Growing Mrs. Gardiner

Today we had the opportunity to talk with Heidi James, a middle school teacher who is passionate about gaming and a huge advocate for the use of Minecraft in classrooms as tool for students to show their learning. To start, Heidi prompted us to think about taking “game” or “gamify” out of the conversation and consider using “play” and “play for learning”.  This prompted the question, “Where can you use more play in your life…”  

I think… 

I think we can all agree that we can all use more play in life! The great thing about play is that anyone can play, anywhere, anytime! Play can be defined as any activity that is for enjoyment purposes – it is diverse and accessible to all ages and abilities. When I think back to my own childhood, some of the fondest memories I have are playing boardgames as a family especially around Christmas time. We also spent a lot of time playing and being active outside. Play is a strong value in my own family – my husband and I have carried on the family boardgame night tradition with our girls, and we spend a lot of time as a family recreating outside. Play is also a huge part of the girls’ relationship as siblings. Countless hours are spent together playing imaginative games of dress up, Lego, dolls ect. I can see the bond that they have, and I know that their ability to play together and work things out between themselves as they come up has had a huge impact on their relationship. 

I know… 

Many of the early childhood educators place huge emphasis on play in education. I think we could all agree that play is a huge part of learning in the early years. As parents, we watch our children learn many of those early fine motor skills manipulating objects through play. We see this in practice in most Kindergarten classrooms where delivery of curriculum is mainly through play-based learning. However, this conversation got me to thinking about why there is less and less emphasis on play in the classroom as students move up into the older grades. I can see the disparity between my own children who are in Kindergarten and Grade 3. The Kindergarten experience is all about exploration and learning through play and already in Grade 3 there is more emphasis on spelling tests, writing workshop and timed math quizzes with maybe one block a week dedicated to “centers”. 

I wonder…  

This makes me wonder, where has all the play gone? Why is there such a huge emphasis on play in the primary grades and so very little play by the time you hit middle school. Listening to Heidi and her students and how passionate they are about gaming in education made me realize that this is a huge opportunity for all teachers to connect and engage kids on a totally different level. I loved hearing about how Heidi experienced a shift in the power dynamic between her students and herself as they became the experts and she the novice. I also loved hearing about how the use of games such as Minecraft creates opportunities for students to learn leadership and mentorship skills among their classmates. While I have to admit I know next to nothing about Minecraft, and most online gaming for that matter, the idea of bringing more games/gaming into the learning environment got me excited and it is something I want to learn more about as I enter my education career. 

We had the pleasure of having Chantelle Morvay-Adams from the BCEd Access Society speak to our cohort today on inclusion and equitable access to education for all students. BCEdAccess is a volunteer run organization that supports families of students with disabilities and complex learning challenges through sharing information, providing education to families, allies, and students, and providing community engagement. To read more about the society and their resources visit the website here. Chantelle was a wealth of knowledge and spoke very candidly about her own experiences with her children in the education system.   

I think… 

For the average person who has little to no learning difficulties, it’s easy to forget that many people don’t experience school and learning in the same way they day do. If I’m being honest, I would have been one of those people if it weren’t for my youngest brother. For my entire student career, learning and schoolwork has come fairly easy to me with a little effort. However, that was not the case for my brother. He was born with a genetic abnormality so minor that from the outside you can’t see that there is anything different, however, he had a hard time keeping up with his peers and school was a struggle. Against all odds, he managed to graduate high school on time, we as a family owe a huge debt of gratitude to the excellent Learning Assistance teachers he had supporting him along the way. Unfortunately, this is not always the case for students with learning difficulties and disabilities. 

I know…  

Last semester I had the opportunity to listen to Shelley Moore give a talk on inclusion in education and it opened my eyes to how exclusive the public school system can be. Shelley has done incredible research on inclusion in education and has put out a ton of resources. You can visit her blog blogsomemoore and I would highly recommend any of the videos she has up on YouTube if you are looking to learn more about this topic. One could argue that the current public school education system is designed for a small minority of its students to achieve success.  

