This past week, I had my first opportunity to participate in an EdCamp! It was a pretty cool experience and one that I would love to partake in again! What started as just our EdTech class evolved to another education cohort from UNBC and several seasoned educators! It was an incredible opportunity to share in conversation and learn from other teacher candidates and educators.

I partook in a two different rooms, one focused on implementing group work and the other on cross-curricular teaching! I would have loved to partake in more, but I got pretty wrapped up in the discussions and before I knew it the time was up. As I have learned from discussions during my weekly observation seminars there is so much to be learned from fellow educators and peers, and this EdCamp only reaffirmed that for me!

Room 1: Implementing group work

 

  • Group work can be effective and certainly helps to work on those soft skills. However, there are certainly challenges to group work and balancing equal participation.
    • We discussed outlining specific roles within the group at the start of the project to help scaffold some of the group work and leading to more equal participation.
  • Assessment can also be difficult for group, as you must decide to assess the group as a whole or to assign different marks within the group.
    • We discussed incorporating some form of self assessment that allowed for insight on the group’s perceptions of themselves individually and the group as a whole. We were for the most part in favour of these self assessments providing more insight than actual grading influence. The hope would be that involving students in their own assessment they might be more inclined to participate.
  • The UNBC cohort mentioned that they are entirely pass/fail graded. This was interesting to me and had certainly been something I have been thinking about with the few pass/fail classes currently a part of my semester. In some ways I really like them, as it removes a degree of anxiety, but I also find it a bit foreign and I am also someone who does appreciate having my hard work shown in a grade. Perhaps that is what has been conditioned in me though! Haha!
    • The insight on the pass/fail model from the UNBC cohort was that it provided and opportunity for community building by removing competition between students. It also allows for more intended learning rather than singular outcome based learning. I am grateful that I feel within my cohort we have established a supportive community and my experience has not been one in which peer-competition has existed. I can understand how removing some of those grading stresses might help to foster this community more though in certain cases!
    • Similarly the competency based focus of the BC Curriculum shifts away the emphasis from ‘grading identity’
Room 2: Cross-Curricular Teaching
  • Cross-curricular teaching is a really effective way to blend disciplines and modalities to enhance learning! From my own experience in my cross-curricular teaching class, I have found it to be so valuable and rewarding to collaborate interdisciplinary! In the real world though this is hard to practice! The system is not set up for cross-curricular collaboration outside of a few specific schools.
  • The shift in the BC Curriculum to focus on competencies can allow for increased collaboration, however if the system doesn’t support this teachers are often stuck within their own disciplines.
  • Cross-Curricular teaching needs to start in primary education, building through secondary education and move through the university system. Ultimately all of these educational stages need to be on board with interdisciplinary collaboration or it doesn’t work.

A final key takeaway that I really loved was that in a wolf pack the leader of the pack is the last inline. This leader oversees the entire pack, he ensures nobody is left behind and keeps the pack unified in his journey. Although we as teachers frequently stand at the front, this more holistic view of leadership is worth considering within our classrooms. Ultimately we as teachers should aim to ensure a strong learning community, and allow for student lead learning within their classroom while also guiding the class through learning together.

EdCamp #1 was definitely a success! Looking forward to participating in another one!

 

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

Photo by Atikah Akhtar on Unsplash

Photo by Swati H. Das on Unsplash