Sunday, July 9, 2017

Narrative/Final Project

     This is the story of my professional website http://www.maryksteele.com. 
Wait!  Before you fall asleep, let me assure you that it’s much more than that.  It is Simon Sinek’s why of my professional website:  the story of how I am writing my life’s Second Act.  And just as Sinek says https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en, my why is a lot more interesting than my whats or hows.  At least I hope so!

     I was that lucky kid who knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: a writer. Through the years, that answer evolved into ‘journalist’.  But when this girl grew to walk a campus, I looked around and thought,  “I’d really like to teach at a college level.”   Almost as quickly as I had the thought, I decided that teaching would be something I’d do later in life, after I pursued journalism.  I hoped I’d have more to offer my students at 50.
     After working as a producer at various news stations, I landed at WNBC in New York, which sounds like a dream job but was more of a nightmare.  Anyway, the experience helped me realize I was quite done producing local news, no matter how large the city.  I wanted to leave the cynicism of the newsroom to return to documentary work I had just begun in my prior job.  I hoped to take the time necessary to tell deeper, meatier stories that might illuminate, examine, and teach.
     Which leads me to life-changing work for a public television series called Visionaries http://www.visionaries.org.  For several years, I produced TV documentaries looking at the why behind philanthropic and nonprofit work.  I had wanted to travel the world since I was the girl in that goofy school photo and now I was leading crews in countries like Brazil, India, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Azerbaijan, Jordan and many more.

We worked mainly in developing nations, focusing on innovative attempts to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems.  I also traveled all over the U.S. and was deeply affected by the positivity of people who believe there’s more good than bad in this world and that change is possible.

     Now let me place you in time: the late 90s to the early 2000s.  I was Marc Prensky’s digital immigrant https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0Z01KNkdIWjdsNk0/view and Scott Noon’s technocrat https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lgDAuLNDXvd_fu0nCPtLarttFR4YbHDLSkZfSfg-Olk/edit: using some technology but unsure of it.  I made the transition from typewriter to computer in 1990 and by 1998, I was learning to operate my first Mac.  But I was a late adopter of web technologies and an old-school linear learner.
     My boss, a techno-constructivist, stayed on the cutting edge of media technology, but I did not.  I directed non-linear editors but shied away from the hands-on work of it myself, maintaining that two brains were better than one.  In fact, I was afraid of technology because I doubted my aptitude.  I did not want to produce a show that wasn’t at a professional level because of my shortcomings.  {I want to note here that it was in thinking about my boss within Noon’s framework that I finally, really “got it”.  I remembered my boss’ over-the-moon enthusiasm for new cameras, editing tools, etc.  and how he would begin to spin ideas on the spot about how we could improve/change/speed up the way we worked.  He was willing to throw out established systems of operation without a backward look to try new technology and he often saw its future possibilities long before anyone else.  Not impulsive or suffering from ADD, as I sometimes thought back then, I now understand him as the epitome of a techno-constructivist!}
     During this time, I helped create a Master’s Degree program with Suffolk University in Media and Philanthropy.  I taught in the classroom and also enjoyed coaching student interns as they traveled with my crew or created their own international documentaries.  I think Michael Wesch would approve of our emphasis on real-life learning environments and the collaborative process of teaching and learning.

