Taking a Break from Teaching but Keeps on Learning

My Classroom

One of my personal professional missions as a teacher is to build a positive-minded generation that is able to appraise and appreciate the goodness in themselves and each other much more than they judge and bring up weaknesses. 

I have heard people called me ambitious, desperate, nerdy, and many other names as if what I'm doing is a negative thing. That's okay. I understand that because in our childhood the circumstances were intentionally made to be tough and filled more with critics, judgement, and scoldings. That's why we have a lot more critics and scolders here in my generation. 

I think we need to change that. So, I will start here in my little classroom :)

Cultivating Thinking Skills

Back when I was a student, learning was mostly about knowing the right answers or being able to answer test questions correctly according to what had been taught in lectures or text books.  Frankly speaking, that's what made learning difficult, tiresome, and a bit purposeless (yeah, I still haven't figured out the point of me memorizing the names of inventors during the British industrial revolutions other than to ace the history quiz).

As a teacher, I wouldn't feel satisfied if my students only know a bunch of knowledge without being able to make use/apply them in real life. So, the learning indicators shall not be reduced to how much questions they can answer correctly, but it should be on how they use knowledge for higher purpose (understanding, applying, analyzing, creating, and evaluating).  I want them to develop their thinking skills more than just storing knowledge ( the lowest level of thinking according to Bloom's Taxonomy.)

So, this week I'm glad to show you the activities we had done in class that cultivate the class' thinking culture.  

These two (above and bellow) are our thinking display boards.  We can see the student's thinking process through them.

Group mind-mapping is an effective tool to practice their thinking skills as well as collaboration skills

evaluating pictures using "I see, I think, I wonder" also stimulates thinking

creating class questions, though it's challenging, it's a good way of tuning in to the topic of inquiries  

 Let me close this post with a piece of thought I came up with about this century's learning:
"Before, learning used to be about knowing the right answers. Now, it's more likely about breaking down answers by creating dozens of questions, and discovering range of new possibilities."

Learning Environment Philosophy

This week I've been focusing on creating a classroom learning environment that meets the needs of 21st century learners.  So far, I'm fond of it.  I believe that every classroom setting in this world are designed based on the philosophies the school implement.  Back when I was a student the philosophy was really made for everyone to be submissive to authority figures. That explains the monotonous classroom setting which all desks had to be in straight rows facing forward to the teacher (authority figure). There were minimal chance of self explorations or discoveries as everything was set for us.  What we needed to do to succeed was stick to rule and memorized everything by the dot. Almost everyone was too intimidated to invent something because of the ridicule or "punishment" for not sticking to the rule.  Neatness, uniformity and orders were on top of free expression and individual uniqueness.  You can see this in the close similarity in handwriting of my generation who spent all of his/her school years in Indonesia. 

Yeah this is how pretty much the class setting looked like back in my days.  We didn't stand up much, nor move a lot (no wonder I have such bad back posture)

 Yet everything is different now.  Fortunately. 

Educational institutions would have no chance but to value the uniqueness of each of the learners and meet their needs to survive in this era.  A good and effective classroom management is no longer the one where a group of submissive students sit noiselessly, facing forward to the teacher for hours and facing downward on his/her textbooks next.  It is the ones that allows them to move, to explore, to discuss, and discover learning in non threatening environment; the environment where learners feel valued for the their developments.

This is how my classroom ideally looks like. Busy.  Everyone's engaged in the collaborative learning activity.

One of the learning outcomes. Instead of having them learning the basic needs of human from books, they analyzed and built their own connections which made learning meaningful

The teacher's position isn't in the front and center of the class, but among the students to observe and guide them.

See the focus in their faces? Me too :)

Let's make them comfortable with learning :) 

     Well, until next time.  I hope this piece of thought may inspire fellow educators.  Let's be prepared for the future by preparing our young learners the skills they need to have.

A Wondeful Start

The first week of school went off wonderfully.  All my 18 students filled in the days with their colorful personalities.  In order to have an effective year, we did what needs to be done in the first days of school:  setting a class agreement.  It will take few weeks to practice them but I'm sure that all of my students can live by the agreements they made themselves. Some might need few more gentle reminders than the others, but even they can do it.  Well, nevertheless, let this be a good start of grade 3 learning journey! :)   

our class agreement, posted in a place visible by everyone