Choosing a Voice In My Work

Learning has been redefined.

I say this as a student who has been the typical A student who did what her teachers told her to do and followed the instructions with precision.

But now, learning is not about following directions to precision and doing exactly what your teacher, instructor, or professor says. It's such a broader and extremely uncomfortable matter.

Through this coursework for my Masters through the Digital Learning and Leadership Program at Lamar University, I've been uncomfortable with just being allowed to choose how I demonstrate my learning, almost in panic mode when told I needed to take ownership with my learning, and most certainly beyond scare to add my voice to how I learn and what I learn. The freedom given has been everything I needed but also everything I've shied away from.

The best way to define the Lamar Graduate program is simply defined by one simple quote spoken to use in our first course of EDLD 5302: Concepts of Educational Tech: " Be comfortable with being uncomfortable." My professor for that course, Dr. Harapnuik, often told us this as we first navigated through the DLL program. Never had these words been truer.

It was a course that first introduced the COVA (choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning) approach. Within this coursework, I was taught that allowing myself the freedom to choose and voice what and how I learned a concept was really an opportunity to take ownership of my authentic learning. I didn't feel comfortable navigating through what I thought was a discourse of learning. The first 5 weeks were a challenge in keeping me authentic in my learning. I wasn't at all entirely comfortable. After Dr. Harapnuik told our class one evening to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, I was taken back that the only reason that I was frustrated and struggling was because I was not in my comfort zone of learning. More so, I was so used to the industrious way of learning, I didn't know that having a choice really provided an opportunity to be creative in my learning.

As I moved to the next course, Applying Ed Tech: Portfolio, I understood how my voice could make a difference. Eportfolio provides learners a space to navigate and create a significant learning environment. My blog space became my place to create and apply my learning of concepts. This was the place that I found that how significant COVA was to my coursework and application of my learning. I created blog posts about what I was learning as well as questioned what I was learning.

In one of my blog posts, Giving and Taking in a Team, I reflected on a not so great year and realized that mindset does affect a team dynamic. I made comparisons and developed questions to Carol Dweck's "A Growth Mindset" and Adam Grant's " Are You a Giver or Taker" Tedtalk. It was a post that really posed questions about team dynamics and how to build a team that worked in sync to a common goal. Update: I still haven't found a secret to building a strong team. But, knowing my place in my team helped me understand how my mindset and role can make its own difference.

By choosing this topic to create a post over, I opened myself up to examining my role in my team as well as reflecting on my contribution at that time. I allowed myself to examine what fixed mindset I put myself in and also learned through how I could develop a better growth mindset. In the effort to understand more about the growth mindset and dynamic of individuals in a team, I challenged myself.

Was I ready for that moment of enlightenment? No. Not one bit. But, I did know that if I wasn't challenging myself was I really learning?

COVA isn't just about choosing, owning, and voicing an assignment development. I think it's about choosing to reflect, voice, and owning up to what an individual learns within the skills they are challenged to learn. I challenged myself to reflect on my past experiences and within that skill, I taught myself an authentic lesson.

As in control as I wanted to be in my learning, I also forgot that COVA did put in my control rather than the instructor in control of me. I learned skills of problem-solving which translated back to my work as well as to my team. This

In making a difference in my team, I had to create an innovation plan that would help benefit our students. The course, Disruptive Innovation in Tech, again brought COVA into what my plan was going to be, how I was going to deliver, and why I wanted to create the plan. My innovation plan was deeply challenging as I couldn't even narrow an idea that would benefit my students.

So, I gave myself the challenge to develop a blended learning program that would help students grow in their learning as well as develop a mindset that allowed them to see the struggle as an opportunity to learn and master their skills. COVA allowed me to create a plan of action as well as develop a program that allowed students to choose how they were going to demonstrate mastery of concepts. Building my innovation plan did provide the challenged me in developing a plan that has become a project that increased my knowledge of blended learning and prepared me in creating a significant learning environment.

This past January I was able to create a plan of execution for my innovation plan in Leading Organizational Change. I think using COVA allowed me to create a plan of execution that fits the needs of my organization, my content, as well as my team. With this plan in focus, I was able to really decipher and dig into what was necessary for the outcome of what I wanted my learners to know.

I also created a realistic goal in mind as well as understanding that this might have to change in the next year since we were getting new learning standards by the state. Letting that knowledge led me to create a plan of execution that would not only measure the knowledge of students but also increase the attendance of students in tutorials.

I think the COVA approach and Creating a Significant Learning Environment aligns with my learning philosophy because it's the reason why I created an innovation plan that allows students to choose how they display what they know rather than being told. By allowing students to have that choice, it follows my learning philosophy that learning is for everyone.

My perspective on learning has changed. I've always had this fixed mindset that learning was regiment and you had to do exactly as the instructions were told. I was fitting every learner into a one size fits all teaching. Whereas, learners are all different in how they learn and why they are learning. What works for one learner might not work for the other. That is the adjustment that educators have to make. The COVA approach and Creating a Significant Learning Environment provides exploration and inquiry to learners that fit their learning needs.

To be honest, I think I took for granted what I learned in my past course. In the effort to stay on task to what we taught. I gave up the idea of a COVA approach often. Not every day does my classroom take on the COVA approach. And I regret that tremendously.

I actually have a choice in how I deliver my lessons in my classroom as long as I stick to the same skills and mentor text. Within that freedom, there has been plenty of opportunities to use the COVA approach and create a significant learning environment. This is where I have my regrets. Knowing what I know, this the freedom that I asked for and wished for so that I could create a significant learning environment for my students. I know that changing the past is not an answer to the problem. I am deciding that now, I need to develop my lessons with COVA in mind as well as my learners.

Working with middle school learners, there is a lot of guidance in giving them choice ownership and voice in their assignments. We recently did a tic-tac-toe board where they were given assignments choices. But, it wasn't authentic or challenging to them. I think giving students an opportunity to inquiry-based assignments will provide an opportunity to have choice, voice, and ownership and authentic learning.

Starting next semester, we are as a campus having common formative assessments that will allow us to teach and deliver lessons differently but assess the same skills. So my organization is also looking at creating small-group blended learning environments as well. COVA approach and CSLE will play an important part in developing our classrooms. Since we are moving into CSLE for our classes, the COVA approach is a starting point for my colleagues. In this new change, creating professional learning about COVA approach should be implemented in helping guide my school into a more authentic learning environment.