Author: Freddie Salado

I believe I was able to connect the Dots

I have to say that after I took the Future Professoriate class last semester, I felt that I experienced another whole new level of how my future as professor is going to be. With this class I realized that we don’t have to stick to the same method to accomplish something.  We all know that the semester was all about blogging, but what the blogs were about is the most important part that allowed me to see that we as professors have to keep an open mind at every moment if we want to succeed.

Contemporary Pedagogy class not only helped me understand that there is more to be done but also I was able to see everybody point of view and how they see each other in the future as professors. I love flowcharts when it comes to explain something, therefore I developed one to present how was my way of thinking related to teaching before I took this two classes. It shows a simple process where I though that we should simply teach and whether the student is learning or not, I don’t have to change my method because is their fault that they are not having fun and learning. THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG!

Untitled Diagram-2

This way of thinking is not only wrong, is the most selfish way of thinking that unfortunately exist in todays world. I remembered when I took Calculus III during my undergrad in Puerto Rico with Lev Steinberg, a Russian professor. During that semester there were two sections with approximately 30 students each. Long story short, at the end of the semester there was only me in the morning section and 4 student the afternoon section. I got the hardest 86 % (B) that I had to work in my life, but since I noticed that I was the only student in my section he will be nice enough to give me the A. I couldn’t be more wrong. After a long conversation trying to convince him that he should change his teaching method and of course my grade, he told me that it was not his fault that the students in my section were dumb and lazy and his teaching method is the right one because that’s why he got his tenure. This is a two way street where if we work together, in the same way the professor teach the student what is on his/her side of the street, the student can also teach them what’s on their side.

I had several experience that made me understand that there things to be changed, but lets start talking about how I “connected the dots” during this semester. Once again I will put it the simplest way using the following diagram:Capture

Throughout the semester I learned that there is a more innovative way to teach in the 21st century that some of us are willing to put into practice. I believe that this new way of teaching takes into consideration four main areas, although I’m sure that most of you will think differently. The learning stage of the students has to be one that considers all the possibilities to get the attention of each one of them by applying methods such as connected learning and problem based learning that will allow them to learn mindfulness. The professors need tools to become the one in the 21st century. Finding their authentic teaching self will allow them to establish their best teaching philosophy and their learner centered syllabus that will help them in the teaching process. The tools will help the professors define if their teaching approach in order to be critical/inclusive to challenge the students by creating a dynamic environment. At last, since everything was implemented, the relation student/professor has to be evaluated to verify how the student adapts to the new system by using his imagination and critical thinking. Also the student will evaluate the professor to verify if the learning method was productive, how feasible were their tools and how good was the pedagogy applied

I know is a little bit broad, but I believe the dots of the Contemporary Pedagogy course were connected in the simplest form by using what I have learned. Of course, there is a lot more to include, but I will let everyone fill in the possible blanks depending on their way of thinking.

The future of teaching

We can easily come up with different ways to improve higher education since nowadays it has numerous flaws in the way it operates. Starting with the fact that most students can’t pay for higher education, therefore it would be almost impossible for them to get a job that will bring them the money needed to get more education. At some point higher education most be free or at least that student can paid for it in other ways, such as by working for the same university or even working for the state that is offering free higher education.

Taking aside the obvious fact that we should be allow to have free or cheaper education, one of the main things that should be improve is related to the Professors that are chosen to “impart wisdom and knowledge” to the students.  The Professors way of teaching should not be as the one where they want every student to do the “critical thinking” but based in their own believes and ideas. In the case of Virginia Tech, I came here in January 2015, therefore I don’t have that much to say about it, but so far it has been a great experience where Professors allow us to express our way of thinking and put into practice.

I recently read a document published by the American Public Media, where a Physics Professor at Harvard University was interviewed (http://americanradioworks. publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/lectures/rethinking-teaching.html). The purpose was to see how Professor teaches nowadays in the University and he explained that he is doing the usual but he does not understand why student are failing or they don’t seem to enjoy the class. He explained that he’s way of teaching changed when one day he notice that after explaining something with a lot of details, only 50% of the class understood what he meant and they answered right. Thats when he decided to allow students to talk to each other and share their point of view. He discovered that even though he has years of experience and knows the topic not perfectly but a lot better than all the students, he saw that after the group activity was done more than 50% of the class understood what he was explaining. He asked himself how is it possible that with all my experience they didn’t understand but when a student explain to each other they understand perfectly or at least had the notion of whats going? thats when he realized that since he already knows the topic, is hard for him to understand what kind of difficulties can a student have, therefore between students they can clarify their own problems in a more quicker way.

With this example, is more than clear that the connection in terms of understanding between student and professor should be more clear. Professor needs to understand that  their way of teaching should be updated because at some point student doesn’t need them due to the fact that we are becoming connected learners.

Learning to be a Learner

After reading chapter two: There is no Teaching Without Learning of Paulo Freire’s book: Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, it came to my mind what kind of knowledge should a professor acquire, so the cause of teaching will have a learning effect .

