andReCOACH

And now we return. And I come back to classes. Face to face. With a complex timetable but we teachers are used to accommodating.

On my previous post I shared an article from Edutopia describing what a 21st Century classroom should look like. It said that the discipline being taught should be unclear as long as learners were engaged in the task and learning.

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BECAUSE OF THIS TUMBLR’s NAME, IT’s MORE THAN EVIDENT THAT THE SUBJECT I FACILITATE IS ENGLISH DIDACTICS.

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Had you come into the classroom today, this is what you would’ve seen:

We start playing and reflecting about how to juggle our classroom 🎈 effectively.

Both trying to do the best they can and better each time, fully commited to promote deep, meaningful learning.

But one of them in particular, activated MY life skills. For I need to let her see she is moving on the right direction and pushed by the noblest of the motivations. I also want to make her aware that because of that movement she is deconstructing fixed mindsets and adopting more flexible ones and that is an overwhelming shift to go through.

It is for that reason that I beg her to love perfection in the imperfection and to observe how her being a teacher unfolds in a pair of beautiful and unique wings...

During the feedback session we had on today’s Didactics class an intense discussion took place when we were reflecting over one of my student-teachers’ classroom observation visits. She had planned an activity to round up the language focus of her lesson when the 🛎 rang. She didn’t panic. She told the students they would do it for... 🏠 💼🏋🏽‍♀️

At this point the student started reflecting on why she had taken that decision and whether it made a meaningful closure for her lesson. Although I tried to lead the discussion towards closures, it took another direction: homework.

Our hidden (and not so hidden) principles came out in the form of these comments:

“Teachers do not set homework nowadays”.

“Students don’t care about homework”

“When I was a student I would do homework because I knew I had to”

“The homework I was given were irrelevant to me”

“I give them homework and tell them they’ll be graded next class!!

So I remained thinking 🤔...

One thing is the closure, another one is homework and may be the latter deserves some deeper thinking to clarify the former. Therefore I searched from some help in the 🌎 and found something that is aligned with my principles:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/debunking-homework-myths-ben-johnson

There I go again to where this didactic journey takes me. I let myself go. Open to the teachings and the 💕 awaiting at the other end of the six-hour trip from the capital. In the morning I’ll be mentoring one of my student teachers. I hope my feedback to her can cover the aspects below:

In spite of being under pressure due to deadlines and midterms and coping with life hardships, this pre-service teacher wants her students to be happy... So she thought how to engage them and... Here they are, enjoying a meaningful lesson, planning itineraries for a real visit to the capital city and selecting the best one. Some of them have never been to Montevideo. Good for both, Cooperating Teacher and Student Teacher teaming up for learners. 👏👏👏👏