Tomorrow I will have finished my second MOOC about teaching from Coursera. It was not an easy class, there was a great deal of information in a short period of time and I wish it was a half a year class, not 6 weeks. That being said, I learned a sizable amount, and thought I might elaborate here for future reflection and thought. Here’s what I learned.
One of the key concepts I learned about is that students success isn’t correlated with socio-economic standing (directly related at least). Student success comes by way of trust and understanding that teachers believe that they will be a success in life.
The “Spiral of Inquiry” is an ongoing process of looking at your assumptions about your class as to what could be improved, trying to improve it, and then coming back full circle and seeing if what you’re doing is having an impact. It almost reminds me of the joke about the programmer who after looking at the directions for washing their hair never exits the shower (wash, rinse, repeat is an infinite loop).
There are two types of mindsets that people can have, a “fixed mindset” and a “growth mindset”. A growth mindset suggests that you can improve at anything so long as you practice. A fixed mindset is the belief that everyone has an innate static intelligence level and this is reflected in academics. Basically a growth mindset looks to challenge students to achieve more whereas a fixed mindset is an excuse for not taking risks in learning so as to not get one’s ego bruised.
Students find things engaging that relate to them. Culture and habit are big influencers on how much students will be engaged in class. This actually had some relevance on my teaching strategies. Instead of just thinking about the materials in my textbooks, I’d think about their application to Korean culture. If a chapter was about making cookies, I’d also look up instructions on how to make Kimchi Jjigae.
I took this courses out of order. It’s the fifth course in Coursera’s “Foundations of Teaching for Learning” specialization. I haven’t taken any of the other courses for this track, and if they were offered in another year I’d probably pick them up. Currently I have to study for the TOPIK and between that, work, and Rice University’s “Interactive Programming in Python” course, I’m a busy guy.
Now, while this course was interesting, there are some problems I have with it. Mostly, this course made me realize how isolated I feel in my current teaching place. A core theme of this course was about working together with other teachers to better tailor the learning for the students. I am unable to do this, teachers are busy trying to maintain relationships with parents, grade an ever consuming wave of quizzes, worksheets and papers, that they have no time to meet with me. Even if they did, the language barrier and rigid structure of the academy (both curriculum and hierarchy) isn’t terribly conducive to experimenting with the spiral of inquiry method.
Even though this class made me feel a little disheartened about my current workplace, I was glad to have taken it. This is the second class I’ve completed in the MOOC world and I hope to complete many more.
Musings and Learnings of a 30 something 