Reflect on the content presented these past three weeks and how you have been able to apply your learning thus far as an educator. Reflect on your progress in the course to-date and how you have been able to manage your time.
To kick off our course, we reviewed brain anatomy and how learning happens at the neural level. I have been talking about these topics to my colleagues and to my students. My sixth graders were up against a project deadline and I could see that they were extremely stressed. I had a chat with them about how stress affects our ability to learn effectively. I had the students take a deep breath and we talked about time management at the middle school level. After thinking about it, I decided to extend the project deadline as I thought the teachable moment was significant (BT1).
One aspect that can be overlooked is the physical environment (BT2) of a learning space. Although I try to create a comfortable space in the media lab, recently I have taken care to change it more often. Changing items on the walls, adding more exemplars (BT3), and talking to the students about it has been interesting. Students now come in looking for changes and seem to be more involved in the space. I hope to expand this and have them take ownership of some of those changes.
I also began a 5-minute transition time to the beginning of class. We did “what would you rather” questions to get us all thinking together. Even my toughest brain raised her hand and participated! I am now investigating adding some quick meditation/visualization techniques.
Time management is fine although team work is challenging with differences in approach. Enjoying the progress!
