Presentation Reflection & Future Speculation

Today’s presentation was fine, though I’m a little sad I wasn’t able to incorporate my activity. This seems to be a common theme of mine – too much information, not enough interaction. Very ironic given the content I presented today… This is something I need to work on in an academic context. Thankfully, I feel I’ve been able to able to be relatively succinct when teaching in high schools.

I found this presentation was chiefly an exercise for my benefit. Although I designed my slide-show to be a resource for others, the creation of this resource was a critical step in helping me understand what has led to my current understanding of collaboration. This understanding will continue to evolve as I continue my research, however I’m particularly interested to see how my views shift as I implement ‘Building Thinking Classrooms’ during my long practicum. The opportunities to facilitate collaboration are abundant and I anticipate many unforeseeable problems. I am so grateful that my school advisor has given me freedom to explore this pedagogy.  

I’d like to touch on my intentions for further research. Recent reflections have led me to believe that my interests would align most strongly with an exploration of the role collaboration plays in community building. There are many ways to target this question – How is collaboration related to community building? Can we characterize different communities by their style of collaboration? What type of community do I hope cultivate in a math classroom? How can teachers use collaboration to cultivate a community of inquiry?

Lastly, a paper I recently wrote for EPSE 308 explored some parallels I’ve noticed between my utopic vision for collaborative classrooms and the community culture of 3^rd beach drum-circles. I am curious to see if this particular line of thought will yield any fruit. I’ve been able to leverage curiosity and intuition thus far in my teaching journey – given that drum circles have been a source of immense creativity and intuition for me, I’m optimistic that many strategies which enable success in drum-circles will have meaningful counter-parts in the context of collaborative learning. Excited for future reading!