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How do you intend to stay current in your field?

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How do you intend to stay current in your field?

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Another great question! Currently, I am staying current in my field by taking these classes, but they are mandatory so I guess that doesn't really count . . . But I am signing up for conferences offered by the CTA and LACOE in order to improve my current skills and become a better teacher and union member. And I do intend on revisiting all the wonderful information provided in this course so that I continue improving myself in the classroom. I learned a lot in this course about blogs and networking with other teachers, which I plan on implementing into my current plan for improving myself as a teacher and human in general. Again, I am already a reflective person who I believe embodies the growth mindset, but with that being said I also know that I'm not perfect and never will be, but I will constantly push myself to at least strive for excellence because excellent is who or what I want to be.

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 How can you embody the Innovator’s Mindset?

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 How can you embody the Innovator’s Mindset?

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I can embody this mindset by actively trying to and by being a risk taker in general.

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If you had your way, what would your 21st century classroom (or work environment) look like?

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If you had your way, what would your 21st century classroom (or work environment) look like?

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Oh man, what a question! In an ideal world, all of my students would have access to a laptop and/or internet at home so we could do things like a flipped classroom and I could assign a screencast for homework and the next day my students will all come in prepared from watching the video to do the task at hand. My students would definitely CREATE more! We would have projects on a regular basis where they would have to create something using a computer - screencast, website, youtube channel, etc. This requires me to develop my skills as a teacher though, which takes time, and while I am trying, I still have a long way to go and many ways I need to improve to help my students be better. But in an ideal world, I think my students would learn a ton about history through their classroom creations.

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 How can our organizations support and encourage change?

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 How can our organizations support and encourage change?

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I think my district could support and encourage change by providing incentives for teachers to change. I know and work with a bunch of teachers who do not like change for whatever reason . . . I don't think they think change is bad, I think they may just be tired and worn out and overwhelmed, which I completely understand! Therefore, I think organizations need to find ways to help encourage change without being overwhelming. Figuring out exactly how to do that is difficult though. For example, it would be great if our district paid teachers to take this course because this course is absolutely wonderful, but then there's our school budget . . . Or is would be wonderful if our school sent more teachers to conferences and workshops, but that would require teachers to give up their already busy weekends and sometimes that requires a teacher to go to a conference on a Friday, which requires a substitute teacher and those are hard to come by in my district . . . There's a lot of ways organizations could support this, but the difficulty lies in finding a plan that actually works for everyone.

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How can we bring the Innovator’s Mindset to our school, workplace, and classroom?

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How can we bring the Innovator’s Mindset to our school, workplace, and classroom?

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I believe we've already taken the first step to doing this. Now that I have read about the Innovator's Mindset and worked on improving my technology skills in the classroom, I will continue to work on my tech skills for years to come as I can always improve myself and I will discuss what I've learned with my coworkers and administrators. One day, I'll even bring some of these articles into my classroom and discuss them with my students and together we can work on developing our mindsets to be more like the innovator's mindset. So long as we keep trying and keeping discussing this, we will keep improving.

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It is important to model and teach learning to our students because being a life long learner is better than not, in my opinion, and we may be the only people teaching them this. It devastates me when I talk to parents about how we can work together to help their student be more successful and they don't even care, or at least they act that way. Sometimes, I hear parents say things that are so negative and don't make sense to me whatsoever, but that is what my student is surrounded by on a regular basis. Those moments make me realize that I may be one of the few people in his or her daily life that encourages them to keep trying or to think differently or to just have fun with it. As educators, we don't always know what's going on at home or outside of school and while we would hope that everything is wonderful and the world is perfect, it's not. So it's important to know that we do make a difference based off our actions in the classroom and we can positively impact someone's life.

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I believe I answered that here to the left.

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How can we model and teach learning (as opposed to stuff)? 

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How can we model and teach learning (as opposed to stuff)? 

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At this exact moment in time, I think one of the best ways we can model and teach learning is to become risk takers ourselves and to think out loud to show our students that we are learners also. I love the 8 Characteristics of the Innovator's Mindset article and that article has made me really think about the following: I know I have an Innovator's Mindset because I'm in my mind constantly, but do my students know? I'm very observant in most every situation and I'm constantly reflecting on everything I do, but the only people who know that about me are the people I vocalize those thoughts to and I can guarantee that I do not do this enough with my students. A majority of the time, all they see is the end result and in their minds they think that I know everything and it all came easily to me (or at least this is what some students have said to me before). What I want them to realize though is that I'm a learner too, a life long learner, and that is something that is wonderful and all should aspire to be. Basically, I want them to develop a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset and I can help them do that by showing them what a growth mindset is like. For example, for the other course I am taking this semester, I had to record myself videotaping a lesson. Initially, I told them it would only take one day of recording to get everything I needed. Unfortunately, I kept running into problem after problem when it came to the device I was using, the audio features on one of the devices, the ability to transfer the video from the device to my computer, etc. Anyways, I ended up recording my class 5 different days before I had all the things I needed to complete the assignment. And I was honest with them when they asked why we were recording again and again. I told them that I made a mistake and completed the assignment wrong and had to redo it. Quite a few students were shocked because they assumed that I did everything right and I just admitted that I kept making mistake after mistake. I'm hoping that in that moment I taught them that mistakes are okay and are even necessary in order to learn and instead of beating myself up over it, I learned from my mistake so that I wouldn't make the same mistake again and then I moved on and did what I needed to do for the assignment. I think that may be a good example of modeling how to learn as opposed to teaching just stuff.

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How do these articles get you “thinking” about education and our role as educators? 

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How do these articles get you “thinking” about education and our role as educators? 

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Reading these articles, especially the accounts/stories from other teachers, gets me "thinking" about education and my role as an educator because I am a naturally reflective person and I instantly go into reflection mode whenever I read these types of articles. I instantly ask myself questions such as "Do I agree with what is being said in this article", "Would this benefit my students? If so, how?", and "Am I already doing this in my classroom? If not, what can I do to change that?"'