The Aftermath... Reflections on Session One

So I suppose the realisation that I am going to have to organise my time very carefully has well and truly dawned on me. I went into school yesterday and as I finished up (after filing and moving Mt Paper from my desk... the sorting tray...the floor space behind my desk etc, to well appointed and appropriate homes) and wrote my 'to do' list on the board in prep for today, I knew I would have to get serious about organising myself if I wanted to be successful. Not my strong point. My thinking and time management is honestly pretty scattered. I can start on something and then find myself getting pretty distracted, very quickly. SQUIRREL! (We don't have squirrels in NZ so um... bird?)

So today I have been trying to catch up with all my tick off tasks loaded on the Mindlab portal. (Ohh sounds like another dimension). I LOVE to tick things off a list. So satisfying.
Anyway, my next issue and something I have to think about is how I will organise my notes and reflections etc. Right now, at this very moment, I am using:

• Blogger: (first time- teaching myself as I go) to record what I'm recording here
• Evernote: in class notes and some video note recordings, reflections to class tasks
• Google Keep: I like to watch videos and record my thoughts on this as I go.

Don't really like this and feel like this represents my scatteredness again. Holly (my partner in crime for this course) showed me her Blog on Tuesday night, and after I saw how awesome her work was, of course I just jumped on that band wagon too. Luckily our course advisor said we will be using blogging so that's super helpful. But I feel like I'm wasting time doing too many things or doubling up. Maybe I should just do what Cassie is doing and put everything on a doc- oh i don't know. Hopefully this will be combated as I get further down the track in this learning journey. (Which my 17 year old son, laughed at! 'Learning Journey' hahaha. Hmph to you kiddo!). 

Anyway on to the guts of this blog - apart from my panic, anxiety and neurosis. 

So today I watched the full Being at Home in the World- Gert Biesta video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUXSxGD8WmE  Ummm mind blown. 

I feel like all the drivel I wrote in my reflection (on Evernote) is just that- drivel! We only watched a little section in class of this video before making our playdough creations. I messaged Holly, indignant- Why didn't we look at the whole thing? My playdough representation is nothing compared to what Mr Biesta was talking about. Well, she replied, maybe they want us to discover that for ourselves. It seems too important for us to just discover by ourselves but maybe they do. 

So what did I find so exciting, interesting and thought provoking?

Through all my education education (haha) I have been exposed to the idea that the child as an individual should be at the center of educational experiences and that each child's uniqueness, talents, ability and culture should be at the heart of all teaching and learning activities. The bigger picture, my philosophy of teaching, the why am I doing this, what is the purpose of education? was to help students to realise their individual talents, aptitudes etc so that they could be contributing and helpful citizens of our world. Biesta's suggests we may need to temper this idea and places student centered education at one end of an educational paradigm with a controlled, ranking, testing system of education at the other. From what I understand, of what he is saying, is that current education system is very 'ego-logical' putting individuals and their wishes and desires at the heart of education- which looking at the bigger picture of society,  fuels consumerism, selfishness, domination and difference over others. He went on to say when we focus on individuality and difference in education it can have the undesired effect of isolating and forcing comparison on to our students. This builds up walls and that sometimes, this focus on individuals and identity, can in fact build barriers to learning and lessen our connectedness with each other. 

His ideas of grownup'ness, I scoffed on Tuesday. Haha I don't want to be a grown up! 

The purpose of education, Biesta proposes is to: Fuel the desire for students to want to live in the world in a grown up way. Grown up, meaning a sustaining, connected member of our world. Where the person isn't the center of the universe but the world is. World Centered education. How we manage to live in the world.

He poses a serious question: Is what I desire, desirable? This disruptive and powerful question has far reaching consequences for education and society. 'Education stretches above learning.'

There's heaps more I can write about this but that's not really the point. I know I have just skimmed the surface of this idea and I have so much more to wrap my head around before I understand this fully. The point is, I can see a shift in my thinking already; the bigger picture, the purpose of education... how is this going to have an effect on my teaching?