Integrated Planning, Instruction & Assessment

Queen’s University
PME 810
Module 5 Assignment – Connecting to Professional Community
“Aboriginal Circle of Educators (A.C.E).
By: Kerri Smart

As mentioned in my previous post, I chose to connect with the Aboriginal Circle of Educators (A.C.E.). The reason why I chose this association to connect with is because I find that the groups beliefs and the sites information closely relate to my goals as an Aboriginal educator. I have specialized in Aboriginal teaching, through teachers college and my Masters and felt that connecting with this association would allow me to develop my professional practice, gaining valuable knowledge about aboriginal education so that I can apply this to my teaching practices in the classroom.

Unfortunately, I did not hear back from the association. I emailed Deborah Clark, the Executive Director of A.C.E and explained a little bit about myself. I wanted to share information and learn from others, about how aboriginal education relates to curriculum (i.e., which curriculum conception(s), philosophy/philosophies, design(s), etc. relate closely to aboriginal education and pedagogy). I included my thoughts in the email as well as a brief background just in case they weren’t really knowledgable about the topic. I explained how I feel that pragmatism and social reconstructionism closely relate to aboriginal education. I also said that I believe that aboriginal education is very much learner based and society-culture based.

Although I was really looking forward to touching base and learning how members of A.C.E connected aboriginal education to curriculum, I do understand that the timeline of this assignment is restricted. I am however hoping to hear from them soon. Even though the course will be finished soon,  I will still be sure to update this site to include any future interactions I have with the association. So please stay tuned!! 🙂

Here is the email I sent to Ms. Clark about my thoughts and the connections I have made to curriculum, and how such relates to my understanding of aboriginal education and pedagogy in the classroom.

Email to Deborah Clark, Executive Director of A.C.E.

November 8, 2016, 8:25pm.

Hello Ms. Clark,

I hope you are doing well today.

My name is Kerri Smart and I am a newly Ontario certified teacher and a Masters of Education candidate at the Queen’s University Faculty of Education at Kingston, ON, where I am specializing in Aboriginal education. For the past five years, I have been working at the Tahatikonhsotontie Head Start program on the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory as the Administrative Assistant and Mohawk language teacher. 

I am writing this email today because I am eager to connect with you as I found your website/blog online entitled “Aboriginal Circle of Educators”. The title and the information contained within your website intrigued me as I am an Aboriginal educator. Although I am a new teacher, I understand the importance of Aboriginal education because I was an aboriginal child who struggled through the education system (particularly high school) and realize that aboriginal children need to feel supported and engaged in the classroom, as well as included. As an aboriginal educator, I feel it is necessary to do such as a way of assisting in closing the gap on aboriginal education. As a teacher, I also wish to help promote and encourage the self-identity of my students. My two primary goals as a teacher are to: create pride and create success in my students. 

In an effort for me to be the best teacher I can be for my students, I have decided to get my M.Ed so that I can learn as much as possible about teaching. One particular course I am interested in is curriculum planning, implementing and assessment. As a professional development goal, I have decided to contact you today to ask for your input on the aforementioned topic to increase my knowledge as a teacher.  

I am interested in learning more about your thoughts on how aboriginal education fits into curriculum and which philosophies, conceptions and designs of curriculum fit aboriginal pedagogy in the classroom. Are you by any chance familiar with this? If so, I would love to hear your thoughts! 

If you are not familiar, that is ok too of course! 🙂 I have attached to this email, a chart of my understanding of curriculum philosophies, conceptions and designs as well as how I see planning, implementing and assessing to fit to each curriculum design. I have been recently trying to connect aboriginal education to the various aspects of curriculum and have created a new, separate concept map to brainstorm my thoughts:

https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/curriculum-aboriginal-education-df17240be447496fa67af12d4820f02c

I am hoping to connect with aboriginal educators and professionals to share my understanding of curriculum and to get new insights and knowledge from experienced educators so that I can better my teaching practice. 

