Learning and teaching are adventures. Learning to teach may
be the biggest adventure of them all. I would definitely call this
year, my year in teacher education an adventure.
When looking at several different dictionaries I have come to see that
adventure is defined as follows:Adventure: an unusual and exciting sometimes-hazardous experience or activity, daring and exciting activity calling for enterprise and enthusiasm.
Doesn’t that sound like learning?
New, unusual, daring, exciting, experiences and activities, what can we as teachers do to bring these into our classrooms? To grow, students need to take risks, and explore something new, they need to get their hands on it and try it. When we give students opportunities to take risks and make mistakes we give them space to learn. One of my favourite examples of this is in the music methods course, I took at UBC, where the instructor has set up a “no fail” way for all of us to engage with and participate in learning. He created an environment that invited us to explore and engage with sound first then taught the theory behind it. I was nervous the first day of the course when he stated that we would learn to play guitar, I had never picked one up before and I thought there was no way I could ever get a coherent sound out of the instrument. I decided to trust the process and see what would happen; looking around the room several others looked as confused as I felt, so I did not feel that I was alone in my hesitation. I was relieved to find that I only needed to worry about one finger and two strings that first class, by the end of the first lesson I was playing “skip to my Lou” not exciting but also for me a success. Because of the safe structure and no fail approach taken to music, I am feeling confident in what I can do. It is this feeling of safety and support for taking risks that helps students to grow and to learn.
We have to keep in mind that Failure is not a bad thing; it is a step in the learning process. FAIL is an acronym for a First Attempt In Learning.
Doesn’t that sound like learning?
New, unusual, daring, exciting, experiences and activities, what can we as teachers do to bring these into our classrooms? To grow, students need to take risks, and explore something new, they need to get their hands on it and try it. When we give students opportunities to take risks and make mistakes we give them space to learn. One of my favourite examples of this is in the music methods course, I took at UBC, where the instructor has set up a “no fail” way for all of us to engage with and participate in learning. He created an environment that invited us to explore and engage with sound first then taught the theory behind it. I was nervous the first day of the course when he stated that we would learn to play guitar, I had never picked one up before and I thought there was no way I could ever get a coherent sound out of the instrument. I decided to trust the process and see what would happen; looking around the room several others looked as confused as I felt, so I did not feel that I was alone in my hesitation. I was relieved to find that I only needed to worry about one finger and two strings that first class, by the end of the first lesson I was playing “skip to my Lou” not exciting but also for me a success. Because of the safe structure and no fail approach taken to music, I am feeling confident in what I can do. It is this feeling of safety and support for taking risks that helps students to grow and to learn.
We have to keep in mind that Failure is not a bad thing; it is a step in the learning process. FAIL is an acronym for a First Attempt In Learning.