Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose in my classroom

One advantage of world language instruction is that, in theory, it's fairly clear what kind of progress instructors and students hope to see - a greater proficiency in the use of a language and a better understanding of the culture of the people who use that language.

Of course, it's rarely that easy, and it's tempting at times to turn the world language classroom into 24/7 grammar/vocabulary/quiz/repeat. I know I find myself going in that direction at times, especially since as a student I typically learned well using more "traditional" methods.

I think that implementing the ideas of Dan Pink's TED talk would lead to greater individualization of coursework, and would require setting out some specific goals as well as trying to really understand what the students are looking for in this class. Some students may want to read a book in French, others want to be able to speak it well enough during their travels, others may want to immerse themselves and go to school abroad, or maybe just pronounce it well so they can sing songs in that language (this was sometimes the case when I taught at IU in particular).

By at least knowing their individual interests, they are already understanding their purpose, and perhaps even moving toward autonomy since they may have to do things individually to get to their goal.

In a more concrete way, I am wondering if it might be interesting for students to set some sort of personal goal at the beginning of the year and then chart their progress along the way. It's not very easy to do this during class time, but it would be feasible with a blog, Tumblr, or some other online platform. This would allow them to work with purpose, but also focus individually on something of interest to them, and would show them when they had mastered a topic.

Technology Integration Matrix Reflection

To make this easier to read, I am going to separate it into each of the key sections to rate myself.

• Active: I rate myself here as adaption. I am trying to encourage and facilitate the use of a wider range of technologies, but I don't do it as regularly as I could, and it's still fairly teacher-driven. I could move toward infusion by the end of the next grading period by planning more in advance what the goals of our projects are, so that I can better give guidance and yet also let students make more choices.
• Collaborative: Probably also adaptation. My classes increasingly use GoogleDrive for projects to allow for collaboration, but not in a particularly innovative way. I can move toward infusion in part because of our school's adoption of a BYOD program. As I plan an exchange program with a French high school next year, we could also move toward infusion.
• Constructive: At this point I'd say adoption. I'm open to possibilities but don't always make connections as strongly as I'd like to. Some of this may be partially because I'm still fairly new to high school teaching, but I could move toward adaptation by including tools more seamlessly, and letting students explore them more.
• Authentic: Maybe adaptation - as a world language teacher, technology is very useful to expose students to things that are authentic parts of cultures from all over the world. However, I still don't include much choice. I could move toward infusion by allowing students more self-directed choices for their use of technology.
• Goal-directed: I think I'm fairly low on the chart here - entry or adoption. I haven't yet found ways for students to monitor their progress using technology. I can make progress here by seeing what kinds of programs or methods students could use to track their own progress.

Moving mindset

For this week's reflection, I am choosing to address zero policies. I know that in my district we are being encouraged to stop assigning zeros for homework assignments that were not completed, so this is an area where I imagine that I will be changing my policies to address this "moving mindset."

I can see how changing my zero policies will be helpful to students who grasp the material quickly and don't want to be bothered with what is, frankly, occasionally busy work (or at least is busy work for someone who already understands what they're doing).

It is hard to predict how this kind of policy might change the grades of students who both struggle and generally choose not to do homework assignments.

I find myself examining my own and other teacher reactions to the idea of reformulating zero policies (i.e. stopping giving zeros). Generally, we tend to have a negative gut reaction, and I've been very curious as to why.

When I reflect upon this, I think that as a teacher, we tend to feel fairly powerless with respect to our administration, our community, what will happen to our paychecks, retirement, the legislation of our profession and public opinion of us. I almost wonder if taking away the ability to give that big fat zero in the grade book feels like one of our few powers left is being taken away.

Week 1 Reflection

Looking at the attached rubric, I would say that I'm somewhere on the evolving-effective spectrum. I have a tendency to avoid the actual question being addressed in forums if there's something else I'd rather talk about, so I don't always stay focused.

In particular, I haven't had a lot to say when it came to commenting on other people's posts. It was easier on the first section because more people had responded, whereas the second section didn't have as much information yet.