March 31st Tech Ed Class Review:

      Today’s Tech Ed class was different from previous classes. We attended a professional development Online EdCamp session that I found to be extremely helpful. Last term in EDCI 303 Graham McDonough had a class that was organized in a similar way: breakout rooms that are to talk about a specific topic. I loved this idea because in less than an hour I was able to learn from a variety of different education professionals on 4 beneficial topics: how to survive your first practicum, classroom assessment strategies, indigenization of the curriculum and inquiry-based learning. 

How to Survive your First Practicum: 

      I was able to listen to Sanda McAulay, a veterian teacher and curriculum guide for SD54 in smithers, BC, talk about a variety of different ways to make the most of our first practicums. Some of her suggestions were:

•  Before the first day of starting your practice, choose something that you think you need to work on to make you a better teacher, and then focus on that thing specifically. 
• Relationships!!! Build relationships with the students right away let them know something about you so they can learn to trust you; however, there is a fine line where students still have to see you as authority 
• (Be very organized) When building lesson plans make sure they have a specific goal
• Classroom management can be connected to your lesson plan don’t just blame for not following along

Classroom Assessment Strategies: 

     The second breakout room I joined was lead by Shannon Schike, another veterained educator, she talked about:

• How to move away from a letter grading system
• Proficiency scale: 10 extending, 8 applying, 7 developing, 5 emerging 

Indigenization of the Curriculum

      The last breakout room that I stayed in for a little while was led by a few different educators that all had valuable advice and opinions: 

• They discussed the importance of speaking to your class about the first people’s principles and how teachers should integrate them into their lessons. 
• They highlighted that when making lesson plans don’t just add in one at the start, wait to create your lesson. Then run through it in your head and then see what aspect of the lesson connects to one of the first people’s principles of learning. Don’t just throw it in as a “token”. 
• They asked us to think about how accurate and from whose point of view have you learned history from, think about how the history we know might not actually be that accurate 

Sadly, I was only in the Inquiry-Based learning breakout room for the last couple minutes.