In the still of the night, I am waiting by my computer. I am waiting for my case study partner to communicate with me (except her internet is goofy and pops in and out at will). So, I will remain alert and coherent for her sake, and for our first case grade sake. Except during my snoozes. I've decided I need to nap in short intervals to conserve energy for the actual presentation in the morning. Actually, the presentation is basically ready. The resource package is not.
At this point I should explain what the heck I'm actually doing. My teacher education section is called problem based learning (PBL). It is a discussion, experience, research based course. It is unique in that we have a 2-week cycle of courses and each of those cycles centres on a case study. Everything we learn about in our different subject classes (i.e. Educational psych, math, science, music, p.e., language arts, art, language and literacy, and one other educational information course that I can't remember the name of) all contribute to the issues presented in the case study. Our other sources of information include research and our sponsor teachers at our practicum school (which is why we were at our practicum school during the first week of school! and once a week until our short practicum in Jan.)
When we receive our case studies at the beginning of our cycle, each tutorial disseminates the case by identifying the themes, issues, and problems. Lots of discussion and exploration follows, including a huge amount of individual research. We actually have less instructional time since we do so much learning and investigating on our own. I love picking information out of the sponsor teachers' brains. It is more interesting to gain first hand observations. And much of it correlates with our other resources which further enhances our grasps of the topics.
By the middle of the cycle, each tutorial (there are 3) decides on the official topics and delegates a team to become mini-experts on their issue. Mine is Parent-Teacher relations. We put together a resource package that will be useful to our fellow teacher candidates and we each present our information at the end of the cycle (tomorrow is the end of our first cycle!)
It is unfortunate that our first case is a lacking a little on the empirical evidence source but as Andrea (my partner) said: C'est la vie. We will learn and improve since as teachers, we're constant learners!! hehe We're also up late because the last few weeks has been pretty much chaos. With my super heavy plate I was stretching myself too thin to the point where good enough meant not good enough for me. I didn't want to be just a good enough student, teacher, wife, barista, friend. I want to be great! So I had to cut out Barista... Alas, it has been a good couple of years but farewell Starbucks!
Ok power nap time....
Feel free to ask questions about my PBL program. I've been brainwashed to consider ourselves the best.
1 comment:
sharon! thanks for an update! i hear ya on stretching oneself too thin :) sonuds like your enjoying your program though, and i would love to hear all about it. i'll try and see you monday at bsf...still haven't forgetten about a potential get together :)
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