Class 4-2-12

First thing's first:

We start today's class with a bit of chocolate. Good for the soul, good for hunger, bad for acne.

Next, we unpack the two guiding questions around which we built the class. We then give context around why we made some of our instructional decisions. All of this should take a remarkable five minutes.

As a reminder, our two questions are:

(1) How have our own life experiences facilitated the construction of our identities?
(2) How do our identities influence, shape, construct, and/or deconstruct our approaches to teaching and learning?

To ensure the hard work and inquiry of the Dragons' blog post is recognized, we'll then ask the Dragons to elaborate on their blog post, and we'll co-construct a third guiding question based on their input.

We will then dive into our "River of Life" activity.
The purpose of this activity is to look back and explore the life experiences we have had that have influenced construction our identities both as educators and people. Although we acknowledge that identity is strongly influenced by context (social, historical, political, environmental, emotional), we also assume that our life experiences are an element of this construction.

On your river, you could draw:

• Formative events/memories in your life


• Key challenges you've faced


• Turning points, unexpected events


• Important people, places, books, animals, robots, plants, or other earthly/unearthly materials that have influenced you.


• Anything else that may flow into your mind...

We like the metaphor of a river because it implicates the dynamic movement of our lives. There are times we've experienced transformational events that have completely changed the direction of our flows (where we thought were going) and other times, we have made small divergences (tributaries,maybe) that are memorable and formative. Please don't feel constrained to using the 'river' as a metaphor. We have plenty of resources and space for you to do your own thing.

Next, MJ will guide us on a protocol of discussion to unpack of the River of Life. We focus the protocol around the connection of life to identity and identity to instruction. It's designed to provide space for equality of participation.

Laura will then facilitate a whole-group discussion around the readings and the implications of the readings on our guiding questions, the river activity, and other inquiries as facilitated by the group.

Finally, we'll ask you to engage in a reflective exercise that you'll post to the blog. And, if time (and brownies) remain, we then commence pigging out more.