B.A. Social Studies
In the process of contemplating beginning an education blog, I worried that I wouldn’t have anything to write about and make time for on a regular basis. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I have so many experiences to share because of the nine years that I have spent in the classroom. Currently, the terms “growth mindset” and “reflection” are buzzwords in education and concepts that I am excited to discuss. They’re not new, but if we understand what they mean and how to apply them to our personal and professional lives, they can be key motivators. With the correct mindset and the willingness to improve through reflection, we all have the opportunity to become better professionals and people. For these reasons, I think that it is appropriate for my first post to reflect on my career and how my mindset has evolved and the impact that my experiences have had on my view in my professional role as an educator. Life! Amazing to think about and reflect on. One of the major struggles that we have is balancing ALL of our roles in life. In an effort to balance those roles it is easy to be happy with rolling along, accepting the status quo. Sometimes, I think we are so busy balancing those rolls that we sometimes forget to work on improving our strategies, whether it is in our professional lives (in my case, as an educator), or personal ones as spouses, parents, friends, etc. My wife (also a teacher) and I have this discussion on a monthly basis. We’re torn between our three major roles: spouse, parent, and teacher. It would just be easier if the both of us were happy with what we have achieved professionally and focused on our personal lives. Or, we could be happy with our personal lives and focus on our professional ones. My point here, is that it is difficult to strike that balance. How do we grow in ALL aspects of our lives? The truth is, through trial and error, focusing on the ones that need the most attention first.
My college experience had a significant impact on my mindset, both professionally and personally. In reflecting on my successes and failures throughout my life, I have found that most of my failures can be attributed to the times when I fell into the idea of a “fixed mindset.” When I left for Kansas State with the dreams fostered from my adolescence of becoming an architect, I was not prepared for the freedom that life away from home offered me on my own account. I struggled and found myself on academic probation following my first semester and rejected from the second year landscape architecture program. I remained enrolled there for a total of two years, trying to figure out what my new life plan was going to be while mostly keeping my habits the same. Reflecting on this, probably the most significant and life changing failure of my life, I have come to realize that it was a result of my mindset. I thought I was good enough, without working hard to become better, to achieve my goals. I had rejected the values that my parents instilled in me most. I had lost what had gotten me to that point, enrolled in one of the best architecture programs in the country. My failure was a result of a fixed mindset. My mindset started to change when I was accepted into College of the Ozarks (C of O), a private college near my hometown located in Southwest Missouri that I didn’t want to attend initially. I still wasn’t sure of my direction in life, but knew that I enjoyed the history courses that I had taken throughout high school and in my first couple years of college. I also enjoyed baseball and the thought of coaching intrigued me. So what better career to choose than as a social studies teacher/coach? That was all that I knew. After my acceptance into C of O, my advisor called me one evening at around 8:00 P.M. while still in Manhattan, Kansas. We hashed out the courses and a general plan for the next semester with a history and secondary education major in mind. I moved back home that summer and started classes at a new college. Still with the same mindset. The difference and changing moment for me was the focus that was placed on education at C of O. The culture at the school is different than that of a public university. In exchange for tuition, students work part-time on campus and walk out debt-free (a story for another day). Class sizes are small, and the professors are hired as teachers, not researchers. They have a passion for teaching their students instead of focusing on outside ventures. Coming in contact with the professors in both the history and education departments was in essence life changing. It showed me how to build relationships professionally while knowing and treating students as people who need to be taught how to grow so that they can take that with them. That is the true life skill that we need to focus on in my opinion. Teaching students that their success is related to the focus, effort, and energy that they put into becoming better at whatever they do at every opportunity. Student apathy is a major issue and topic of concern in our entire education system today, just ask any teacher or professor. If we ingrain the idea that school is about growing every single day, this could change their mindsets. How do we do that? I don’t have the direct answer, but I think that it starts with us, as teachers, modeling it to our students. The entire purpose of this (what has already turned into longer than expected) post and blog in general. I want to show my peers, former students, and students how I change over time and the impact that has on those around us.