     Wesch would also like that the students chose the subject of their production and did their own fundraising to make it happen.  Explaining why they picked a particular issue and capturing the emerging narrative happening around them inspired good questions and gave them reasons for learning.  As their mentor, I know they found significance in their education as a result…and I found great meaning in teaching.  I do see now, through Wesch’s lens, that I could have been better at enjoying the messy learning power of process and less focused on the end product.  Because I was responsible for making sure their documentary could air within our series, I may have been a better whip-cracker than teacher in those days.  This course has given me that insight.
     By now I realized that I absolutely came alive when I worked with people from different cultures.  I loved leaving SCWAAMP behind by seeing the world through many different lens, learning bits of new languages, and creating partnerships to take action and drive change.  Simon Sinek and I share the belief that story is where real teaching and learning take place – what he might call “the buy-in. 
     My focus on teaching through global storytelling shifted when I found a niche in historical documentary.  I became a techno-traditionalist, using technology to accomplish many more tasks.  By now, I was experienced with word processing and email and I used Google and the Internet for much of my research.  With editors, I was exploring ways to make antique still images come to life.  In 2006, I directed the creation of a website for a documentary series and updated my “Producer’s  Blog” for it every week.  It served area teachers, museums, libraries, as well as our viewing audience and it included interactive educational tools.  Unfortunately, it’s no longer active or I’d link to it here.  If only I’d been the expert at screenshots that this class has made me, I’d have evidence!
     Some years after that experience, it happened: my 50th birthday.  As it turned out, my young self had been right—there came a time when I was ready to put production down.  I had lost interest in keeping up with the rapid-fire changes in the medium brought on by the digital revolution.  So much so that I no longer wanted to teach documentary or news production.  So the question became:  just what would I teach?  It took over a year for me to put together the pieces but when I did, it felt like a small epiphany:  I would teach English as a Second Language to adults! Yes, I see it as a way to return to fulfilling multi-cultural work.  But at the core of this decision is my belief in story as the way humans connect and literacy as key to accessing opportunities everyone deserves.
     The bottom line is that I want to help immigrant and refugee students express their mature thoughts in meaningful, useful ways: to tell their stories.   But first I had to learn a new language myself, that of being a teacher in the world of ESL.  I started the M.Ed. in TESL program at Rhode Island College.  The path has not been smooth:  in 2015 my husband and I were hurt when we were struck as pedestrians by an SUV and last Fall, he was diagnosed with cancer (he’s doing well now).  Because of those things, it’s taken me longer to complete the program than I planned and it has often been physically and mentally challenging to stay on track.  
     That said, I’ve been gaining experience in my new field in my internships and as a substitute instructor at RIC.  After ten months as a volunteer teacher, I was hired as the part-time ESL instructor at the Refugee Dream Center in Providence http://www.refugeedreamcenter.org.   The rewards are rich:  recently one of my students reported she was able to take her daughter to a doctor and tell him what was wrong, because of our unit on health.  My heart swelled when she exclaimed, “I thank God and I thank teacher!
     Danah Boyd http://www.danah.org/books/ItsComplicated.pdf and I could have a good conversation about my adult learners. When she writes that there is no magical relationship between technological skills and age, I think of new research showing adult learners have no innate disadvantage when learning a new language.  The difference has more to do with exposure, time, and motivation.   That’s news I want to share with other teachers of adults.  Which finally brings me to my professional website!  Eager to gain teaching experience, I created this site aimed at potential employers.  It was a class assignment and the first website I created myself.  It is pretty basic; not a hyperlink or group communication tool to be found! But during this course, I began to see that my website could be so much more. 
     After listening to several This I Believe podcasts http://thisibelieve.org/podcasts/, I was inspired to reflect upon my dedication to refugee students and critical research I want to share about their unique learning needs.  As a result, I decided to focus on adding resources for refugee teachers and advocates on my website.  Down the road, I’ll add digital tools aimed specifically at students.  This course made me more comfortable rooting around Weebly to enhance my website and address a serious need.  I find that most ESL teachers don’t understand the real impact of trauma on language learning and how that affects refugee students.  I began by adding a scrollable Resource page with an extensive list of supports, as well as a downloadable version.
     To include a PowerPoint that I created for Professional Development purposes, I discovered I could export the presentation as a movie, upload that to YouTube, and create a link.  Now that I understand Screencastify, I plan to re-do that movie with a voiceover added.  I was also able to link to a related RITELLER article and provide a downloadable version.  I plan to add other features as I continue to build this page, but I’m pretty excited about the new skills that helped me get this far!

     So here I am, at 53, on a different stage for my Second Act but in many ways still answering the calling I had as a kid.  Using story to connect, illuminate, advocate…to teach and to learn.  At the core of my beliefs as an ESL teacher are these three words:
·       STORY
·      OPPORTUNITIES
·      ADVOCACY
Like Sir Ken Robinson and Michael Wesch, I believe our diverse students learn through their own experiences, social context, and natural curiosity.  As I complete my M.Ed. in TESL and particularly as I finish this course, I see my job now as awakening and developing their powers of creativity.  You know, if you met my refugee students, you’d hear epic tales of resiliency.  I'm looking forward to helping them discover new ways to share those stories and I'll be including some of those on my website down the road.  I hope you’ll check it out.







Tuesday, July 4, 2017

At the Core of My Teaching Beliefs

  • I believe language is our attempt to give voice to intellect, to put sound to soul
  • I believe humans connect through story 
  • I believe ESL teachers must help learners express their thoughts in meaningful and useful ways
  • I believe becoming literate in a new country is key to accessing opportunities
  • I believe ESL teachers should serve as advocates of social justice for English Language Learners (ELLs)
  • I believer story provides the best teaching and learning tool (using literature, poetry, music, creative writing, video, audio, etc.)
  • I believe a teacher of adults must consider funds of knowledge, social context, and motivation
  • I believe students must be active participants in learning (through process, creating)

I had trouble reducing my list to three core beliefs and so I settled on four (the highlighted lines)!

In thinking about my final project and speaking with Professor Bogad, I decided that since story is at the core of my teaching philosophy, that I should tell the story of how I came to be in the position of creating a professional website as an ESL teacher.  This is a second career for me and the winding roads that converged to put me at this junction are interesting.

I began by thinking about the childhood roots of my long career in journalism, how that branched from news to documentary and into international production.  I dwell on the international work in the presentation because that was the life-changing period that most directly connects to my current vocation to teach adult immigrants and refugees.

