Real-World Connections
During this (my last) term of the program, I found myself fully immersed in my innovation project in real-time. By working with three of my campus teachers, I was in classrooms observing and noting student attitudes and understanding teacher frustrations. This has helped me understand more about my project and allowed me to reflect on how to refine areas to prepare for next school year.
Due to the time of the school year we are in, I also found myself having to multi-task more than usual therefore had to take a small step back on some of the contributions to my learning community.
Flexibility is Key
With these two final courses, the flexibility continued to work for me – especially at this time due to my role as an instructional coach and having to support teachers and students more as we prepare for state testing. I made sure to view all the readings and videos in a timely manner to participate in discussion posts with my peers. I really enjoyed the discussions boards because they are a great opportunity to learn what everyone else is doing and how they are dedicating their time to improving their ideas. Personally, I received lots of great feed-forward through these discussions from others who are not necessarily part of my group! During this term, I made sure to make the most of utilizing the discussion posts for feedback opportunities. I also posted on time to receive feedback with enough time to make edits or changes to my assignments.
I would have loved to attend the live sessions this term, but I am also a mom of two boys that play baseball, and my family commitment is high on my list of priorities. However, I made sure to tune in to the recordings once they were posted so that I would not miss important information that may have been helpful as I worked through the assignments. Again, the flexibility of these courses helped me with prioritizing the time I committed to my assignments.
Learning Communities
I do consider peers who are part of the program to be my PLN – but I did work more closely with one specific classmate Vitalia Acosta. We made time to set times for phone calls and agreed on ways to share and give feedback to each other throughout the course. She has a busy schedule like me, so it was great to have someone who understood. I also contacted my friend and previous classmate, Hilda Rodriguez, who completed the program in March as her continued feedback was very useful as well.
Overall, I have appreciated having a network of peers that are supportive and want the best outcome for everyone on this journey. I can’t wait to see what many of them get to accomplish!
Scores:
EDLD 5318 & EDLD 5320: 92/100
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