Making Changes

In If We Fail to Adapt, Our Students Lose from @DavidGeurin Blog, David Geurin asks,

“How are you adapting as an educator and as a learner? What have you done to step out of your comfort zone?”

It is so easy to fall into a comfort zone as both an educator and a learner.

As an educator, your lessons go well so you use them over and over. They worked for previous classes so why won’t they work for the new ones. But over time, information changes and our student’s change. Some of the information may be outdated or the presentation itself may be outdated. I may use a lesson twice but after that, I try to take a close look at it and see if there is a way to make adjustments in order to bring it up to date. Besides that, after two times, I tend to get bored with it and feel that my delivery is kind of stale.

In the same way, I try to constantly learn new things every day. It doesn’t have to be something complicated but I think it is important to learn something daily. I might learn more about another person or learn how to do something little. I might learn that I don’t want to do something or don’t like something I’ve eaten. I like to watch others do something that I don’t know how to do.

My favorite way of learning is by reading. By reading, I can go at my own pace and reread parts that I’m unsure of or I don’t understand. Growing up, I read all the time and was considered a bookworm. As an adult, I still tend to read a lot.

But now I have found videos online that help demonstrate some things that I’ve read. I’m learning that seeing someone show how to do something is great to go along with my reading.

I need to do that more in my classes. I still think reading is important and it is important to encourage my students to read. I feel that if they can read, they learn about anything that interests them. Then I can enhance the lessons with videos that demonstrate what they have read. I could also encourage my students to make their own videos to demonstrate their understanding.

Not only is it important to show students that learning is important but it is also important to learn that there are many different ways to learn. Trying different ways to learn can be enlightening. A person might even learn that there are better ways of learning than the same usual way.

What do you do differently to vary how you learn? Do you vary your lessons from year to year? Please share.