As a teacher, particularly a writing teacher, I love metaphors to think about concepts and help my students consider their own writing processes. Often, I think of my own role as a teacher as a coach helping them to practice the skills and drills they’ll need to write and it helps me think of myself guiding students rather than telling them what to do.
However, it’s rare that I think of myself as a tour guide as Flower Darby and James Lang argue in the first chapter of Small Teaching Online, but I suppose that’s what I am as well. It’s my role to think about a destination, an itinerary, and the sights that we’ll see along the way. As teachers we think about the experiences, journeys, and observations that our students can have.
We’ll read the first two chapters of Small Teaching Online that asks us to start thinking about the big picture in terms of our classes. For our discussion on 11/18, let’s consider these larger questions: What is the purpose of my class? What do we ask our students to do? Why do we ask them to do this?
If we’re the tour guides of our own classes, what are the educational experiences that I want my students to have? As Wiggins and McTighe say, how do we create these experiences so that they’re learned in a way that doesn’t escape memory. What is the enduring understanding that I want my students to have?
We can then look at the specifics of how to actually create this in class and discuss examples that show How do you make the purpose of class activities explicit? What are strategies to do this online? Where is the opportunity for reflection in my class? How do students revisit ideas in your class?
And we can then wrap up our discussion around what makes assignments meaningful?