I would appreciate any information about and/or your thoughts on the topic of curriculum, particularly how it relates to aboriginal education. I would like to thank you in advance for viewing my email and I look forward to connecting with you. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me via email at kerri.smart@queensu.ca. 

Sincerely,

Kerri Smart, OCT
Administrative Assistant & Mohawk Language Teacher
Tahatikonhsotontie Head Start

Queen’s University
PME 810
Module 4 Assignment – Foundations and Principles in the Context of Practice
By: Kerri Smart

Aboriginal Circle of Educators

I have chosen to connect with the “Aboriginal Circle of Educators” (A.C.E) association. Their website can be found here. Aboriginal education is my specialization as a teacher and it is truly one of my passions. The reason why I have chosen to become a part of A.C.E is because I intend on using my teaching knowledge and experiences (professional), as well as my ancestral background knowledge and experiences (personal) to teach children using Aboriginal based pedagogical practices and resources and I feel this website will assist me in doing so.

I have searched for and reviewed various aboriginal teacher based associations and I really liked the information and lay out of the A.C.E site and blog. It has a lot of wonderful and detailed information about the association, including its formation, goals and mission statement, a blog that entails upcoming events on aboriginal education, great aboriginal resources for educators, and much more!

It is my hope that I will be able to share my knowledge and experience of teaching aboriginal content with other educators on this site, as well as connect and collaborate with them so that together we can create better learning outcomes for the children whom we teach. I feel that in making connections as such, I will be able to learn more as a teacher and gain an even deeper understanding about aboriginal education. This will serve me both personally and professionally.

Making Connections

For the most part, I find the A.C.E site to be very user friendly. I can easily access and reply thoughts to the A.C.E. blog when I visit it but it would be nice to receive ongoing information that I can view. I am not one to use Twitter or Facebook and these are the only means that I can receive daily information from A.C.E. I have decided however to sign up for emails to receive important information on upcoming events and additions to the site. I am still debating on becoming a follower of A.C.E on Twitter because I feel that I don’t log in much and may not use this method enough in the future whereas I do check my emails daily. Luckily, besides this I have not had any problems with gaining access to A.C.E.

About the A.C.E Website & Blog

As previously mentioned, I really appreciate how the A.C.E website is very user friendly. The information contained within the website is organized into section tabs that can be found at the top of the page and can be easily accessed without too much “searching.” The main mode of communication is via a blog, which the Executive Director Deborah Clark posts to and moderates. The only con to having such a blog is the fact that members can only reply to posts and cannot actually initiate posts. I think that if the website were to offer a spot for all members to post thoughts, findings, comments, suggestions, etc., this may entice even more members to become apart of the Aboriginal Circle of Educators because even more collaboration could occur. I feel that the humanistic/self-actualization and social reconstruction curricula conceptions make the foundations of the A.C.E association. It is very much grounded in pragmatism and social reconstructionism, primarily focusing on the individual and their experiences as well as societal need.

Overall, I am very impressed with the information and design of the A.C.E website. I really look forward to making this professional connection and maintaining it on an ongoing basis to enhance myself as a professional educator working within an aboriginal community.

October 21, 2016 Blog Post – My Thoughts on Video “I Just Sued the School System”

Hello everyone,

I watched a video the other day that really had me thinking. It was so insightful and powerful. It actually gave me chills and wanted to make me cry. It’s very sad in a sense but there is a sense of hope because it comes as a reminder about why we became educators and the fact that we are all working towards changing the education system to make it better for the next generations to come, simply by continuing our education and enhancing our practice.

The man speaking is so powerful – his words, his voice and his outlook. It was actually quite funny because I often speak to people about my outlook on the education system, including those I work with, and when my colleague seen this, she too said “this is everything you have been talking about!” I really mean no offence to anyone working in mainstream education (whatsoever!)-I just see there are injustices happening and I am sure most of you can relate. What we are learning in this course really emphasizes this man’s point. It’s important that we look at what is and is not working with our planning, instruction and assessment methods and change them to enhance overall student achievement. When I watched this video, I made many connections to what we are learning here. For instance, one connection I have made was when the man in the video says (school) “was made to train people to work in factories” (YouTube, 1:38) and then read schools use “scientific management like factories.” (Shepard, 2000). It’s so true.

