Communicating Your Ideas

I think I’m in the beginning stages of becoming an innovative educator. I consider myself an Accidental Teacher in that my chosen career straight out of college had nothing to do with teaching. It took 30 years and a life altering event to bring me to this career. I hope that all of my life experiences will help make me an innovative educator but I feel like I’m just getting started. At the beginning of my teaching career, I observed and learned from many great foreign language teachers who have a passion for teaching languages. I copied somethings and made them my own. What they all seem to have in common is creating their own curriculum from a variety of texts, and other resources. None that I have met seem to be looking toward technology as an asset in the classroom. I hope to be a resource to these teachers by providing access to my experiences and reviews of technology used in the foreign language classroom.  

Prior to taking this class, I would have thought that I was creating meaningful and authentic materials for my students. Now I’m rethinking how I should present lessons to my students to promote a growth mindset. I do believe that I have created an environment for learning that is not grade focused instead it is effort focused. I have created a blended classroom that incorporates content gamification and my students have responded well to the addition. I have also used Google Classroom to organize my assignments and resources. 

Kotter states very clearly why he advocates for a wide assortment of technologies to disseminate your message. Under communication can be the cause to “kill a change effort.” Not communicating enough and through various channels to ensure that the communication is received can jeopardize the success of any implementation project. It’s not enough to simply communicate your ideas and your efforts and your whys in one vehicle. Multiple channels of communication need to be employed so that your message reaches the ears of the audience you are targeting. Not doing so, risks the message being lost or undervalued.