A Current Reflection

As I am continuing in grad school, I have just recently completed a course designed to provide educators with techniques which allow them to teach their regular course content as well as something called the new literacy skills. This has absolutely been one of the most enjoyable classes I have undergone. The new literacy skills encompassed five major areas: Questioning, Searching, Evaluating, Synthesizing, and Communicating. In each of these categories we learned how to create more student centered inquiry based lessons. These methods give the students freedom to define what they want to learn about. This in and of its self increases student motivation and especially initiative.

During this course I was taken aback by the amount of student autonomy that these lessons and methods ignite. I sometimes struggle with the idea of letting the students direct themselves because I am cautious of how the classroom will be maintained. However, I have come to realize that the students are capable of much more than what I was allowing. Another very intriguing moment that I had during this class, was when I began to realize that we as educators are attempting to teach students skills for a future that is undefined or foreseeable. With the rate that technology is advancing we must make sure that the time we spend with our students is being used to educate them on the most pertinent, objective, and relevant skills.

The content of this course helped me to become more aware of the teachable moments where I can instruct things like: how to navigate a website, how to evaluate the content of a website, and even how to connect what we are learning to the creation of an educational artifact. With the methods described in my current course I will be able to stretch over my standard content area and implement 21st century skill instruction.

This has led me to set the goal of assigning more students driven research projects which allow the integration of the new literacy skills into my curriculum. For me to accomplish this goal I have begun to reshape my standard curricular approach so that their will be more creative and communication projects. I have also begun to rethink my classroom set up so that it accommodates these types of activities more readily. Finally, I have resolved to continue networking and searching for tools which will increase my efficiency and effectiveness as an educator of music and technology.