During week 6 Ed253 learned about wide-awakeness and the moral life. The components listed were, agency, awareness, commitment, consciousness, indifference, mechanical life, and the system. In a preview of the lesson by Dr. Shutkin, I was intrigued to see how many different ideas the students had put on the board under each category. It encouraged me to think further outside my norms and really challenge the topics. When reading the essay about wide -awakeness and moral life, the theme of being “woke” ultimately stuck out to me. The learning experience allowed me to test my knowledge and develop further understanding of the reading. When looking for a current event article, I was motivated by the topic of agency to do some further research. While browsing I stumbled across a teacher agency article and immediately a light bulb went off. Teacher Agency, in my mind, allows individuals to be put in opportunities where they are able to choose awareness, commitment, consciousness, avoid indifference and mechanical life and even challenge the system. When teachers are given the power to make decisions not only in the classroom, but for their own professional development, they are educated on how to improve the system. When having new professional development opportunities, teachers are able to have a mechanical life that includes having new knowledge and ideas that are encouraged and nurtured. When teachers are able to make their own decisions, they often feel the opposite of indifference towards the atmosphere in their schools and classrooms. Teacher Agency encourages commitment, awareness and consciousness because individuals feel like their voice is being heard and are motivated.

My article, https://www.edutopia.org/blog/five-ways-increase-teacher-agency-professional-development-anne-obrien more than shocked me with it’s statistics. The article quoted that only 53% of teachers believed that their opinions were being included in decisions made for their school. This high percentage number only leads to more employees having lower job satisfaction. The article, instead of basing itself in the classroom, focused on teacher’s professional development, something that stuck out to me because usually through teacher agency there is more focus on the students. This article however, talked about professional opportunities necessary for educators in order to improve and perfect their craft, teaching. It tackled issues such as individuals needing more training and relevant events funding by the schools that they can actually implement in their classrooms. The definition provided by the article was; the capacity of teachers to act purposefully and constructively to direct their professional growth and contribute to the growth of their colleagues. The interesting part about this definition was the focus on the educators. It prompted me to conclude that individuals, no matter where they are in their life, when able to access new opportunities, are often more motivated. This motivation when a teacher is crucial to enable one to be woke. This wokeness transforms into commitment and consciousness. When researching my article I came across another article talking about how to increase teacher voice https://www.edutopia.org/blog/increasing-teacher-voice-decision-making-anne-obrien. A new survey from the Center on Education policy concluded that nearly half of teachers would quit their jobs for a higher-paying job. This statistic once again, left me shocked. The 3-step method was for teachers to Listen, Learn, and Lead.

For my class activity, I decided to allow most of the session to be conversational lead. To begin, I had each individual give me their definition of teacher agency and I wrote it on the white boards so we could refer to it after. After mentioning a few key points I again prompted my group to think about what opportunities they would want as a teacher to further professional development and their love of learning. I found this to be super impactful for me as I watched the article come alive in ideas of mental health training, open discussions in place of a staff meeting, leadership skills and how to implement them in and beyond the classroom, and how to get involved in “the system” or legislation of education laws. Following this question, I asked the students if they ever experienced a teacher who was frustrated with their school curriculum or education system. Not one person said they had never seen it. Kate told an inspirational story about how her teachers had formed a union and would wear shirts every Friday. I saw this as a super encouraging movement by the teachers to show their students that when there needs to be a change, individuals can come together and allocate resources. To end the discussion, I had each of my classmates give me their new definition of teacher agency. Each definition I wrote on the board from my friends was a definition that I either aspired to be, or hoped to be able to incorporate into my life as a teacher. Leaving that class, I felt super motivated and supported that if I was working in a school with those 15 other teachers, that we would all be striving for teacher agency to support each other, and most importantly have all of those positive aspects trickle down onto our students to enable them to take on more meaningful learning.

Our reading focused on the Progressive Era from 1890s-1920s. We learned about Progressive Teachers and how they tried to put the student first, incorporate real world situations, and that every student has their needs best fit for them as an individual. There was a heavy influence on pragmatism, establishing an important foundation for the students in early childhood education encouraging students to take interest in what they do well it. Overall I believe the Progressive Era was a push for social change, benefits for the community, and to improve life conditions for the maximum amount of people. Progressivism is the belief that learning how to learn is more important than knowing a specific facts. Clild centered expierental learning created a move for schools curriculum. Learning about the lab schools made me have an “aha” moment when I realized the greater purpose of planting a seed in my 6th grade science class. The strength of learning experiences is taking prior knowledge and connecting it to the new material helping students gain a great understanding. Our LC agreed that is not only the job, but the goal of the teacher to prepare the student for the real world after schooling. Similiar to this agreement, Dewy believed teachers must prepare the child to integrate into the world. Outside of the classroom, individuals of the Progressive Era pushed for extracurricular activity involved to boast the role schools played in the community.

