Self-Assessment and Reflection

It is a singular privilege when finished with a difficult task to be able to look back and reflect on the experience. This is a particularly satisfying pleasure when looking back on my first experience in the cohort program at Montclair. I found the program thus far to be quite rewarding from a number of different points of view. My first observation is that I am extremely grateful that the courses had a very practical focus. From designing blogs and collaborative web pages to being able to design a pedagogically focused museum exhibit with the help of experts in the field, this was an experience that will inform my teaching for years to come. I will be able to implement all of these experiences into my teaching with a minimum of additional effort. More importantly these were projects that could only have been done in the context of the cohort program. In neither a traditional lecture based course nor an online course (which many of my colleagues suggested I take in order to simply “move up the guide”) would I have been able to learn these valuable lessons, and my students will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this work. Having a firm background in theory is of course important and the many readings served well to reinforce my background in this area. Having a specific methodology as a guide was a great help as well, although I still do not consider myself a true believer in the Wiggins model, feeling that I still do not know what the specific research that supports his model is, or if there really is a solid body of evidence to back up his claims and approach - nevertheless having any well defined model where congruence is stressed is bound to make a teacher’s lessons more effective and I feel I have benefited from the Wiggins approach in this area and I am looking forward to using his method as one of the tools in my lesson planning toolbox.

By far the most useful and enjoyable part of the experience was being able to work hand in hand with my colleagues. For the last four weeks we and our instructors have been working extremely hard under a tremendously compressed timeframe in order to meet the requirements of a rigorous sequence of courses in teacher leadership. Even though it was only four weeks the course requirements were just as demanding as if they were being run during an entire semester. The only way to survive in such an atmosphere is with the help of fellow professionals. My colleagues in the courses were all professionals in the highest sense of the word – people who cared deeply about their teaching, their students, the quality of their work, and dedication to helping each other through towards the noble goal of becoming even better teachers than they already were. Without their help and support I would have never been able to finish the first courses in the program. I sincerely hope we have the opportunity to work together again and until that time I wish each and every one of them the best as they endeavor to complete their work to become teacher leaders in our field. Thank you all!

Wonder in the City

I just came across something exciting that I feel encapsulates the teaching of wonder to which this blog is dedicated. It is an article about scientist Steven Farber in the NY Times. Dr. Farber is a scientist that runs BioEyes, a program to get kids excited and interested in science in inner city Baltimore. Beyond the fact that this is exactly the approach that needs to be taken for exceptional teaching I found it interesting that when asked why he doesn't involve more scientists he unabashedly points out that most scientists couldn't teach at any level, never mind the advanced level necessary to teach younger students! As an alternate route teacher myself I found this very amusing and quite agree - many people out there who think that teaching is just a matter of transferring subject matter knowledge and that the ultimate measure of a teacher is the extent to which they have mastered that subject matter knowledge (are you listening, NCLB people with your naive ideas about what constitutes being 'highly qualified?) has another thing coming if the actually think they can take that attitude into a real classroom with real students! Dr. Farber makes it a point to only allow teachers to teach in his program, preferably elementary. Long live Farber and BioEyes!

Apropos

During one of my all too frequent quests around the web (on my vacation!) I came across a very interesting educational site. Actually it's a commercial site for Apple Computers, but like many companies they occasionally make some effort at supporting education. This page was particularly interesting after having put together an exhibit at the Newark Museum. Apropos to this experience I wanted to share an interesting idea for an exciting lesson. At Apple's site they provide plans on how to lead students through setting up an audio tour of a museum exhibit using their IPod product. I thought this would be a great lesson for students in putting together their own pedagogical unit through a museum exhibit. It would also be a great formative assessment for a field trip to the museum! I will talk to the people at Newark Museum and let you know if they are interested in incorporating superlative podcasts of these tours into their exhibits...