Tutoring with Taylor: Tyranny of Time

For the past year I have been working as a tutor for a private tutoring company in the Niagara Region.

My students range from grades 3 through to grade 12 (and up to fourth year University/College). Each student is tutored individually between 1-3 hours a week. Most of my students are ESL and have been in Canada for no more than 10 years (most from South Korea). 'Tutoring with Taylor' consists of a blend of English/ESL, literacy skills, conversational skill building, academic skill building, and a meta-cognitive approach to understanding and guiding their own academic paths. Currently I have 18 students a week each with a unique set of units designed for the summer. 

I have been looking forward to publishing a series of blog posts dedicated to my adventures with tutoring these students and this academic material. I have been enlightened and exposed to a new adventure of education and learning that has positively influenced my teaching philosophy.

One of my students has been writing a novel as part of our tutoring experience. We have been frequently discussing the concept of time and how there never seems to be enough of it. We began to pull that idea apart to discover what exactly the characters in his book (and us in reflection) are experiencing when they "do not have enough time". We are calling it our 'tyranny of time dilemma'. His character is struggling with not having enough time in each day to be as lazy as she wants, and as productive as she wants. I can certainly relate to that.

I am a big believer in effective and mindful time management. I have have worked time management skill building into my tutoring lessons with each student. I have found that the quality of homework has increased because students are actively planning time to complete homework AND to edit the work before submission.

I try as best I can to 'practice what I preach' and set time aside for writing (anything other than my thesis) and for being creative (taking photos or blogging). I am hoping to use blogging & photography as a component of my reflective teaching practice while continuing on this tutoring journey.

Here is a photo of a storm rolling across Brock University two days ago as I sat in the library and began to write this post on May 27, 2015. Posted on my twitter page.

Mind Over Mood: A Personal Literacy Story

Mind Over Mood: Using The Text 

As part of an education graduate course at Brock University, I was asked to engage in an interview with a class member to bring forth an understanding of my own literacy story. A series of open-ended questions were asked that allowed me to engage with recent literacy based events.

I found that I gravitated towards reflecting and expressing my thoughts about the cognitive behavioral therapy that I have been engaging with for the past six years to cope with a generalized anxiety disorder. I was able to articulate how effective and valuable the engagement with the text Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think was to my personal and teaching philosophies. The text became the scaffolding that structured my meetings with my doctor and allowed me to continue learning, exploring, and reflecting when I was on my own. This, being the goal of CBT, is to enable mind over mood as a self-reflexive practice in all aspects of your life.

Five Pillars of Happiness 

One of the exercises that resonated with me deeply from this book is conceptualizing, understanding, and creating pillars of daily happiness. The idea is to create five things that you feel are the most important to achieve or do in order for you to have a positive, healthy, happy day. There are many examples of 'ideal pillars/ scaffolded pillars' that may help you to create your own. 

Scaffolded Pillars:

1. Eating properly/ drinking enough water

2. Getting proper sleep 

3. Connecting with loved ones

4. Connecting spiritually 

5.Getting your heart rate up 

Monica's Five Pillars of Happiness:

1. Getting proper sleep 

2. Eating well/ drinking water 

3. Engaging with someone I love 

4. Engaging with something I love 

5. Engaging spiritually / self reflection 

I challenged my EDUC 1F95 Seminars to consider and create their own pillars of happiness. This is the brainstorming that both of my classes completed as part of 'Happiness in Education' week. 

What are your daily pillars of happiness? 

New Year! New Research!

It is official! 

I have officially decided to pursue a MEd thesis instead of a major research paper. As a full time graduate student I have the privilege to complete research of my choice as part of my program exit requirements. I had the opportunity to decide during my first semester the topic and scope of my research interests by taking various master’s courses and speaking with members of the department. The master’s courses that I took in the first semester are as follows; (1) Teaching, learning, & development of education, (2) Introduction to Research Methodologies, (3) Innovative Practices in Curriculum/Assessment (K-16), & (4) Developmental and Educational Issues in Children and Adolescents. This semester I am taking (1) Qualitative research methodology, & (2) Theories of Literacy.