I was regarded as a successful teacher immediately and was recognized as an “Outstanding Beginning Teacher” from C of O and the state association of college educators. I thought I was doing a great job. In hindsight, I was doing a decent job, but my students weren’t learning as much in my classes as they probably could have. My teaching methods, were "so Twentieth Century." My students were there, but they weren’t engaged. Not for lack of effort on my part, but for lack of recognition that those old methods weren’t the best in regard to getting my students to learn. Also, I was in the mindset that when I get my first year done, I can keep my methods the same, continuing on with the same old pedagogy that my teachers had used along with their teachers, and those before them. I went stagnant. My first couple of years had to have been a drag to walk into my class for my students. I crammed content down their throats, but not into their minds, by forcing them to listen to me and all that I knew about history and government. In hindsight, I didn’t know that much either. If they struggled on tests, I blamed them for not studying. “Why didn’t they get it? It was in the PowerPoint!” None of it was my fault in my opinion at the time, but I questioned my strategies. About three years into my career, I was confident enough in my content knowledge to really start moving away from the whole PowerPoint lecture style that included supplemental primary source analysis and other small projects just to try to break things up. I switched to discussion based direct instruction time. In hindsight, it wasn’t much different. Because students didn’t understand the content, it turned into a glorified lecture. I think students enjoyed my class, but knew that they would be busy with activities that didn’t have any value to them personally. I struggled getting my students to make the connection between the assignments that they had and the content that I was trying to teach. I was trying to get them think more critically, but I was not giving them the tools to do it. I used primary source worksheets, incorporated as many reading strategies that I could, but students still were not making the connections. This disconnect between purpose and value of class activities created an environment where students were going through the motions, much like I was at this point in my career, focused on their grade and end result, but not learning the material. In essence, I was not achieving my personal goals: making social studies interesting and having students learn the content. I became disenchanted with the system, with education, and with my students. I went to work, but I had no interest in working to change my strategies. I felt like it was a lost cause. Why should I work to change if students weren’t willing to accept anything that I tried to do because they saw it as work and didn’t associate any value with what I was trying so hard to get them to understand? This was my struggle and a very trying time in regard to motivation and purpose. I had just earned my M.A. in history from Missouri State. I wanted out and was searching for opportunities to move to another career. I was too good at what I did to be stuck in the classroom with students who don’t care. I know that I’m not the only one that has thought this way at some point in my career as an educator (or any field for that matter). If I was going to remain in the field of education, I had to find purpose and motivation.
The implementation of 1:1 changed my philosophy as a teacher. I had heard of the Flipped Classroom Model, but had no way of incorporating it previously. I started by bringing the mobile lab to my dual-credit American History students every day that it wasn’t checked out by another class. I flipped the class and went 1:1 in that class essentially. My version of flipping is different and is a story for another post, but it allowed my students to begin understanding the value of the information that I was providing because I could make real-world connections to the material and content through my discussions. This class was my pilot for what was to come. I loved preparing the new material for them and they seemed to “get it.” These were some of the best students in school, but still, they were getting it. I think the biggest thing that it showed was that due to the fact that students saw me working hard to get better, they worked hard to accomplish our goals as a group. They understood my goal for them and it meshed with theirs. This was the turning point in my career. I understood that I had to work to make myself better and if I had that goal, it would rub off on my students. Because I bought into the 1:1 pedagogy and ideology so early, I was able to take on a new role in my building and district. I was one of the first to try to incorporate technology lessons on an almost daily basis (due to resources the year before complete rollout). My peers started asking me questions and I was able to tell them about my experiences both positive and negative in trying to incorporate this new learning environment. I had value outside of the walls of my classroom. Now I was able to help my peers if they asked or needed it. I realized that I had become over the scope of a year or two a leader in my district because I had worked to make a change and grow professionally. "I have renewed passion for my role as an educator and truly enjoy my job [...] I get happiness out of the learning process and motivation from the fact that I am at the front of great things in the new age of student-centered pedagogy [...] Being passionate about learning and growing every day has had an impact on myself and my classroom environment. I have renewed passion for my role as an educator and truly enjoy my job (with the natural more trying days). By working to change to make things better every day for myself, my students, and my peers I have found new motivation and purpose in regard to my professional life. I have focused recently more on reflection and improving myself and have turned a corner. I enjoy coming to work and currently spend more time working to create a successful learning environment than I ever have, and I’m happy to do it. I find that the harder I work to grow, my students see that. I get happiness out of the learning process and motivation from the fact that I am at the front of great things in the new age of student-centered pedagogy and the fact that I have experiences to pass on to others. Being passionate about learning and growing every day has had an impact on myself and my classroom environment.
This blog will document this process through reflection on both past successes and failures as well as current ones, with a particular focus on "new" methods such as the implementation of project based learning and the flipped classroom. I hope that anybody who reads this blog will be able to grow as a result of the experiences that I share.
Kelly Dougherty
10/22/2015 07:25:01 pm
I've had 3 children in your classes and have seen your growth as an educator. I appreciate the excitement and your use of technology in the classroom. I think you will understand more too when your own child is in school and how important it is for the teacher to be excited about what they are teaching so they can excite the student to learn. I've said this for years and to about everyone of my children's teachers, you are not there to teach, you are there to engage our children to learn. If they do not learn, what have you achieved?
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AuthorBrian Anton currently serves the Purdy R-II (Missouri) School District as the 7-12 Principal after working in the PK-12 Assistant Principal and Athletic Director roles for two years. In the 12 years prior to moving into administration, he served as an award-winning high school social studies teacher. Archives
September 2018
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