- Feb 2018
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marginalsyllab.us marginalsyllab.us
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In other words, when you wobble, it doesn’t mean that you’re failing. Rather, it signals that you are pursuing worthwhile poses that require learning, reflection, and professional growth.
I love the positive spin that this places on "wobbling". Just as we encourage our students to learn from their mistakes... it is important for educators to follow their own advice. The emphasis should be on professional growth when individuals wobble, and I think that this quote really hits it home...
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In so doing, they experience “wob-ble” as a guaranteed and necessary part of the growth process. While wob-ble may initially cause frustration, it also signals a commitment to increased discipline and deepened practice. Persisting through wobble produces a sat-isfying sense of being “in the flow,” of focusing oneself so intently on the activity of the moment that time seems to disappear.
As I mentioned earlier, I love the yoga metaphor. Specifically, from own experience, the concept of growth process is integral for educators. Recognizing one's limitations but always striving for self-improvement is important to maximize the impact for students. While I do not necessarily place complete credence "in the flow" of the metaphor, but I think that for educators when one has the self-awareness of one's inherent limitations, an individual becomes so much more effective within the classroom.
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After years in the profession, shouldn’t teachers eventually figure out how to get it right? Maybe not. Personally speaking, we know that though our uncertainties and apprehensions differ from those we experienced in our early years of teaching, we have them all the same. What’s changed is that we don’t view them as liabilities, but as challenges that can further our pro-fessional growth.
Perhaps I have been preoccupied myself into viewing education through through the same biased context. Especially, with the apt yoga metaphor (which I will mention in a subsequent annotation), I forget that while policymakers and educators preach about the changing K12 demography-we forget that experienced educators evolve as well...? Not only do students change-but educators grow as well... We need to remember that since educators have such an important role...
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- Jan 2018
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marginalsyllab.us marginalsyllab.us
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Plato somewhere speaks of the slave as one who in his actions does not express his own ideas, but those of some other man. It is our social problem now, even more urgent than in the time of Plato, that method, purpose, understanding, shall exist in the consciousness of the one who does the work, that his activity shall have meaning to himself.
Perhaps with my background within Higher Education Administration-I see this type of discussion occur quite frequently with the discussion of the value of a liberal arts education. This is interesting to me to see that close to one hundred years later, this debate of the extrinsic vs instrinsic value of a liberal arts education still rages on within educational policy making...
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Otherwise, changes in the school institution and tradition will be looked at as the arbitrary inventions of particular teachers; at the worst transitory fads, and at the best merely improvements in certain details—and this is the plane upon which it is too customary to consider school changes.
I think this quote serves as counterpoint to the Connected Learning and Research Agenda quote on Page 14 (Connected learning recognizes a tension... ... competition for scarce opportunities.) The tension that the Agenda describes is an incomplete implementation of connected learning that some may consider as a fad in the eyes of Dewey. Again, to make sure that the Agenda policy makers can implement the alternative connected learning pathways, policymakers must take on Dewey's broader social view that we must undertake the learning paradigms that enhance student learning...
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Yet the range of the outlook needs to be enlarged. What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.
I think there is alot to unpack with this quote... A lot of what Dewey was discussing was the transition in the industrial revolution with students from home learning to external community based learning. The reminds of me the mirra quote-describing the fact that teachers are "conditioned to avoid messiness..." For me, I do not think it is that the teacher is conditioned to avoid messiness, I think rather society (community) is conditioning educational processes so it can better determined what did it wants for all of its children. (Outcomes such as graduation rates or test scores...) I think if we really want to implement connected learning to individualistic outcomes-we need to be prepared to implement it across the board...
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