Most of you are currently struggling as teaching assistance because there is no other option to obtain that so well received assistantship. Since the first day, this has been a topic of discussion in every class, where students share their anecdotes to get feedback from the others to feel that they are on the right track and of course, to feel that most of them are in the same situation. But let me tell you something, I believe there is no right solution to these “issues” on how you should teach. You can’t decide whether you should only be “cool”, “funny” or even if you should talk about your daily anecdotes to make the students feel comfortable in your class.

Everybody has a different perspective of how should a college professor should be. Im sure most of you have seen the following meme that shows the different perspectives that people have about what it means to be a college professor. (http://metapreneurship.net/college-professors-meme/). The picture is self explanatory, but as you can see even the actual professor thinks he does something that he is not really doing.  Should we act like Mr. Burns as the villain and wreck the students lives or should we help students open their minds and find what they really want in their life as Robin William did with Matt Damon?

CollegeProfessorsMeme

Learning to be a Learner might be the hardest thing to accomplish since we are trying to learn what we should learn, to find our Authentic Teaching Self. Finding your Authentic Teaching Self can be a difficult task, however is not an impossible one to achieve. One of the things that I have noticed from the professors is how they behave to get the attention of the students during a lecture. According to a paper published by Diane M. Bunce et al, How Long Can Students Pay Attention in Class? A Study of Student Attention Decline Using Clickers, the authors mentioned that if a student does not have the enough motivation during a lecture, they will pay attention for an average of 10-20 min (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ed100409p). This means that if you made the wrong choice on how to approach the students, you will see the effect of the attention decline after 10 min of starting the lecture. So, we ask ourselves again what could be the best practice to apply in college in order to not transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge, as mentioned by Paulo Freire?

As connected learner that we are the first thing that came to my mind was: “let me google best practice in college” to find the answer; the first thing that I found was: A Brief Summary of the Best Practices in College Teaching (http://teaching.uncc.edu/learning-resources/articles-books/best-practice/ins tructional-methods/best-practices-summary). Just by reading the title I told myself: “I finally got the answer that I needed”, but all of you know that is not that simple. Even though the document was divided into 12 specific and well explained areas that the author believe you should concentrate to follow the best practices in college, it will not make you find your Authentic Teaching Self.

There is a lot to cover in this topic, however the question will always remain open no matter whom tries to summarize best practices to become the “ideal college professor”. I believe the professor has two options, either he/she adjust to each individual student or treat every student as a whole. The problem with the first one is that due to the constant changing, the professor will not have a own identity and the second one will have an impact on the students since not every student have the same knowledge. You can’t speak only in English in a class with different student from around the world, you have to talk to them individually in their own language in order for them to learn from the one that was once a learner.

Incentive Directly Proportional to Motivation

Im sure all of you experienced the opportunity of receiving a reward from your parents when you cleaned your room or even when you helped with several task in your house. Of course your parents knew that you will always perform better when there is something in return. I remember when I was 12 years old, my family lived in a farm with a lot of grass to cut, therefore my father used to trick me by telling me that every time I clean the backyard he will reward me with the “extravagant amount” of $20. At that time, yes, for me was a lot of money but when I got older I noticed that the amount of money wasn’t equal to the amount of job that I was asked to do. That’s when I started to work without any motivation and started leaving areas unattended. Due to my lack of motivation, my dad decided to increase the reward and right away I started being the hard worker kid that I used to be.

The weird part is that it wasn’t always the same. It seems that the incentive didn’t work as well when he asked me to help him with his job. Why a 12 years old boy would like to spend his Sundays in a office working with task that require the use of his brain? Of course most of the kids believe that the only moment they should use it is at school. Yes! I know that most of you are saying right now: “That wasn’t me, I always wanted to read books and study math 24/7”, but not me, I just wanted to play Mario Bros. in my Nintendo and nothing else.

This experience that I had bring us to what Dan Pink was referring to in his animated video: The Surprising Truth About What Motivate US. How come I didn’t feel motivated by the amount of money or the other gifts that I was going to get just by using my brain? well, Dan Pink explained it very well in his animated video. He said that people work harder to get a job done when it requires mechanical skills or tasks that has an specific result no matter the way you do it. If you are going to be rewarded for $50 for each time you clean your parents house, it doesn’t matter if one day you start with the second floor and then the first floor or if you decided to start with the bedroom instead of the kitchen the result will always be same, which is a clean house. However,  if your parents decided to increase those incentives and to receive them you were asked to rearrange the furniture in the living room that has almost no space available, to accommodate another couch. Usually, a 12 year boy/girl would say: “Dad we are good like this, forget about the couch”, because we don’t want to waste time in a task that we don’t know if we are going to be able to accomplish it or not. Tell them to paint a house and they will do it because they know the beginning and the end of that task, but asking them to do something that has no clear end might be too risky and they will decide not to do it or give a poor performance. In other words, performance in mechanical task is directly proportional to the incentive, but is not the same relationship for the task using our brain.

The myth of giving to receive proves that no matter the incentive, the person will react different in each situation. Is not a matter of money or a matter of getting something that we need, Dan Pink couldn’t it say it better, is a matter of the challenges we pursue that will help us make a contribution while we master different abilities.

