Where There Be Dragons? – Student Container

We started the inservice with the question “What does transformative teaching looks like?”  “Courage to Teaching” by Parker Palmer.  We need to encourage your vulnerability as a teacher today.  What tone have you set in your classroom?  Activity: Storytelling – describe a profound educational experience. What were the conditions that allowed for such learning and growth? What adjectives describe the environment and your learning?  Mine was my first global project with Flat Connections.  Dynamic, Interactive, Innovative.  How do we teach to courage, open-mindedness, self-reliance, curiosity, compassion?

Students catch value they don’t learn it.  Students come pretty stripped when they are not comfortable.  We need to be between the comfort zone and the panic zone.  There is the uncomfortable / learning zone.  With goals we all start with unspoken and unmet, the more you speak about it the more you will reach your goal.  PPPP – Pirate is the not wanting to learn and no one else should be learning –   learning is uncool. Prisoner is not engage, everything sucks, negative but doesn’t affect others.  Passenger is along for the ride, no harm but not a lot of engagement. Participant wants to be there, deeply engaged in their own learning.

In order for all to learn there must be transference.  Transference happens when you review, reflect, synthesize, reintegrate and recognize. They need a place to draw from the learning, time to transfer the knowledge.  When “Dragons” does a program for 9 months, they usually do a 1 week transference.  For a week program, it might be a 1/2 day.

Process of Transference:

1. Review – make the students state what we did.
2. Reflection- reflect of how they felt, use a line chart to make a mountain range to show how they felt.
3. Synthesis – How does this experience matter in your life?  What does a global citizen look like through a drawing.  A Davi – a god with multiple heads or arms carried by a vehicle.  Personalize your Davi.  How did your values change?
4. Reintegration – How do you bring this home? How will they talk about the experience? How was the trip?  One word, one sentence, one paragraph, one page.
5. Recognition – Acknowledge their participation and who has gotten them there.  Warm fuzzy conversations.  Have a page with your name on it. Pass it around and everyone writes one sentence about that person.

3 things that really landed – look people in the eye, get students to speak their goals and think about a way to get there. Make students think about the difference about panic mode and being uncomfortable. Give them time to decompress.