Instruction Adventures

I have always considered interal and external reflection to be an important part of my growth and development as a person. The tools that prompt this self reflection have throughout my life have been quite varied so I should not have been surprised when this article became such a tool. The truth was, however, that surprise was mild in comparsion to the reflection that this article created within me. It was more on the level of eye-opening that had me reassessing some of my core ideas about teaching as well as reflecting back to my earlier academic influences.

My academic background has been heavily influenced by lecture based classes and in my heart of hearts I always believed that this would be the way I would conduct my own classroom. However, eight years have passed since I was a freshman and since that time some my ideas have evolved as I have grown as a student. I thought about ways I would change this or tweak that, but it was all centered around a lecture and discussion type format. Upon entering into the MLIS program, I realized that teaching pedogogy had shifted somewhat in a new direction with learning outcomes and some teachers calling for moving away from lecture based classes. This put me into somewhat of a tailspin about my original ideas on teaching. I was intrigued by the new shift and eager to learn more, but the more I learned the more muddled my internal ideas became. It was upon reading this article that a cord was struck with me and I felt that I began to gain some clarity.

The clarity I derived from this article came in two parts. The first part that I was focused upon was that teachers all had various teaching styles and one particular method was not better than another. This revelation was like light shining for me into a dark room. I knew on a certain level that this was true but when I looked back some of my best teachers almost all of them used the lecture based approach. Upon entering into my MLIS program, many of my professors had wonderful but varying teaching styles. This is where the waters got muddled in my mind because I was not sure which path I should follow. Reading this article however made my realize that I was not alone in this confusion.

The second part that I derived from the article was the concept of balance and this point right here cleaned up my internal traffic jam. The article gave examples of some of the best practices of teachers using various methods in a hybrid fashion. From this, I realized that I did not have to fore go my plans of using lecture but I also did not have to just be restricted by it either. The knowledge that I could have a hybrid teaching method not only thrilled me but made me realize once again that not everyone learns in the same way. Knowing now that when I go into a classroom I could possibly have a teaching method that could reach students on various levels is thrilling to my internal core.