compassionate educator
This spring, my main professional goals have been focused around discussion facilitation with students. Before IslandWood, as a 4th grade math teacher, I had a bit of experience facilitating student discussions, but not enough that I felt super comfortable embracing them in the IslandWood context. I decided to center my spring professional growth plan (PGP)… Continue reading Embracing Feedback for Professional Growth
This past week, I decided I wanted to see what would happen if I gave the students the reins for the week, letting them tell me what they most wanted to learn about and then taking the planning from there. When the students arrived Monday, one of the first things we did was head into… Continue reading A student-led week in the woods
This spring, I've been in a class called Collaborative Projects in Educational Leadership: Nonformal Education. This class has been a unique experience for many reasons, not least of which being the experience of collaborative lesson planning. For the second half of the course, we've been workshopping lessons together as a class. An individual will bring… Continue reading Collaborative Lesson Planning
Whenever I'm asked about my priority in teaching students at IslandWood, my answer is always stewardship. I want my students to walk away from their week in the woods with me with a greater sense of respect and care for themselves, their human community, and their natural community. I want them to go home feeling… Continue reading Stewardship & Social Marketing
Throughout our time at IslandWood, we've had many conversations as a community about implicit bias. Sometimes, we discuss bias coming through our information and discussions. At other points, the conversations shift to bias with regards to our students and our expectations for them. Ultimately, it is vital that we, as educators, examine and reflect upon… Continue reading Implicit Bias
I struggled for a long time to think of ways that I myself had named the steps while rolling out a new concept or instructions in these past teaching weeks. Instead, I have settled upon sharing a time where I encouraged my students to name the steps to solidify their learning. While I didn't hit every component… Continue reading Naming the steps
This past teaching week, we discussed the gradual release of responsibility model (GRRM) in our practicum session. I had learned about this model before in my undergraduate education, but was excited to more purposefully and thoughtfully utilize it in the field this week. A specific activity where I felt like I had great potential to… Continue reading Practicing gradual release of responsibility
This week, I made an effort to utilize the information we learned in practicum about the serial position effect when providing students with information or instruction. I had success with my results, and plan to continue utilizing these ideas in future weeks. On the second day of my week with my field group, we did… Continue reading Serial position effect in the field
This week, we've been spending a lot of time discussing & thinking about student "misbehaviors" and their causes, and how to intervene in this situations. We learned about the differences in student motivation when these behaviors occur, whether they are to get attention, power, revenge, or to avoid failure. When I sat down to reflect… Continue reading Student motivation & intervention
Before we began learning about everything that an SOP week entailed, I had lots of ideas floating around about what I would do, how the days would run, and everything I would be able to accomplish in the time I had with kids. As we have gone through training, I've realized how little time we… Continue reading Expectations vs. reality
Julia Tandy Harnick 