Personlized Learning

Foote (2013) writes about empowering ourselves to find free opportunities for learning online for through webinars, livestreams, twitter chats, and podcasts. She provides a list of her favorites. I love finding links that lead me to helpful and free resources through newsfeeds and articles. I try to keep track and file them away because I know they'll be useful someday. I just recently learned about LiveBinders - a web-based application for organizing resources. I'll have to get started on that soon.

Foote's article and the purposes of this blog speak to the same thing - personalized learning. I never thought I'd be too busy to reflect and personalize learning but I've found myself in that very situation this semester. Raising four boys, taking classes, and working full time has depleted me of all physical and mental energy. Everything in my life is good. I am not complaining. There's just a lot going on. And if I don't intentionally take the time to reflect, it won't happen.

In an article in Edutopia, Nicholas Provenzano, a high school English teacher, shared four ways that he uses to reflect: obtain feedback from students, take notes, blog, and record himself. I would add feedback from peers as well. And I am growing to like the idea of reflection prompts. They seemed so cheesy and contrived to me at first, but they can actually be helpful in adopting a fresh perspective on something stale. There are a lot of them out there and I like to mix up the ones specifically geared toward teachers (were students on task?) with personal ones (what's one thing that made me really happy today?).

A few years back, I read Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking. I told my husband I felt so validated. An extrovert, he asked me if there was something he could read to feel validated as a psychopath - we can sometimes be on the opposite ends of the spectrum from each other. And although I don't agree with everything that Cain said, her book helped me realize that I need to embrace who I am and learn to operate with my strengths and weaknesses. One excerpt that I enjoyed:

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

For my growth, as well as for my sanity, I need to engage in more quiet reflection.

References

Cain, S. (2012) Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking. New York: Crown.

Foote, C. (2013). From professional development to personalized learning. LMC, 31(4), 34-35.

Provenzano, N. (2014, September 25). The reflective teacher: Taking a long look. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/reflective-teacher-taking-long-look-nicholas-provenzano