Final Reflections

This course pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me think more deeply and broadly about things I hadn’t really considered before; and for that I am very grateful. Looking back over my past blog posts, I find it difficult to summarize succinctly what seems like years of experiences crammed into a few short months. A few favorite moments that come to mind are my times in the garden, especially my “sit-spot”, and listening to Jo Boaler and Frank McCourt. I loved the calmness I discovered in the garden, and the creativity it allowed. Some of the experiences outside, like drawing and writing creatively, brought me much joy and helped me realize the importance of giving myself balance in the things I do. It’s now something I hope to expose my own students to one day.

A lot of what I’ve gotten from this class is the experience of joy that open-mindedness can bring, and how learning experiences can be anywhere – not just in textbooks. Frank McCourt told us that in teaching “you’ll always have resistance,” but this course has helped me see this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. I’ve learned the importance of practicing what I hope to preach, by being open to new learning experiences, taking on challenges and embracing mistakes. The latter has always been difficult for me, and I think this course has helped me get a little more comfortable with my own limitations. Honestly, it’s still a struggle but I am beginning to accept that I don’t have to do or know everything; I just have to try. I really appreciated learning about math anxiety from the Jo Boaler talk; that it can affect our ability to think through mathematical problems, and that speed has no bearing on ability. I loved the idea that that "every time a student makes a mistake, they grow a synapse;” that making mistakes is actually good for our learning process. The idea of fixed and growth mindsets also helped me learn a lot about myself and why I react the way I do in certain situations. It also made me realize how important it is to allow my students to make their own personal connections to the subject and have their own reasons for being successful and what success may look like for each of them.

I think the course helped me appreciate what inquiry is and the value of it in my future teaching. I enjoyed all the classes and felt I took away something valuable from each of them. The only suggestion I have for possible “improvement” would be to use Canvas at least in addition to the blogging. I found it a little frustrating to have to scroll through blog posts to find what I had to blog about for an entrance or exit slip as sometimes some of the posts did not appear on the class blog or were not in order. I would often have to go into the back end of the blogger site and look through each post to find what I had to do which, given the number of courses we had to do this term each with their own sizeable amount of readings and assignments, was frustratingly time-consuming. At times, I had set aside time to do a blog post but could not access the reading which was frustrating. Also, having each of the students have author access to each other’s blogs was quite cumbersome and resulted in us having to scroll through over 60 blog sites every time we had to find our own and make a new post. I even posted some of my blogs on my peers’ sites by mistakes at times or found they had done the same. Conversely, our other courses on Canvas made finding assignment details, lesson topics, and submitting assignments very quick and straight forward. While I did enjoy the writing and reflection of the blogs, I think this could be done on Canvas without losing any of the benefit.

Reflection on Inquiry Project

 

I have really enjoyed this inquiry process so  far, and I feel that I've learned a lot. There are a few things that really struck me during the research process.  I loved the quote from Erin Kline, a teacher at Fraser Academy, whose presentation I attended: "Kids with dyslexia, see the forest and the trees." These words really affected me because it's how I see my sons. They see the world in such a beautifully different way that really is a gift; the struggles they face with the simplest of tasks creates amazing creativity and invention. However, it also perfectly describes the difficulty in seeing a clear message when being overwhelmed by so much extraneous information in the way of inefficient cognitive processing.

A huge takeaway for me was that every teacher and specialist I spoke to or heard from, reiterated the message that adaptions for dyslexia were "just good teaching" and would benefit all students. This is frustrating, because it's not always being done, but also very hopeful because it needn't be reliant on funding, time or vast amounts of training for teachers already in the field.

When my son was first diagnosed with dyslexia (about 16 years ago), I did a lot of research on what dyslexia was, its manifestations, causes, and how it could be "overcome."  Honestly, this process was not very thorough as I had four young children to care for, and I was quite distracted with worry and concern about my son's future. When I was preparing this project I realized how little (if any) research I have done about dyslexia since those initial panicked days or weeks; and how all of my time and effort has been in advocating for my son in his schooling. This surprised me, and then made me realize how much of a disconnect there is between researching and understanding dyslexia and helping students with dyslexia succeed in school.

My interview with the VSB literacy enhancement specialist was extremely valuable for me. She gave me several  names of educators who have done active work to help students with dyslexia and was able to pass on insights from several different schools. I was only able to look into these resources superficially, and so I'm excited to have more time to learn about them further. What was really interesting to find out was that although there is a strong advocacy and support system in place for literacy support, there is no equivalent in mathematics. I believe there is an great need for such a program and hope to delve deeper into what such a program could look like and how it could be implemented and executed. The specialist told me that she thought a math support program may have been attempted in one of the school districts (not VSB) but she was unclear on the details. This is definitely something I want to find out more about.

I loved the research studies that I read, and felt I only touched the surface in this area. There's so much information to be learned from the scientific research and also the practical "on the ground" strategies that have been tried and tested for decades. Although, I want to dive into the research and learn more about current teaching and scaffolding strategies, I think the area that may be most exciting is the sweet spot in between these two and, again, how to implement a program like the "Reading Recovery" program for literacy but for math into schools.

Here is a link to my Inquiry Project presentation.