{"id":433,"date":"2018-10-26T11:33:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T18:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/?p=433"},"modified":"2018-10-26T17:27:17","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T00:27:17","slug":"if-it-aint-broke-break-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/if-it-aint-broke-break-it\/","title":{"rendered":"If It Ain’t Broke, Break It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faux Punk Fatigue<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’ve been teaching trades now for over nine years.\u00a0 I’ve got some pretty tried and true systems set up.<\/p>\n

I keep all my worksheets, notes, video links, powerpoints, and lesson plans in Evernote (I’d be dead if Evernote just closed up shop and ran).\u00a0 My lesson plans are meticulous.\u00a0 I have the text references, notes, worksheets, etc. all planned out for each day of the unit.\u00a0 I’m careful not to be too rigid in my use of them, but I can walk into my class on any given day and know exactly what is going to happen.\u00a0 I know many teachers would be envious of my position.\u00a0 I was pretty proud of myself too.<\/p>\n

Then I started my Masters of Arts in Learning and Technology, and it all went to hell.<\/p>\n

It would be ridiculous for me to try to summarize in one blog post all that I have been learning.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that this course has challenged the way I look at and practice education.\u00a0 I have had my mind blown open by the works of Jesse Stommel<\/a>, Rajiv Jhangiani<\/a>, Sean Michael Morris<\/a>, Clint Lalonde<\/a> and Audrey Watters<\/a> to mention a few.<\/p>\n

I am starting to see what a subversive activity teaching can be.<\/p>\n

I started looking at my practice through the eyes of my students and not just learning outcomes.\u00a0 I began to find myself resonating more and more with the punk sensibilities that a lot of these thinkers exude.\u00a0 Now I’m not saying I’m getting tattoos, piercings, and listening to social distortion (though I must admit that there are times that call for a little social distortion).\u00a0 What I am saying is that the current model of trades education needs to change.<\/p>\n

It isn’t working anymore.<\/p>\n

I’m not so sure that it ever did.<\/p>\n

With a rebel yell<\/h2>\n
\"\"

The Lucky Group<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

In this blog post, I want to share my little act of rebellion against the system (A system of my creation).\u00a0 The time that I got up the courage to walk into my office open my lesson plan for the day and hit delete.<\/p>\n

It was one of the best things I’ve ever done.<\/p>\n

I teach an electrical foundation class.\u00a0 The students range in age from 17-50 with the majority falling between 18-21.\u00a0 When the students first come to the course most of them have never even held a tool.\u00a0 In the 24 weeks that I get to instruct them, it is my job to teach them the basic theories about electricity as well as give them hands-on\u00a0skills that they can use when they get hired by an electrical contractor.<\/p>\n

Typically the schedule is; we have an in-class\u00a0portion for two months, shop time for two months, and then an additional two months of class time.\u00a0 It is a great program, and the students leave knowing a lot more than when they came, many of them go on to successful careers in the trades.<\/p>\n

Then I went ahead and broke it.<\/h2>\n

I started thinking about what the point of the class was for the students.\u00a0 Did I want them to memorize facts and then prove to me they knew these facts through tests?\u00a0 Did I want them to learn how to use tools and then have me evaluate them on their use?<\/p>\n

It was all working, but something didn’t sit right.<\/p>\n

When out working for a contractor will my students be expected to regurgitate info they learned in class, or would they be required to work hard, work in a team, and know how to ask the right questions when they didn’t know what to do?<\/p>\n

Was I preparing them for a life in the trades?<\/p>\n

So here is what I’ve done:<\/p>\n

Half the day is spent learning the theory.\u00a0 I used to teach theory in a traditional lecture method.\u00a0 I’ve adopted more of a flipped learning method lately, which I will discuss in another post.\u00a0 I have the classroom split into pods of 4, and there is a lot of time for group interaction.<\/p>\n

The other half of the day is spent in the shop.\u00a0 At the beginning of the course, I am very hands on.\u00a0 Taking the time to show methods and discussing how things should be done.\u00a0 As the course progresses and their skills begin to increase, I step back and start encouraging peer mentoring.<\/p>\n

How do I assess all this?<\/h2>\n

That’s one of the things I am most proud of right now.<\/p>\n

I don’t.<\/p>\n

I get the students to assess themselves and each other.<\/p>\n

Every couple of weeks I have a group “Quiz” day.\u00a0 They have to perform a shop task, a lab exercise and a group theory quiz.\u00a0 At the end of the session, I release to the class a peer\/ self-assessment form that I built in google forms. In the form, they are to assess themselves as well as the others in their team.<\/p>\n

The first time I did this I was worried.\u00a0 I worried that they would grade themselves too high and not take the other assessments seriously.\u00a0 The results blew me away.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The google form I built<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

If anything the self-assessments came in lower than how I would have graded them.\u00a0 They also took the grading of their peers extremely seriously and gave great feedback.\u00a0 It proved to me what I had been hoping for, that students, when given a chance, will exceed your expectations.<\/p>\n

There is so much value in learning how to assess.\u00a0 When you are looking at things critically (in the proper sense of the word), then you start noticing where you can improve in your work.\u00a0 As I watch my students now, in both the classroom and the shop, I see them interacting and engaging with each other.\u00a0 Whereas before they would be talking about the latest game or their favourite Migos song, now they are going to each other for help, assessing each other, sharing tips.\u00a0 They are learning that mistakes aren’t a failure, they are just learning opportunities.<\/p>\n

Every good post ends with a strong conclusion and here’s mine.<\/h2>\n
\"\"

Group Quiz Time<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

The more I read about, practice, write about, and experience different methods of teaching, the more I am coming to embrace critical pedagogy.<\/p>\n

Paulo Freire said,<\/p>\n

If the structure does not permit dialogue, the structure must be changed<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My previous methods, in my opinion, did not permit dialogue. They weren’t encouraging the right types of interaction and engagement.<\/p>\n

So I broke them.<\/p>\n

Have I found the perfect system?\u00a0 Heck no!\u00a0 There were, and are many hiccups.\u00a0 But like my students, I am learning that the hiccups aren’t failures but learning moments.<\/p>\n

As a tradesperson, it is in my nature to fix things, but right now I am just having too much fun breaking stuff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faux Punk Fatigue I’ve been teaching trades now for over nine years.\u00a0 I’ve got some pretty tried and true systems set up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[83,73,84,21,82],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critical-pedagogy","tag-assessment","tag-critical-pedagogy","tag-foundation","tag-oer","tag-paulo-freire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":472,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0054\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}