I don’t know about any of you but for me is kind of weird that after the first blog post Im not even thinking about the grade that Im going to get by creating a blog post every week. Ever since I saw that there is a “Hot Topic” section every week, my mind tells me that I need to find a way to challenge myself by using my knowledge and creativity at my best if I want to get that incentive. It seems to me that the truth about what motivate us relies on the idea of finding something that will challenge us in our own environment without believing that we are risking something if we don’t accomplish it.

 

MINDFULNESS as solution in the learning process

A couple of months ago I decided to read a book written by the author Dr. Robert Siegel: The Mindfulness Solution with the purpose of finding a way to align all my thoughts and to gain the power of deciding whether I want to think in something or not and if its going to affect me. This book shows several ways or solutions on how a person can stop living in their routine life and start taking a moment to stop on the road and smell that flower that was never notice before. Dr. Siegel believes that nobody is alone in this life due to the difficulties that each one of us encounter everyday or as he might say, difficulties that we bring to ourselves. He sees Mindfulness as a solution or antidote that will help us reduce our suffering by living each experience in our lives. Although he does not concentrate his ideas and solutions in the learning process of a student, it can be apply as stated in the book Mindful learning by Ellen Langer.

Ellen Langer express in this book that it does not matter if we change the curriculum of the school, standard of the testing or even increasing the budget for education will make enough difference in the learning process unless students are given the opportunity to learn more mindfully. Each student should be allowed to leave the classroom environment and pursue their challenges by means of different approaches such as Connected Learning.

The author not only believes that learning more mindfully is a solution, but also that there are several myths that prevent people to achieve mindful learning. Before learning something, everybody has to go through the “basics” so that way they can continue learning. By achieving mindfulness, you will realize that this statement is completely wrong, due to the fact that you can not use the same approach on every student. Explaining math the same way to everything student will force them to think that this is the only way to do it and they will perform the calculation mindlessly. Why do you think students does not have the imagination or maybe the ability to go beyond what has been taught to them? When they taught you how to sum numbers you never though that multiplying them was even possible. Albert Einstein once said that if you judge a fish on it ability to climb a tree, the fish will live his life thinking that is a stupid thing to do, in other words teaching students the “basics” will force them to think that nothing else is possible besides what they were taught. Students need to start thinking What else can we do with this numbers? instead of asking themselves is it possible to do something else with this numbers?. Telling themselves “what else” instead of “is it possible”, will help them open their minds and believe that there is always a way; it will help them learn more mindfully.

Although the author presented seven myths, the last one that caught my attention was that people tend to think that intelligence is knowing what’s out there. Knowing what is already there will not allow you to open your mind and reflect on everything that you see because you will believe that nothing else can be done since is already “out there”. The way I see it is that Intelligence is having the ability to see everything in different perspectives and not in the way it is presented. Using the same example of the numbers, a student can know the entire multiplication table and knowing that does not mean that there is intelligence in that student, it means that he manage to memorize those results. Learning more mindfully will let the student deduct that there is more than multiplying the numbers and for me that is the real meaning of intelligence: knowing what is not out there.

Taking into account the two myth presented before, mindfulness will not only allow you to be aware of your daily experiences but also accept them. A student that is allowed to learn mindfully will achieve great things in life, will accept that there is more and that there is no basic or standard way that by knowing it will determine their intelligence.

Updating our educational experience by Connected Learning

During the first week of the Contemporary Pedagogy class we had the opportunity of watching three documentaries related to Connected Learning. Before I start talking about my point of view, I need to confess that this was the first time in my live that I heard such term. Im a PhD student from the the Civil Engineering department without any idea of what Connected Learning could be or with what purpose was created. After a couple of random searches I found the following definition of Connected Learning (http://connectedlearning.tv/frequently-asked-questions#pastandpresent):

Connected learning is a model of learning and social change that is not defined by a specific technology, tool, or technique. Instead, connected learning is defined by a commitment to social equity and progressive learning, and seeks to mold the uptake of new technologies and techniques based on these commitments.

This definition seems to broad to me. From what I understood Connected Learning is the way of learning from everything in every possible way without thinking that learning can be achieved in this unique way that can’t be changed. From the three videos I decided to talk about the case of the ninth-grader Charles Raben, What Does Connected Learning Look Like? During the interview, this young boy said something that caught my attention. He believes that learning can happen anywhere. There is so much truth in those words since in fact you can learn from your daily experiences, from the people that you meet everyday or even from what you overheard from other peoples conversation while having a coffee.

Charles decided by himself to leave the usual daily learning experience at school by helping a newsstand operator that was going to lose his license in the state of New York. He had the opportunity of learning how to acquire signatures for a petition and during that process he was able to feel the sensation of achieving something in his life. He acquired a whole new experience which may not be related to his math or science class but he had the chance to see that in every person that we meet there is a new story to learn that hasn’t been written in a book.

From my point of view, us as future professoriate, we need to consider every possible approach and never stick to one idea. Is not too late for current professors to direct their effort into this emerging way of bringing a new learning experience to their students, because at the end the students will pass on what they learned from those experiences and they will put it into practice to achieve more thing in life.