Changes in my Practice

Week 32

Changes in my Practice

Create a blog post where you first reflect on your personal 32 week learning journey through the whole postgraduate programme and provide a critical discussion of two key changes in your own research informed practice in relation to the Practising Teacher Criteria (PTC) in e-learning. Then share your next dream regarding your future professional development.

As I come to the end of my Mind Lab course I am able to reflect on my journey and what a journey it has been.  In some ways, it feels like it has flown by and in other ways it seem to have taken forever to reach the point where the light is shining brightly at the end of the tunnel.  It has been challenging to say the least- as I have tried to balance the busy life of teaching with family life and Mind Lab created a whole new dimension into my world.  One of the best things about the journey for me has been the people I have met and the connections I have made.  I even managed to reconnect with a couple of people I trained with many years ago.  It was great to have a sense of belonging and connectedness.  The face to face part of the course was fabulous and I enjoyed being part of our Christchurch community of Mindlabbers.  In the later part of the course, I felt that I wasn’t travelling the road by myself because we had the Google+ community where we could connect with others also.  I found the assignments thought provoking and challenging and mostly valuable.  It was nice to know I can still write an essay after all these years.  Probably the hardest part of all was the finding the time to actually sit down and complete these assignments.

Being reflective is something that goes with the job.  Even if we are not conscious of being reflective I think we constantly are reflective to some extent.  Teaching is something that is never far from the front of mind for most of us and I find myself always looking back and wondering how it could have been better.  What Mind Lab taught me was to look forward into my practice more.  The Practicing Teacher Criteria (Ministry of Education, nd) requires us to be reflective, however it can be difficult to reflect individually on each criteria as they cross over and are interconnected.

I feel that in my Mind Lab journey, Criteria 1 (Establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of all ākonga.) and Criteria 4  (Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of professional personal practice) saw the biggest changes in my practice.

Criteria 1 is about establishing and maintaining effective professional relationships.  I believe I have demonstrated that I have established positive relationship with my learners and colleagues through working collaboratively with them.  Google docs has been a great way to plan together both with my teaching team but also with other professionals if required. This is a great way to work because we share ideas and resources so that everyone benefits.  Through this course I have challenged my thinking around why we do what we do (collaboration) and tools and strategies to help support it.  I have become more aware of how connected we need to be as teachers with each other and I have developed some new relationships with other professionals from different schools throughout my Mind Lab experience.  I believe that every professional relationship has something to offer.

How have I demonstrated a commitment to ongoing professional learning?  I had to stop and think about how passionate I am about continuing my professional learning journey now that Mind Lab has come to an end.  I have decided that my learning journey is exactly that- a journey in which I have come to another cross roads.  Fortunately I have had my eyes opened to many more opportunities in education and I want to continue with my journey to keep learning and introducing new ideas into my classroom.   Exactly how that is going to look for me remains to be seen but I know it will involve more learning in some way, shape of form.   Mind Lab has enabled me to think more critically about what I am doing and why and to take more risks with technology.  It has also really got me thinking about the challenge we as educators face with the 21^st century skills.  I am committed to continuing my professional leaning journey and Mind Lab has had a significant part to play in this fact.

This 32-week journey has given me the confidence and mindset to try new things out in the classroom and to be more reflective in so doing. I really wanted to increase my knowledge and gain experience of digital technology and the part it plays in today’s education system.  I found that my journey through Mind Lab has gone a long way in enabling me to begin to do so. 

Where to next for me?  I have just begun an online course around PBL so that is something I will continue to learn about in the next wee while.  I am looking forward to getting more of a handle on how PBL for juniors and putting it into practice.  From there –who knows? I am open to suggestions!  Thanks Mind Lab- it has been a great ride.