Monday 13 February 2012

My Education Passport

For my Method's class we were asked to create something to depict our philosophy of education. The following is what I created and wrote:

Trying to find a way to describe my philosophy of education in a succinct, yet creatively ‘me’ way was a challenging endeavor. My mind sprang to ideas of creating a painting of some kind because since coming to Brock University my passion for art and creativity has been re-ignited. But I was unsure what to paint, so I started thinking of creating an interactive multimedia representation, as I am part of the Educational Technology Leadership cohort. However, I still felt at a loss for how to encapsulate my personal teaching philosophy. I then began thinking about how much I love traveling, and how it has influenced my life and values. I began sharing these ideas with my friend Adam Childs (Twitter: @adamajchilds )who is a Junior-Intermediate student at Brock in my Cohort who shares a similar thirst for travel. As we talked more about this I came up with the idea of a passport to represent our journey. Then Adam came up with the idea of making actual stamps to reflect our personal development. Together we enthusiastically collaborated in creating our own passports representing our respective journeys through education, and experiences that have influenced our teaching philosophies.



Cooperative learning is one of my principle beliefs in learning, which is why I was so thrilled to work on this project with Adam. Together we came up with ideas on how to create the passport, which individually we would not have been capable of. By working cooperatively in designing the layout with individual responsibilities, we were able to embody cooperative learning whilst creatively creating our passports. This tangible object was created through both artistic and multimedia design (Adobe Photoshop) – both the original strategies I hoped to build upon. Working together made this such an enjoyable experience, and we were able to build off each other’s ideas and enthusiasm. I strongly believe that if you want to ‘talk the talk – you have to walk the walk’. What I mean is if you say you are all for cooperative learning, then you have to want to do it yourself, or else there is no way you will be able to sell it to the students as a learning approach. Students will see right through your transparent motives if there are not authentic. I am honestly over the moon with how the final product turned out. It is far better than I could have imagined, and I absolutely love the feeling of having achieved something, and gone above and beyond your expectations. I owe a lot of this to Adam and to the process of cooperation, as I find when you work cooperatively and succeed, being able to celebrate that accomplishment along someone else is that much more satisfying.




I found it very inspiring creating this passport because it prompted me to take a step back and reflect on what I have learned since arriving at Brock five months ago, and what events in my life have inspired me to be who I am today. One of the strongest realizations I have had is how much of a kinesthetic and visual learner I am. I love getting involved, hands-on, creative environments. This is why I was so involved in sports and the arts as a child. I was speaking to my Mom about this the other day, and she told me that when I was a child I would study by walking around the room; that I was always moving. This reminded me of Sir Ken Robinson’s speech about creativity; and I have set a personal goal to teach with this in mind. I want to teach in a classroom that thrives on creativity, cooperation, and active engagement. I want to create a safe and inspiring learning environment, built around the principles of Tribes and energizers. I want my students to learn through authentic problem solving tasks, which I organize through the input of students. I want my classroom to be a twenty-first century inclusive classroom where students want to learn because they enjoy it – not because they have to. This is what I strive to create, who I strive to be, and the journey I strive to travel on – with my passport in hand filling up with more and more stamps as I continue along my educational journey.

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