I haven’t done much challenging in this course, but now I see a need to challenge the “subject matter” curriculum designs. It quite frankly doesn’t work (or at least seems to be the most ineffective approach to say the least). Without giving too much information, I can assure you that after you watch this video, you too will agree.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I did. It’s definitely one to keep as a reminder!

Thank you,
Kerri

Sources:
Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14. doi:10.3102/0013189X029007004

YouTube. (2016). I Just Sued the School System. Retrieved on October 19, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTTojTija8.

Queen’s University
PME 810
Module 3 Assignment – Planning, Instruction & Assessment Approaches in Different Curricular Designs
By: Kerri Smart

Hi All,

I am probably the only person who has created 3 different concept maps in this course. I just had to! I had difficulties at first deciding how to lay out my map, and so I made the second one but now after going to finish this part of the concept map, I ran out of room and realized that Word was just not cut out to do a good concept map. So I created one using Mindomo because it allows the viewer to be more interactive when viewing and it is much easier to move around the map. I hope you don’t mind! Enjoy 🙂 And I look forward to hearing your feedback. I must say, again, I struggled a little on this task but not near as much as the modules prior. It’s all beginning to become clearer!

My New Concept Map as of October 19, 2016 To view my interactive map and check out my notes, please go to: https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/pme-810-planning-instruction-assessment-192f93f3d56e4c8591942c6461229f66

Please let me know if you have any difficulties accessing it.
Thank you,

Kerri

Queen’s University
PME 810
Module 2 Assignment – Connecting Curriculum Philosophies and Designs to Curriculum Conceptions
By: Kerri Smart

**CORRECTION: As of October 16, 2016, I have created a new chart in order to readjust my understandings of each curriculum aspect. I found that the original lay out of my connections was difficult to connect each aspect appropriately. My new chart was easier to attach several connections to one another. Here is my new chart:

Also, you will see that in my original chart, I made a couple mistakes that have now been fixed. I now see Curriculum as Technology as “Idealistic” not Pragmatic as well as I see the Humanistic approach as being more “Pragmatic” and not Idealistic. However, I did keep minor a connection between idealism being learner based because from my understanding, an aim of idealism is character development and self-realization which I think begins with the learner. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Thank you,

Kerri

Hello Everyone,

Please feel free to check out the visual representation I have created below to explain my understandings of how each curriculum philosophy and design connects to each curriculum conception. I look forward to hearing your thoughts! 🙂

Kerri

Queen’s University
PME 810
Module 1 Discussion Post
By: Kerri Smart

            After completing the readings in Module 1, I now have a better understanding of conceptions of curriculum. I can really appreciate the information contained within these articles because, as a new teacher myself, I haven’t really been acquainted with curriculum too much and so it has been great to become more educated on common conceptions of curriculum. I now have an understanding as to curricula that continue to be used in the education system and some that are no longer very popular or regularly used.

It seems as though most of the conceptions of curriculum that have been presented in the articles are being used today by educators across the world. All of the conceptions of curriculum that have been explained, can be categorized into four general categories; individual, society, technology and academia. There are commonalities among many of the conceptions of curriculum across authors. For example, Pratt’s (1994) conception of curriculum entitled Individual Fulfillment is similar to McNeil’s (2006) Humanistic conceptions of curriculum. These aforementioned conceptions of curriculum focus on the student as an individual and believe that it is important for a student’s overall personal growth to learn and discover things on their own with the support of a teacher as a “resource centre” (McNeil, 2006). I can see why conceptions of curriculum that focus on the student as an individual continue to be used. I agree that encouraging personal development through student directed learning and inquiry/personal experiences creates confidence and strong cognitive/intellectual abilities for students to succeed outside of school. It also teaches young children how to be good moral adults as they enter adulthood; something which I believe should be a main priority of teachers.