Our LC chose to demonstrate aspects of experiential learning and in attempts to teach like Dewey, created our own form of “Lab Schools” within the classroom. We decided to do a learning experience where the class would be involved in discussions and asked to participate frequently. We decided to emphasize the learning experiences to represent the Progressive Era because we ourselves, thought it was so interesting how aspects of new educational ideas, and still in our schools today. By taking the prior knowledge our peers have of their previous schooling, we connected their experiences to the text to help them understand where these educational elements originated. We took the passage of the texts that we most related to, such as extracurricular, lab schools, politics of the Progressive Era, and the Progressive Era as a whole.

For our learning experience we used several tactics to involve the classroom. We used google slides to give a visual aid to the classroom with important quotes and ideas from the text. Each group member enaged the students in a learning experiene and then followed with slides that connected the learning experience to the Progressive Era, historically and in everyday progressive representations. Members of our group incorporated the white boards for four corners, post-it note wraparound reflection and classroom participation through questions as different elements of learning experiences. Google Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dYbxCLr-wTIXvj888mb-t9-nURzmoRaaeboBQEsGEdM/edit?usp=sharing

We met in the library to go over the content and figure out how to make the goal of the lesson a reality. Personally, I reviewed the notes from the reading and picked 4 main topics from the Progressive Era. I attempted to pick topics that we could easy incorporate learning experiences as an intro to the idea and further teach the material in an effort to connect with the classrom. From there, we all worked together and brainstormed pedagogical ideas and what learning experiences would be the most effective on our classroom audience. I located the wraparound reflection on the link Teaching Ideas from Facing History which we decided to use as the closure for our learning experience. Throughout our presentation day I attempted to keep track of timeto take advantage of our opportunity to teach.

One of my responsibilities during the learning experience presentation was to start the Progressive Era conversation by asking students about lab experiences in their early childhood or middle school classes. I tied these examples to Dewey’s ideas of lab schools and experimental learning. I brought to light the idea of child-centered learning and the foundations of the Progressive Era. I went on to talk about the attempt at cirrculum reform, produced in 1917, the Cardinal Principles Report. They listed seven objectives of education: health, command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, livelihood, civic educatio, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character. I incorporated this curriculum reform as a way to share varioues elemts of the Progressive Era, not just the movements within the classroom but to education as a whole. My notes from the reading and the meeting with Dr. Shutkins were shared with the group to draw on for materials and ideas.

Reading : Janak, Edward 2019.  The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education. Chapter 4: Education in the Progressive Period (ca. 1890s–1920s). Switzerland: Palgrave Pivot. pp. 43-63. 

Tools : https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies

1. I go by Mary, nothing fancy or any cool nicknames. My preferred pronouns are she/her/hers.
2. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
3. Freshman; Early Childhood Education with a minor in leadership development through the leadership program.
4. I am COO of Kappa Alpha Theta and I cantor mass Sunday here at JCU. I’m also involved in SUPB, dance marathon, hold a work study position in the musical department, and participate in intramural sports. In highschool I played basketball and sang, some of my friends would joke I was “Troy Bolton” from High School Musical because of my love of both sports and musical theatre.
5. This artile about inclusive leader embodies my goals as a leader. All throughout high school and even through my first semestre at college I have found myself, or worked to be in, leadership roles. I try to be the leader that creates a community where people not only feel comfortable as if they belong, but are excited to be a part of the community. I think it’s important for leaders to understand how much inclusive membership can enhance performance while encouraging others to take on responsibilties and ownership of their work. Article/ Website : https://hbr.org/2019/03/why-inclusive-leaders-are-good-for-organizations-and-how-to-become-one
6. My weekly service is on Tuesdays at Noble Elementary tutoring the students there.
7. I am visual tactile learner. Hands on experience and hand writing notes is how I study. For me to feel comfortable, I need to be encouraged to step outside of the box and appreciate failure in terms of advancing learning.
8. A few of the significant issues I see in the field of education is the failure of having equal opportunities straight with students in elementary school. Another issue I see is teachers involved in the field that are not passionate about learning and their students. The difference in the educational standards from state to state, and north to south on a larger scale scare me. All students and teachers deserve to be able to strive for academic excellence.
9. What is your favorite assignment or activity in ED253? Which do you like more- learning or teaching?

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