I wonder…  

When I consider what I learned from Chantelle and what I saw my own brother experience in school, as a future educator I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility to be aware of inclusivity and bring equitable access to education into my future classrooms where I can. As I continue on in my pre-service teacher education path, I wonder are some of the things that I can do to create a more inclusive education environment for my future students? 

The arrival of COVID-19 and the ensuing global pandemic has forced alot of industries to rethink how they provide products and services to their customers. The delivery of education has been no exception. Last March we saw a mass closure of schools worldwide and when it came time for schools to think about re-opening, decisions on how curriculum was to be delivered to students varied from continent to continent, country to county, and province to province. Here in BC, as September approached there were many discussions on when, how, and even if students would return to school in person. Eventually, parents were given the option of face-to-face, blended, or all online.  

I think… 

From what we learned in class, it seems that the discussion around access to learning and flexibility around modality has been in the works for a long time. Many believe that on-line learning is not as effective as face-to-face although some would counter with that there is no guarantee face-to-face learning any richer. Some argue a blend of both could benefit many learners. I think that in discussions such as this, it is important to remember our biases that cannot help but impact the way we consider we think and feel. There is no doubt in my mind that if modality became more flexible in education, more people would have the opportunity to access learning in the way that best suited their own individual needs. 

I know… 

The pandemic hit my family particularly hard – my husband lost his job, we sold our house, uprooted our family, said goodbye to our wonderful community and moved closer to family. In the midst of it all, I was accepted into the UVIC Post Degree-Program for Elementary Education. I am so grateful that the University moved my entire program on-line because if that had not been the case, I would have missed out on the opportunity to further my education and achieve a lifelong dream of becoming a teacher. I got lucky a global pandemic forced academic institutions to pivot and offer their programs online. But what about those who were not so fortunate as I was?  

I wonder… 

The biggest thing I wonder about it how modality and flexibility around access to learning will look when things go “back to normal.” Are e-blend and on-line options here to stay? Or will education institutions back to what we would consider normal and all those students who actual did better in some sort of blend of face-to-face and on-line be forced to learn in environment that doesn’t suit them. What about mature learners who have work and family responsibilities that inhibit them from taking university classes because of the way they are scheduled? What about those with health problems who can’t attend in person?  

Without question Trevor MacKenzie has been my favourite guest speaker so far. This class got me so excited about inquiry-based learning and validated my desire to teach students skills that stay with them and prepare them for a life of learning rather than to memorize and regurgitate information that will be lost quickly. Trevor’s books, Dive into Inquiry and Inquiry Mindset, are two excellent resources for teachers who are looking to incorporate more inquiry-based learning in their classrooms and I am so looking forward to his 3^rd book that looks at assessment and inquiry. His website is also full of amazing resources and free graphics that can be used in your classroom. Visit his website here.

I think.. 

I think up until this class, the word “inquiry” has been something of a mystery to me and many of my classmates. It has been used in almost every class we have taken since the beginning of the school year but there hasn’t been a single instructor who has taken the time to explain what exactly inquiry is and how we as teachers are supposed to implement this style of teaching in our classrooms. For example, in this class we have been asked to do a free inquiry and a partnered inquiry on a tech topic…yet no one has actually taught us how to plan, research and report on an inquiry topic effectively.  

I know… 

What I learned from this discussion was that inquiry teaching is as much a value as it is a framework for delivering curriculum to students. An inquiry classroom has the learner actively contributing to the creation of the learning environment. The teacher’s role is to create opportunities for students to dive into topics they are interested in and leverage their ideas for future learning. Inquiry classrooms value student agency, control and ownership. Trevor shared his guiding question for his classroom which is: “Am I doing something for my students that they should be doing for themselves?”  

I wonder… 

As a pre-service teacher, I think my biggest wonder about inquiry-based teaching and learning is what does it look like when you are just getting started? Do you jump all the way in? Do you do little bits of inquiry here and there? Trevor shared that his experience was to go all in and learn along the way – that seems overwhelming and a little terrifying. And how do you prepare your students for a whole new way of learning?