Learning Grace in Education

Ever had the reminder to give yourself grace? This has never been more relevant as I have embarked on the journey of my first MAET course. CEP 810 - Teaching for Understanding with Technology has reminded me that I love learning but also about balance and how to find it.

During this course, I have also been teaching full time and there have been many times that I have felt under-prepared, having not had time to complete marking in the time frame that I told my students or with a revision of a lesson that I wanted to make, or maybe even just not finishing updating that new bulletin board that I wanted with student work.

Image 1 - My progress board to help me organize all the things I need to do.

A conversation with my AP Chemistry students served as a good reminder for me. In that particular lesson I had not finished grading work and students asked if it was finished. When presented with my explanation that I had had to finish course readings and not had the time to grade they gave me a pass after a little joking around. "Don't worry Miss Elicia, we know your learning is important too" said one student, I was a little floored. "How come they can give me more grace than I give myself?" I thought.

Later when doing research for my lesson plan revisions I was researching Competency-based learning and the new BC curriculum. We have been struggling with how to assess these competencies in science and I found that in fact, many others were as well. Several articles looking at the implementation reminded me that shifts in education can be not only challenging but downright rough. Again, grace is needed as I write and revise units

and assessments for my classes, I won't always get it "right" the first time around, in fact maybe that is better.

But things come in three, don't they... going back to my week 1 essay, where I wrote about experts being "accomplished novices" rather than experts as discussed by Bransford et al. in their book How People Learn: Brain, mind, experience and school, was my final reminder. Remembering that we are learners as well and that we need the time and space to work through our learning, practice applying, and time to reiterate and revise to become more proficient; helped me think about my growth during the course. Each reading and video needed to be worked into the context of my teaching and that takes time and support, even if that support is your 17-year-old students cutting you the slack you needed. So I am giving myself grace this time around, I took the extra days extended to us by the instructor so that I could go play Rugby before revising this essay. Hopefully, that helped me capture some of my learning more clearly because it definitely didn't help me keep this post to the 200-300 words it was supposed to be.

References:

Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. National Academy Press.