What Have I Done?

With this post, I am wrapping up my fourth class in the DLL program. One-third of the way to my master's degree in education. My master's degree in education. That phrase has always intrigued me. I don't know if this is true for other languages, but I love the way that, in English, we tend to say "I'm working on my PhD," or "I'm getting my HVAC license" as opposed to, say, "I'm working on a master's degree." It's a very optimistic way of phrasing it--it expresses an assumption that there's a high school diploma, a bachelor's degree, a tech certification, a doctorate, whatever, just waiting out there for each and every one of us, and meant just for us. We don't have to create it out of thin air. We just have to take the steps to go get it.

Grow, Prune, Repeat...

It's time now to step back a little over 4 months (or approximately 237 years, depending on how you measure--time is subjective and relative, especially if you're a grad student and a music teacher around the holidays) and revisit my very first assignment in the DLL program, my growth mindset plan. It's really more of a presentation of a plan than a greatly detailed look at the plan itself, but that's neither here nor there for now.

We'll Start At The End....

In my last post, I outlined goals (both Big Hairy Audacious ones and...Little Bald Reticent ones?) for my innovation plan, which can be found here. In that post, I used a modified version of Fink's 3-column table to map out goals, activities, and assessments for the Technology-Assisted Music Course that is the keystone of that plan.

In this post, I've taken a different approach to do a deeper dive into one part of that class. Using the "backward design" principles put forth in McTighe and Wiggins' Understanding By Design (2005), I designed one of the culminating projects of the TAM course: an "audio self-portrait," in which students attempt to express part of their personalities through self-produced audio recordings of their own compositions.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals and Where to Find Them

In my innovation plan, I have proposed an online Technology-Assisted Music course for my district. There will be a year-long version for students, and a quarter-long professional development version for teachers, aimed at helping these teachers bring the ideas of a growth mindset and creative thinking into their own disciplines and learning environments. The entire innovation plan can be found here; below you will find the learning outcomes and learning and assessment activities for the teacher-targeted professional development version of the course, as well as a description of the driving motivation behind the plan, expressed in the form of what Collins describes, here and in many other places, as a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG (2018).

My Learning Philosophy

When I was 10 years old, I was a Cub Scout, and for Christmas my parents gave me a copy of the Boy Scout Handbook, to prepare me for moving on to the next level of Scouting. There were all kinds of interesting things in the book: identifying edible plants, first aid techniques, folding a neckerchief, etc. Of all the topics presented, one section that stuck with me was the section on firestarting. Not because I actually learned the skill; I can barely get a fire going in a fireplace. The reason that section stuck with me is that it began with an almost offhand example of a teaching philosophy that blew my young mind with its simplicity. The book is long gone from my shelf, but I can paraphrase at the very least. Its point was to the effect that "When someone asks you to teach them something, your first instinct will probably be to say 'Sure!' But your answer should be, 'No, I can't. But I'll help you learn for yourself!"

Creating Significant Learning Environments

As part of my DLL coursework in EDLD 5305, I created an innovation plan which involves establishing an online course in Technology-Assisted Music. The details of that plan can be found here, but, in summary, the intent is that this course will help both students and teachers use the study of digital audio production to enhance their creative skills, both individual and collaborative, and to develop a growth mindset, which is vital to any sort of learning.