NLGL Creative Synthesis
Frances Wittman
North Carolina State University
May 2, 2013
North Carolina State University
May 2, 2013
“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it" - Antoine de Saint ExupéryGraduate School: As I was entering my tenth year of teaching, I realized that the way in which students communicate with others was becoming very different than when I started my career. It was at this point I began looking for a learning opportunity from which I could gain some proficiency implementing technological tools into my curriculum that would meet the needs of today's students. Likewise, I was also searching for the opportunity to really reflect on what I felt would be important to emphasize in my classroom besides the standard college preparatory curriculum I was used to. A year or so later I was attending a WorldView Conference hosted by UNC when I heard Dr. Hiller Spires speak about the NLGL program. After doing a bit more research, I realized this was the opportunity I had been looking for. The program has truly been a transformative experience in the way I look at myself and my purpose in the classroom. I'm determined to maintain a relevant learning environment regardless of the future challenges we will face in the field of education.
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"All great changes are preceded by chaos" - Deepak Chopra
Rationale: In today's world, students’ needs are constantly changing, and we do a disservice by remaining insensitive to those changing needs. I tell my students that at the end of the year I want them to be able to feel COMFORTABLE and CONFIDENT communicating in any situation and with all people. Primarily, this focus of communication is on comprehension (but not in the sense of following a plot line and understanding symbolism), analysis (but not necessarily a literary analysis), and written communication (which includes, but is not limited to, a formal essay). Although collaboration and creativity seem to be the buzz words of the day, they need to be treated as skills that are taught in our classrooms with the same intentionality as vocabulary or math facts. Students need to see their classroom experience as a shared experience and be encouraged to help take ownership of that experience. They need the creative license to figure problems out – on their own and with others. Space needs to be given in the classroom for this kind of participatory learning, and often this means a certain amount of controlled chaos as students hit roadblocks, stumble, fail, and try again. That same license for chaos needs to be given to teachers as we also try new things, stumble, fail, and try again. Educational practices must change if we are going to fully prepare another generation of successful citizens to participate in our global community, and we need to understand the inevitability of both success and failure that will accompany this process as we attempt to make these changes.
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