In the morning over my coffee, I set an intention for the hour and for the day. I do this to give focus to the moment so that I can carry that intention throughout the day. And as usual, I started to think about learning. I realized that this notion of setting intentions is exactly what we want learners to do in our courses. We want them to set goals for learning beyond memorizing facts. We want them to set intentions for learning that will carry through to their other courses and their daily lives.
December 2014 archive
Introducing Participatory Professional Development
I’ve been a teacher of some kind or another for about as long as I can remember. From reading to young kids with processing disorders to teaching ten-minute playwriting and producing festivals to tutoring middle and high school students for cash in college, I seem to always find myself in some kind of educator role. So when I became a teacher – and not a geneticist as I had planned – no one but me was surprised. “Of course you became a teacher,” everyone said. “You were teaching toddlers when you were three,” they said. “You were born a teacher,” they said. And I suppose they were right.