I had begun this program this past September knowing that the driving force behind the rationale for taking my Masters now was that I was passionately curious about the power and potential that dramatic playbuilding can have on Qualitative research literature available to researchers. I wanted to seize this opportunity to be academically encouraged and challenged to expand and explore areas of educational research that need some attention and TLC to bring it into 21^st century relevance for our students.

In order to frame the posts that will likely be occurring over the next two years about my research I would like to include a condensed version of my official research thesis plan!

Research Proposal: Monica Taylor

About the Study: Research Interests/Rationale

In collaboration with a local school board, a qualitative research study will be conducted to explore the elements of environmental literacy that currently exist in school communities. The study itself will be between 8-10 sessions in length, whereby secondary students workshop, rehearse, and create a play about the environment and students attitudes towards it (e.g., how do they feel about global warming, sustainability, eco-responsibility), as well as how the environment is perceived or talked about in schooled environments.  Once ready, this play will be presented to junior division students (e.g., grades 4-6) in order to gain access to a more comprehensive scan of students’ ideals around environmental issues.

Participating in DART 3F93 Social Issues Theatre for Community Engagement with Dr. Joe Norris allowed me to see the potential level of engagement and meaning-making of playbuilding and applied theatre techniques for participants and audiences alike. Using playbuilding as qualitative research method will provide student participants creative freedom to explore environmental literacy from a individualized, arts-based perspective.

With a boom in inquiry-based projects in the 21^st century, collective responsibilities to engage in a more environmentally active society are necessary.  This is particularly the case with notions of sustainability and environmental consciousness. My undergraduate degree in dramatic arts and geography lends itself to a curiosity about the effectiveness of literacy initiatives that can enhance students understanding themselves as active 21^st century agents of change for the environment. Additionally, discussions regarding literacy and effective literacy engagement initiatives have led me to a desire to research with students to actively explore current school environmental literacy initiatives.

Proposed Research Methodology

            The study methodology that will be used for this study is Playbuilding (Norris, 2009; Tarlington & Michaels, 1995) with case illustrations/vignettes. I chose this qualitative approach because: a) I have a background in theatre and studied this discipline in my undergraduate degrees (e.g., DART 3F93 Social Issues for Community Engagement); b) playbuilding allows me to work with two diverse groups of students and collect data on both; and c) an arts-based approach invites all voices and perspectives to be included. 

As mentioned above, I will work with secondary students in the Niagara region to develop and produce a 45-minute play that will be performed to a younger audience (i.e., junior grades). Data will be collected on both sets of study participants to get a wider understanding of environmental literacy in schooled settings. Data sources will include: a) interviews, b) surveys, c) focus groups, d) video of the devising and the play itself, e) photography, f) student blogs, and g) student work samples. Data will then be coded and categorized into relevant themes. Vignettes will be selected—those that highlight these significant thematic patterns in order to triangulate the data.

If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments about the proposal I would be overjoyed to hear from you! 

Elementary Student Perspective on Internet Safety

Internet Safety 64 

- Written by J, Gr 5

First, I have a couple limitations for internet safety; NO sending any private information via social networking, NO using technology without permission, NO misusing others' files/work/info, NO use of technology not under supervision, NO sleeping less than 1/2 feet away from technology, NO accepting an user agreements/etc. without reading it through.

Second, I have a few and tips suggestions for everyone reading this: Note that children now have more access to technology and that there should be limits to how much kids use technology. I also think that every one should know the rules of internet safety. Schools should teach this. Kids are using technology in schools and in the classroom. Teacher's should teach students how to use technology well. 

I know a lot about internet safety because I saw a presentation at school by Paul Davis. He taught us about the dangers of the internet as a kid and as an adult. The link to his website is below. It is important for teachers and for students to read this website or see his presentation on internet safety.

http://socialnetworkingsafety.net/

3 Profiles: Secondary School Student's Opinion on 21st Century Learning

As part of tutoring with the SSEN Learning Centre this month, we are focusing on understanding ourselves as active 21st Century Learners. 

