Aligning Portfolios & Outcomes

I have been a teacher for ten years and seen students meet learning opportunities with distaste and disdain. In their perspective, the content may be irrelevant at best and undesirable at worst. There is also the added pressure of school districts, actively searching for ways to minimize the necessity of the content. Thomas and Brown offer a different perspective, “…learning should be viewed in terms of an environment—combined with the rich resources provided by the digital information network—where the context in which learning happens, the boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and information within it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way.” This is why I have set as “My Big Hairy Audacious Goal” to teach a class that integrate English and History skills.

The concept of an integrated, skills based class this has been tried before and the execution has been very flawed. My approach would call for students to have a set of learning outcomes that specifically target the content of a History class. Student will be required to student, obtain, and demonstrate mastery on these learning with each topic. As History has topics that span centuries, activities (that integrate well into/taken from an English classroom) will be present in this class to build long term, cross-curricular skills. These activities can be generally summarized as reading, writing, and creation; expressed a variety of ways. Students will be allowed to choose the ways in which they express that mastery and display it as part of their ePortfolio. Students will use the content, apply what they have analyzed, and create something to demonstrate the learning outcome.

Learning is so much more than just the knowledge obtained in the class. There should be a quantitative change in the students. Most students I met felt weak, disempowered, and isolated. The change I wish to see happen through this process is that students feel empowered to create whatever they wish. I see the next step in this process as learning to work in community. Students mostly come into the classroom with a hive mentality based in their culture. This is toxic to their personal and academic careers. The ability to demonstrably work in community is a transferable skill that can end any type of strife. Above all else, they should love learning and that love should replace any hate with that love.

References

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of Constant Change. CreateSpace?