Week 5: Journal Reflection....my expectation....

 Prompt: Take some time to reflect on how you are anticipating the classroom experience and your teaching of your course.  What student engagement and active learning challenges do you anticipate and what kind of practices are you becoming aware of that you would like to try?  Or maybe this is all new to you; how do you anticipate the use of active learning methods affecting your classroom presence, approach, or management style?  We would just like you to reflect on your anticipated experience in your classroom as you begin working with this new modality. 

I actually loathe this prompt.  🤣

This is the question you can't answer.  It's all hypotheticals.  There are too many factors (the students and what they bring to the classroom as baggage being the largest unknown factor).  And I absolutely hate wasting time thinking about what I'm not aware of.

I can certainly WANT things to turn out one way.  But I really dislike thinking ahead like this because the challenges I think are going to be challenges may not be challenges at all...and something else will rear its ugly head.  I am one of those people that works better in the moment with classroom challenges and don't love to anticipate because then I am putting a ton of effort into something that may never manifest itself.  

So here's what I do know (instead)....

• My class will be a nice mix of first year and upper class students.  So coming with varying backgrounds and experiences in the classroom.
• About a third will be zooming in.  So I'll have that tech to juggle.
• I know that I can't use the whiteboard because people won't see it on zoom, so I plan to use apps as replacements.
• I plan on recording some lectures and doing others via Nearpod.  Weeks I'm using Nearpod I will have students watching things on our hybrid day outside of class that is similar content.  
• I will likely use breakout rooms in Zoom for group activities I have typically done in that class.  It will require that students in the classroom have tech that allows them to join that breakout room.  I don't want to always have the zoomers only working with other zoomers. I think it's important they meet others in the class.  
• I am going to take the "if it doesn't work, we will deal with it" approach to a lot of the new things we try using.  If the tech fails or the app doesn't quite do what I want it to do, we will learn from it and move on.  I plan on being very transparent with class about the fact that we are going to be paving the way for new things and that some things will fail and others will be a success...but we are in it together.  And their input when things don't work is just as important as what I'm observing.  
• I cannot predict many things.  Nor can I plan for all of them.  So having a backup plan is always the key.  
• I will take the time to learn from my F2F+ faculty peers about what is working and what's not throughout the fall semester and apply that knowledge to my course moving forward.  And I hope to be able to contribute as well to those conversations.
• Nobody's perfect.  There isn't a perfect setup in any classroom.  Everyone teaches differently.  All students learn differently.  And you just have to go with the flow.  

And if you haven't learned something about my teaching style in those bullets, I didn't do a good job writing things out.  😂