We first worked on brainstorming and defining what we think 21st Century Learning looks like in the classroom today using mind mapping.

We then wrote individual mini-blogs to reflect on how the current education system in Ontario is providing 21st Century Learning opportunities and what else can be done to bridge an existing gap.

To begin, the students were each shown this tweet by Lester Laminack to spark their active minds for engaging with 21st century learning concepts. His website http://www.lesterlaminack.com/ was also used for reference.

 MINI BLOG PROFILES

(All information/images shared with permission)

MINI BLOG ONE: ERIC, GRADE 10, DSBN 

 Students from a century ago and students from 21st century are very different. Invention of electronics, such as smartphones and personal computers is the biggest difference between them. Students' learning style and the time period is different. We cannot have a class without collaboration and interactions between students and teachers, and we should remember that we are learning for our future. 

Teachers usually restrict students from using cellphones in a class, but technology can be a tool for students and teachers to make them learn better. Almost every students including grade 1 to grade 12 knows what smartphone is. They use smartphones to communicate with their friends, or playing games a lot, and these reasons make teachers to hate smartphones. However, if teachers can teach students using the smartphones, students will be motivated to learn, because they already are very familiar with the learning tool called smartphones. Electronic resources, such as ebooks or online learning videos actually help students to learn and remember them. 

Teachers in Korea are stuck in the old learning style, which forces students to memorize, not to learn, and actually have a beneficial effect to students for the future.  Students in a class must follow instructions that teachers give, and cannot have a discussion within the class. This method usually makes students to forget what they learned after a year or two because they didn't really understand what teachers were saying. What students did were just copying what teachers said. This is very inefficient way to get students to learn. There must be discussions and debate in the class, and students must share their own opinions and interact with their classmates and also the teacher. Collaboration is also important, but the old method prevents students to learn collaboration and confidence to speak up, and actually "learn". This is why we should have think about the future for the students that really can help them to "learn" something from the education system.

MINI BLOG TWO: BRIAN, GRADE 9, DSBN

 

I often think about technologies settled in our school sometimes needs to be changed or improved. And this comes to my mind very often when I look around my school. When I am looking at slow computer, I think about how should they improve this computer's speed. It's not that I am uncomfortable with these technologies we have in my school, instead, of course if my school is going to expand the level of technologies in learning, they could start putting some more thinking into it. For instance, they could put more classwork into technologies and do some classwork with computers and taking notes with computers to prevent sore arms and hands by writing a stack of notes and make it easier to access their work and so on. They should have more serious rules about electronics and doing other things on computers instead of finishing their classwork. A lot of things should be changing soon and specifically technologies in schools.

EDUC 1F95 - Seminar 12 - The Pedagogy of Possession

I have been very excited to reach week 12 (in my Graduate 5P30 - Teaching, Learning, & Development) and read Norris’ article Arendt, Freire, and the Pedagogy of Possession as it links so closely with the TA work I am doing for Norris’ current EDUC 1F95 course. 

In 1F95, we are guiding first and second year students through the Introduction and Foundations of Educational History, Philosophy, and Sociology. For some of these students, it will be the first time they are exposed to applying critical thinking skills to micro and macro lenses of education from both a student and educator’s point of view. This paper weaves together an understanding of consumption and possession and how it relates to education, schooling, policy-making, and hidden curriculum. The big concept this week for 1F95 is exploring hegemony and how it exists in schools. Hegemony, in a very basic description is domination by consent. I am hoping by sharing this paper, written by their professor, with the students in 1F95 that with guidance, they will make connections between hegemony, consumption in schools and the pedagogy of possession.
 
Linking this article to the theme of development – we can see that the influence of consumerism has a major potential effect on the self-image and self-worth a student places on his or herself. The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy is “the notion that the assumptions and expectations that teachers and other service workers hold about students can influence students’ lives” (Wotherspoon, 2013, p. 43).  The multiple influences that students receive at school help to shape their self-identity and meaning making processes. Agents of consumerism (marketing departments and companies) are constructing generation X & Y consumers as part of the socialization process in schools. Students are exposed to hundreds of consumer messages a day at school, these products and concepts embedded in the education environment make escaping the consumer reality near impossible. It is by illuminating the intent behind marketing and consumer culture to students that they can begin to create their own idea of how to construct their identity. In no way can we erase the inevitable influence consumerism has on students but making students aware and critical of it is one way to develop students as agents of change.
 
