Reflections on the Way

My first experience as a teacher, by myself in front of a classroom, was leading tutorial groups for a large university freshman history class. I was given the material that would be covered in each lecture, but no guidance on what I was supposed to do with it in my individual sections. I didn’t know what I was supposed to get these students to do, compared to what they were already doing in the larger lecture meetings. This really showed in my planning, or lack thereof. I would set up activities or simply cover in more detail some of the material I thought was most relevant, but I really had no clear expectations for what the students would actually gain from their time with me. As the semester wore on and I gained a better understanding of where the lecture was failing my students and what they needed from me, I was better able to articulate my goals to myself and produce more effective tutorial sessions. Reading Wiggins and McTighie (2008), I realize had I stumbled haphazardly ...

I decided to look at reddit for my exploration of personal learning networks. I have some experience using reddit for hobby interests, but I have never considered it as any sort of professional tool. I decided to make a new account with the sole purpose of following education related topics, subscribing to the teachers, education, elateachers, and teachingresources subreddits. The first thing that jumped out at me, and it was honestly something I expected from previous experience, is that a lot of the threads were people asking for very specific advice. Things like what to expect on the first day of teaching, how to find a job, what sort of clothes to wear were all pretty common. I would see lots of the same type of thread started by different people, because they are typically only interested in their own issues rather than discussing in larger topics. There were also a lot of random or irrelevant topics (in my opinion at least) that needed to be sorted through, even when I was only ...