Final ADL Contribution to Learning

This was a really challenging semester. Not necessarily because of the workload for the two classes, but because I was trying to balance the work with summer life and starting a new job. There was a lot of competition for my attention and honestly, it was very difficult to become and stay motivated for each assignment. What saved me from phoning it in was the COVA approach. These assignments were mine and in the end, I couldn’t do less than my best. The videos and reading assignments provide valuable perspectives and insight into relatable issues, and I know I will always have one important takeaway from each assignment. I was able to work with Eboni Mitchell and Chris Aebig again this semester, and they have been the biggest supporters throughout the entire program. I have always enjoyed working with people, but after working with Eboni, Chris and others so closely throughout the ADL program, I truly understand how powerful collaboration can be.

I was initially nervous about taking the 5315 Action Research course. Data collection and analysis seemed to be a bit outside my current skill set, and I thought this might be a class that doesn’t really apply to my professional situation. But after reading Action Research, I felt so much more confident that teachers already complete informal action research and that with a couple of additional steps to formalize the process, I could have valuable data to help inform and shape my teaching practices as well as to influence others (Mertler, 2019). This was a course that I had to continuously refer back to the book for study methods and data collection information and that is still something that I need to continue to learn and apply. I don’t know that I will truly grasp the action research process until I implement my plan in my classroom, but this course gave me everything I needed to begin.

5320 gave me an opportunity to step back and reflect on my experience and learning journey through the ADL course. It reminded me of a lightbulb moment I had in my sophomore year of college in a higher level history course. I had earned a B in the first course with this specific professor, and I was on the A/B line in the second course with one test to go. For all of high school and that first history course in college, I studied facts. The lightbulb moment hit when I was studying for that last test and realized that to accurately show deeper learning in my essays, I needed to show how people and events across the world in a given time period were all connected and influenced by each other. Once I took the time to look for the connections and relationships, I started to become a real student of history rather than just a human timeline. Coincidently, this new method of studying and thinking also gave me my A in the class. 5320 has given me the time to connect and truly digest everything that I have learned in a very fast paced graduate program. I was able to not just focus on WHAT I created but how and why. One of the best examples of the impact this course has had on me was in my creation of the last video. I had tried to create an animated video at the beginning of the ADL course, but I spent several hours trying to figure it out with no visible success, so I gave up and moved onto a different video format. This last time around, I again spent several “fruitless” hours trying to create an animated video, but this time I tried to focus on what I was learning instead of what I was not producing. I knew that I could create something similar to my last one and earn a good grade, but I really had my mind set on an animated video. So instead of giving up and focusing on the time I had wasted, I tried another approach until something worked. It was a much harder process and took way more time than I had originally planned, but I feel satisfied about the final product and even more satisfied at the learning journey I took to reach that final product.

References

Mertler, C. (2019). Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators. SAGE Publications, Inc. https://edge.sagepub.com/mertler6e1/student-resources/chapter-2/video-resources