I have learned a lot in my years of post-secondary about the importance of community, and for this week's blog post what a better way to transition from Thanksgiving weekend than talking about gathering. More specifically, gathering information, gathering resources, and gathering together. Gather InformationIf we are awake to the wide circle of reality around us, then its intelligence can join to ours in ways that reach far beyond what we can imagine from our point-wise awareness" - Arthur Zajonc The world provides us the opportunity to gather information on a daily basis, we simply need to act like sponges. Mindfulness and awareness are two key components to allowing ourselves to soak up this information. As teachers, it can be easy for us to slip into the leader mentality instead of the co-learner mindset. If we allow them to teach us, we can learn a lot from students and gather information about what they have learned, how they learn, and why they know what they know. Parker Palmer talks about letting the subject be the centre of our classroom in his powerful novel, The Courage to Teach. It takes the microphone away from the teacher and "the subject itself corrects us, resisting our false framings with the strength of its own identity, refusing to be reduced to our self-certain ways of naming its otherness" (Palmer, 2017, p. 108). We must be open and available to students and subjects in order to gather and soak up information. Be the sponge in a world full of hydrophobics. Gather ResourcesHere is where I get to tell all educators about an amazing platform that allows teachers to gather and share resources they can use across grade levels and curriculum subjects. This collaborative environment is called Cube for Teachers, and it allows you to save resources found on the web to folders of your choice. Cube is great for planning units, saving ideas for the future, and organizing resources into one place. There are many wonderful educators you can follow on Cube to see what they are sharing that may inspire future lessons of your own. Besides this community, be sure that you are continuing to gather resources to keep both yourself and your students inspired and excited to learn in a world that continues to change and grow. Gather Together
Check out my fellow Lakehead 9x9x25 bloggers:
Helen Dewaard - http://extending.hjdewaard.ca/category/9x9x25-blogging-challenge/ Steven Secord - http://teachingbythebay.ca
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AuthorJust a university student blogging about her reflections, assignments, resources, and learning tidbits. Archives
October 2018
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