This model of preparing students to think critically about the choices and purchases they make does not work well for companies who bank on youth blindly consuming. There is a ‘significant incompatibility between commercial values and the promotion of critical thinking” (Norris, 2005, p.261). I wonder about the implications for the economy and society as a whole if in the next 50 years schools have encouraged students to develop exceptional critical thinking skills about the consumer culture around them. It seems like a good idea to have youth be aware of the obvious and hidden influences consumer culture has on identify and life-long meaning making. What if this has a profound negative impact on the way consumers exist in relation to the economy? It would seem as if the whole system would have to shift to accompany this new standard of critical thinking. Perhaps, however, that at that point the people running this consumer culture will be from Generation X & Y and will have a fantastic response to altering the consumer culture.
 
Norris, T. (2005). Re-thinking re-producing consumption: Hannah Arendt, Paulo Freire and the pedagogy of possession. Philosophical Studies in Education, 36, 77 - 90.

Wotherspoon, T. (2013). The Sociology of Education in Canada 4rd Ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-542660-1
 

EDUC 1F95 - Seminar 11 - CBC News Article

Oilsands companies could get a say in new Alberta curriculum
Click title for link to article

CBC NEWS- Posted: Mar 12, 2014 6:59 PM MT Last Updated: Mar 12, 2014 8:26 PM MT

The Alberta government plans to include oil and gas companies in consultations on the new school curriculum.

School boards were asked to come up with groups to provide input on what children should learn.

Education Minister Jeff Johnson is defending the decision to include oilsands companies in consultations on Alberta's new school curriculum. (CBC)

The Edmonton Public School Board plans to ask oilsands companies Suncor and Syncrude what to teach children in kindergarten to Grade 3.

"What are we looking for in the graduates of tomorrow. Certainly we have a perspective but we need to hear all stakeholders," said Mark Liguori, assistant superintendent of schools for Edmonton Public.

Education minister Jeff Johnson thinks including the business community in discussions will help.
"One of the things I think they may be able to help with is how do we attract kids to that side of the business, science technology and engineering piece of the education system that so much of the economy is telling us we're short on," he said.

However, NDP education critic Deron Bilous thinks this is the first step in allowing corporations to influence Alberta schools, which he worries may go too far.

"There's also examples in the United States where coal companies have been involved in curriculum design where they've written a completely one-sided view speaking only of the benefits," he said. 
Johnson says companies are only providing input and will not write the curriculum.

Syncrude and Suncor aren’t the only companies involved in curriculum consultations. Stantec, PCL Construction, Apple and Microsoft Canada will also get a say.

Suncor has yet to receive an invitation to join the consultations. Syncrude hasn't decided whether it will take part.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:  
Answers included are reflective of the conversations had in EDUC 1F95 Seminar 15 & 16 - Nov 21
 

1. Should oil and gas companies be allowed to influence curriculum? Why or why not? What impact do you think they would have?

The conversation began heated about this topic. The conversation shifted from who should be able to have a say to who already has a say in curriculum development. What really would be the disadvantages of Canadian companies having a say (not a definitive vote - just a say) in the content of curriculum? 

We discussed how society is always in need for the development of schools to foster youth into relevant, contributing members to local economy and society.  Shouldn't we have a curriculum and school system in place that aids students to developing into contributing members of society with the skills and knowledge needed to survive in that society as an adult. Who better to speak about the skills and needs in demand for that society than the companies on which help build the society? 

The consensus was that companies should be able to have a say but that means all Canadian companies. Allowing certain companies influence and others not can create a biased curriculum with skewed skill sets and societal competencies. The final vote in curriculum standards and content should be left with educational professionals and researchers. They should be considering a holistic view of Canadian needs and skills for a successful society. This includes but cannot be limited to assessing the influence of economic companies.