Standing in the Clouds

The water was crystal clear and completely still. I was standing in awe as I saw my future wife standing at the edge of the fountain and I knew that it was a moment that would be imprinted on my mind for the rest of my life. In black and white it is a captivating site; in color it made the world stand still. What made it such a powerful moment was difficult to define or to explain to others. At that exact moment, the rest of the world was animated and spinning...it was going about the business of life. For me, the moment was frozen in time and every second was an eternity full of possibilities. 

I have often thought back to that moment as I have grown older. It seems to me now that one of the most powerful aspects of that frozen moment was the fact that I seemed to be seeing the same sight with all of the various sides of myself and I was drinking in the moment from multiple perspectives. 

At the conclusion of this course I am beginning to feel as if the same kind of awareness is beginning to dawn in my mind. For years I have wanted to be in the classroom with kids, so I see the lessons from these masters classes through the eyes of a classroom teacher. This is a view that I am comfortable with and I can see how a GAME plan can be a valuable asset to a teacher in the classroom. The fact that this kind of planning requires the teacher to set goals, take action, monitor progress, and evaluate the effectiveness of what they have done (Laureate, 2009) makes it a valuable way to approach the planning of lessons. The teacher is directly involved in preplanning and metacognition both of which can be powerful learning experiences for a teacher when considering what is best for students. 

I can also see the value of teaching students to create their own GAME plans. The whole process makes them actively think about the way that they are learning. While based on a small study, Janice A. Wiersema and Barbara L. Licklider (2007) found that this had a major impact on both the way that higher education students and instructors looked at education. I find that this is true for me as well. I think that one of the biggest changes in my understanding of problem based learning is that by having students actively engage in creating a GAME plan, they are more likely to engage in this kind of deep learning experience. 

In some ways though, it was difficult to look at the GAME plan as a way to engage with students, since I didn't have any students to engage with until four days ago and the lessons I created were for later in the year. Many of my classmates found this frustrating, but I think that it was a more powerful lesson for me without the hustle and bustle of having students in the classroom everyday. I was able to focus on each of the roles I fill and think about how the process showed up in each one of them. This was a type of PBL and allowed me to really look at what individual needs I had as a learner that might be different from those of my classmates or colleagues. Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer (2009) point out that each of our students may need something drastically different from the others when focusing on PBL lessons.

  

And that takes us to the most massive change in my understanding of this process. This change has been on a totally different level though. I find that for the first time since entering this profession, I am seeing a totally different reflection of myself. I have never been interested in administration or professional development until this year. This class has made me reconsider my position. I started out with a plan for engaging students in the environmental impacts of humans through problem based learning, but over time I realized that the real GAME plan I was engaging in had very little to do with the lessons I was creating. The real GAME plan focused on my understandings as an instructor and involved me really taking to heart all three levels of ISTE standards. The administrative, teacher, and student standards have similarities and should all be embraced by teachers who are interested in the true power of technology in the classroom because it takes an understanding of all of these to make real change in a school or district possible. Sometimes looking at a situation through one role means that you lose the power of the overall image. By forcing myself to look at what I was doing from all three roles and through each set of standards made me really reconsider my role within my building and district.

I now see myself as being a true teacher leader within my building. A week ago, on the first professional development day of the school year I gave this presentation on 21st century skills to the staff as a way to introduce the professional learning community that will be driving staff development this year. At the conclusion of the presentation I had many teachers ask how they could use Prezi in their classroom. I then gave a short demo on Wallwisher and was pleased to find out that some of the people in attendance are using the tool to communicate with their students. I have been asked to provide professional development on technology to our fine art department in mid-September, engage with a group focused on mentorship within the building, weigh in on websites for teachers at our district, work with the professional development office for induction, and set up blogging as a common tool for members of my English department. I understand better now that a GAME plan is not just a way to plan out lessons, it is a way to really engage at multiple levels in my profession. Would I have volunteered to present to the staff before engaging in this class? Probably. Would I have been eager to do so? Probably not. But now, I see that it is my responsibility to pass on the information that I think will help make classrooms in my school more engaging for both students and teachers. Really defining my goal as a professional educator throughout this course has made me want to engage and drive change in my building. 

Reflections allow us to see ourselves in a world that might be different than the one that we think we occupy. We can see many things the way they are, but sometimes we can see more than that. Sometimes we can see the possibilities in the reflections. That is what I saw when I really started looking at myself towards the end of this class; the possibility that I could affect change on a more massive scale than simply helping my 160 students. For each teacher I reached the possibility of them affecting their students exponentially increases my potential impact. That potential is what makes reflection so powerful. When we take the time to really think about what we are seeing through all the various parts of ourselves, we can find a deeper meaning in the vision before us. I realize that this is really the same process I experienced earlier in my life. A GAME plan is all about seeing the possibilities that are out there and determining which of them you are going to shoot for. You see, those possibilities are what made me stop in my tracks at that abandoned prison in Tasmania. When I looked at that vision of my future wife standing on the edge of the fountain, I saw my soulmate and the possibility of a life shared with an angel. As I looked at her and her reflection I realized that she was standing on the stone just like me, but her reflection was standing in the clouds and yet they were the same. It was like seeing the soul and the body at the same time. In that moment I found the same truth that I found during this class: If we can allow ourselves to truly see the possibilities and are committed to taking action, we can make them realities...and after a while you stop needing to plan out every step because seeing the possibilities and making them real becomes the way you live your life.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach.  (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.

Wiersema, J., & Licklider, B. (2007). Developing responsible learners: The power of intentional mental processing. The journal of scholarship of teaching and learning, 7(1), 16-33. Retrieved 22 August 2010, from ERIC.