and if we do not connect with other teachers we will burn out. I think these lessons are really important. As someone who likes to plan and follow a rule book learning that the most important thing you can do as a teacher is connect, can be a little scary. There is no handbook for connection. It is a bit out of my comfort zone to know that the most important thing I can do as a teacher is something I can’t learn how to do. But, I think that is also good. It is getting me to expand and change my pedagogical thinking.
It has also been really interesting to learn these lessons of connection in a world of no actual face to face connection. The technology that we have does wonders to help facilitate our learning and I don’t personally mind doing online school, but the feeling of connection is different. We can Zoom and text, we can edit papers together on Google docs but there is no replacement for the energy you get when in a room full of people.