How?
a)  I am passionate about equal access to opportunity for all.  In my international work, I bore witness to so much inequity, obvious and subtle.  Usually because of gender, race, poverty, physical and/or mental ability.  My stories were focused on issues of social justice.  As a woman who grew up very modestly, I am also keenly and personally aware of gender and economic inequities here in the U.S.
b) I am emotionally and intellectually invigorated working within multicultural and multilingual environments.  I like to look at the world through others' lens.
c)  I have dedicated my professional life to illuminating, examining, and recording life, challenging perceptions, advocating for change, and sharing that process as well as the information gained.  In other words, teaching through the medium of TV, through the field production process, and in classrooms.  My 'Second Act'  of instructing adult ELLs is a more literal interpretation of teaching, but to me it is part of a continuum that may not be obvious to others.

Therefore, this project aligns with my core beliefs by connecting my experiences through story and then using story to take action, increase understanding, or make change. The need for my website is not in and of itself interesting, but the story of how I find myself struggling with that new digital experience is unusual and hopefully, compelling.  Changing my professional website www.maryksteele.com so that it serves not just me but also students and colleagues is part of my growth as a teacher and a lifelong learner.

My challenge is time.  I would like to explore and choose  at least three features to add to my website that serve students and three that are resources for colleagues.  I hope I have the time to finish adding those features so that I can speak about them in my presentation but it may be that I will have to write about my plans and show what I have implemented thus far.  Right now, I need to get back to it!  I hope you had a wonderful Fourth.  

Friday, June 30, 2017

Haiku

     Curr 550

What work-play is this
media navigating!
Frustrating delight.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

The Quest for Connection: Turkle and Wesch

"A Vision of Students Today"Youtube video

I believe that Michael Wesch and Sherry Turkle share common ground in their discussions of new media and technology because in different ways, they are both talking about the need for connection.
In her article, Turkle writes about devices creating a new way to be "alone together", changing what we do and even who we are.  I find this to be profoundly true.  Recently, I walked my dog through the busy Bristol Town Common and noticed that 3 out of 4 people I passed were focused on their phones.  This on a beautiful summer day, with children playing all around them, and a small carnival in full swing just yards away. My dog and my husband seemed to be the only souls present with a desire to sit, connect, and take in the beauty and activity around them.
Albert and Piper
Turkle is speaking of connection between individuals and our modern phenomenon of keeping each other at distances we can customize and control.  In her conclusion, she urges us to "look up, look at one another, and start the conversation." Michael Wesch also writes about a dire need for connection, in this case between students and the world.  
Wesch was not seeking to separate his students from their technology but he was desperate to help them learn to ask questions that might lead them to find meaning and significance in their education.  As Turkle found a disconnect between people, Wesch discovered a disconnect between students and the purpose of their "higher" education.  Devoid of any grand religious or national narrative, Wesch argues that students have become savvy test takers but are not inspired to be lifelong learners.
When Wesch does the hard work of studying and quantifying this disconnect (you can watch the resulting video he and his students created at the top of this blog), the results are disheartening for any teacher.  But the author/educator finds a point of connection, or at least the need for it, in the state of 'Spaceship Earth'.  He manages the learning environment and uses technology to help students discover for themselves the meaningful narrative that has been emerging during their lifetimes:  the alarming state of their planet and the need for them to connect (in the classroom and globally) in order change the trajectory.


I could have easily have taken the position that Turkle believes our devices cause us to disconnect while Wesch see their potential to bind us together in a grand new narrative.  However, I do not see them as opponents in the discussion of media and technology.  After all, they are both talking about the need for human connection, whether individual or global. As we discussed in class today, both educators are in search of the WHY.




Incredible! Hulk Lets It Go







Weebly Wobbles

Weebly is the first website I created and overall, I found it easy to use.
I was able to sign up easily, follow simple prompts to get started, and pick a theme. There are free and paid options.  

In the screenshot below you will see some of the prompts, options, and tools available:
As you can see, it is simple to build and edit your website using the prompts on the top of the page and the tools represented on the left side tool bar.  Where Weebly really wobbled for me was in choosing a theme.  It may well have been operator error, but I had great difficulty in personalizing any of the standard themes/backgrounds.
Once I found my way around that, I could explore more of the building options:



I probably should have used a tutorial to avoid my trouble with the theme, but I did not. For this assignment, I found several when I googled and I've included one here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJcncH4NQMA

I built this professional website fairly quickly for informational and job seeking purposes.  I look forward to revamping it for CURR 550.  I'll be exploring more of the options and digging into the toolbox to expand the website to serve my adult students and to be a potential resource for other ESL teachers, particularly those serving refugees.  

Narrative/Final Project

     This is the story of my professional website http://www.maryksteele.com .   Wait!   Before you fall asleep, let me assure you that i...