On the contrary to the aims of the conceptions of curriculum previously mentioned that focus on the student as an individual, there are some conceptions that focus mainly on societal needs more than the student’s. For instance as suggested by their names, conceptions such as Eisner and Vallance’s Social Reconstruction-Relevance, McNeil’s Social Reconstruction, Pratt’s Social Transformation and Sowell’s (2005) Social-Relevance Reconstruction, focus on societal needs over individual needs. Commonly believed, these approaches can create the “perfect world” (McNeil, 1992) by providing students with tools and skills to analyze the world around them so that they can survive in a changing world and will be able to work to find solutions to existing political and societal problems. These are important and commonly used conceptions of curriculum because teachers need to prepare students for life as adults. When students leave school and become adults, they need to understand that the world around them is changing and there are problems that will need to be addressed. It is the job of adults across the world to create positive change for a better future for the children to come. Therefore, conceptions of curriculum such as these will allow students to think more diversely about the world around them and the societal and political problems that exist within it.

Technology Curriculum and Academic Rationalism are also common conceptions of curriculum used by educators. Technology curriculum focuses on using technology to communicate knowledge and “big ideas” to students. I believe that in the technological world that we live in today, this conception of curriculum proves to be very successful in reaching out to student interests because they are familiar with technology as a tool. Academic rationalism is successful because it allows students to think critically which prepares them for life as adults, which is again, another main priority for teachers.

Two conceptions of curriculum that are not currently being recognized and/or used by curricular theorist are Eisner and Vallance’s Self-Actualization (because it has been replaced by a new, more appropriate conception entitled Personal Success and Commitment to Learning) and Pratt’s Feminist Pedagogy. As a part of development and to ensure essentially the best educational outcomes for students, curricular theories/developers need to revisit these conceptions of curriculum to ensure they are doing just that; creating student success. If for whatever reason these conceptions are no longer contributing to student success or changes need to be made, conceptions of curriculum such as the Self-Actualization and Feminist Pedagogy conceptions will be adapted or unused.

Lastly, in my current position and workplace, the conceptions of curriculum that are most commonly used are the ones that mainly focus on the student as an individual; McNeil’s Humanistic curriculum and Pratt’s Individual Fulfillment curriculum. I believe the reason for this is because I work with very young children and they are at that age and stage where they require a ton of warmth and nurturing. Since they are so young, using a curriculum that focuses on societal needs would be too complex and complicated. Too, because young children are just becoming acquainted with who they are and the world around them, a more individual approach seems most appropriate.

Great Resources Regarding Planning, Instruction and Assessment:

• Humanistic/Learner Based: A Teacher’s P.O.V. on Starting Inquiry-based Learning in the Classroom.
  http://vimeo.com/85470752The Power of Student Voice to Enhance Teacher Practice
• The Power of Student Voice to Enhance Teacher Practice.
  http://vimeo.com/61528845
• Summerhill School Site – http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/trust.php
• Social Reconstruction: Ursula Franklin interview with The Current on CBC Radio (Part 1 of 2)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzJyDxI_S30
• Ursula Franklin interview with The Current on CBC Radio (Part 2 of 2)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UJkrZ396VI
• Ursula Franklin Academy.
  http://www.ufacademy.org/v5/
• Imagine Student Success Ursula Franklin Academy
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKp0TElK1O0
• Assessment Approaches:
• John Ralston Saul: Where is the Standardized Testing Trend Taking Us?
  http://vimeo.com/28412154
• Sir Ken Robinson: How to Escape Education’s Death Valley.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc (ONE OF MY FAV! (: )
• Read Steve Paikin’s Blog for the program titled, The Agenda.  Specifically the blogging regarding standardize testing and mathematics on this link that presents an article titled, “Some Heretical Questions on Math Education” by Daniel Kitts, Wednesday January 8, 2014 

• Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14. doi:10.3102/0013189X029007004

• YouTube. (2016). I Just Sued the School System. Retrieved on October 19, 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTTojTija8