This course will be valuable to me to improve my teaching craft. First and foremost, I want to understand the best practices to present an online curriculum to young students. I wish to be able to make interactive and engaging lessons online that enable students to master the standards. Finally, the collaboration among my peers, to share ideas, successes and failures, while learning together, is invaluable.

Goals:

I want to become more efficient with my online tools and feel more comfortable with remote teaching. I am especially interested in ways to engage young learners during whole group online lessons and different opportunities to gauge their success with the standards. As my confidence grows, I hope to extend my personal knowledge of how to integrate student choice and collaborative work during online teaching. 

“Lost causes are the only things worth fighting for!” (Winston Churchill) because of the pandemic many students and teachers felt lost as to how to proceed toward achievement in such cold lock down conditions. “Teachers led the revolution.” (Kraft,Simon,Lyon,2020) 

The harsh reality as to the benefits or disadvantages to these almost two years of remote learning are still precarious. The data and the science are still so new, that we may not ascertain conclusions until the future discerns what quality on line elements were sustained toward 21st century long term student achievement. A past generation of learners, remotely loved the way Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street characters, climbed through the screens and touched the souls of future readers and mathematicians, scientists, and environmentalists-----they had such a presence, that they made us feel we were the only ones there. Statisticians, Scientists, Family and Consumer Scientists, Historians, were born out of this eclectic instructional delivery of these clever one to one tutors provided by public broadcasting systems. There is an enduring emphasis in “the importance of scaling one to one tutoring” (Kraft and Falken, 2020) and it is still the Secret Garden value of offerings provided by enthusiastic teachers who use a cache of learning websites/digital tools to forward achievement.

Even in our cliched new normal,the most important reason for stepping it up a notch is to forward student centered achievement, based around diverse learning styles. Students display an array of learning modalities in every academic core area, some still like auditory learning and may glean more from hearing the lesson from merely seeing a diagram online. Other students who are visual spatial concrete learners love seeing the picture of the lego tronic and immediately begin to construct angles and geometry in their minds, without any oral interruptions. Mathematical learners love unobtrusive, digital tools that display maps, charts,outlines, time lines,sequences,and data gatherings. The interpersonal learners love coaching, communicating opinions in essay formats, Book Buddies, projects and interviewing. Moreover the intrapersonal learner achieves mostly by intuitions, autobiographies, poetical analysis, reflections and self study reports. The intellect of a naturalistic learner (Gardner, 2020) loves the outdoor flora and fauna of the world around them and learns best by connections to people, plants and animals and aquatic life. The ever magical, perpetual motion, kinesthetic learner loves dramatic performances, plays, charades to explain curriculum concepts and recess! As teachers, we must value reaching all of them, not just some of them and not just the ones who can afford to order the applications, and not just the ones who appeal most to our own learning styles, because all of their learning styles are normal--we value honoring all of the “Genius” (McLaughlin,2021) in them!

Martha Mullen

Franciscan University

Goals; Starburst

We must use fresh data and science to pull achievement forward, not  just in politically engendered test scores out of Washington D.C. to Race to the Top for early autumn grant money, or Leave No Child With a Behind, but digital tools that reach all the children on all the virtual playgrounds--even the ones healing in the hospital. Patterning of successful digital tools allow diverse learners to shine in portfolios that burst with verbal /written competency, time lined data efficiency, collages of visual spatial mastery, kinesthetic displays/dramas of English/Irish literature/History, intrapersonal displays of cultural identity, interpersonal portfolio results of surveys and polling, and kinesthetic/athletic displays of sportsmanship. This is no mean feat for educators, but necessary to make all children sustain isolation with collaboration. There is a passage of star dust to the persevering and resilient craft of teaching, and all students should be reassured that “the second star to the right,” at twilight is calling to them, one on one, personally to the Neverland of learning. (Barrie,Peter Pan)

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While I am not currently in the 7-12 English classroom, I am an online adjunct instructor at SNHU. I am always looking for ways to stay current with teaching methodology and resources. I continue to maintain my EEL with English endorsement and this course provides some professional development hours to meet my individual professional development plan.

I would love to walk away with some new tools and strategies to bring into my SNHU-107 introduction to online education course. I also am looking forward to reflecting and supporting fellow educators. This is an opportunity to continue with my goal of being a lifelong learner.