“Learning involves patience and time.” — EDUC 490 — Practicum Reflection
When designing lessons, I always consider how to incorporate the FPPL into my lessons. These principles allow for holistic, respectful, experiential and reciprocal learning.
Facilitating this Indigenous way of learning supports teaching students with diverse needs. This is especially true with the principle, “Learning involves patience and time.“
Students need time to practice what they have learned. The need time to process questions posed to them, and time to respond. This can be a challenge when some students have less patience than others and call out. This is one aspect I will continue to work on as a gain more experience teaching. In my previous practicum, I was the person worrying about time and did not always wait long enough to give my students time to process and answer. Students calling out is something I tolerate but I found myself asking students to wait this time to allow for other students to have a chance to respond. When some gifted students know all the answers, it makes it harder to have a class discussion. I did use group and pair work to help with this but those techniques have their own strengths and weaknesses.
In this latest practicum, I was more comfortable in ensuring students had ample time to process and think about responding to my questions. I tried to elicit their responses and was did my best to be inclusive when teaching the whole class. One example, was during my art class I checked for student understanding of the word “lark” in the poem, In Flanders Field. I had no response at first, then one student, who has severe learning disabilities answered, “Is it a dog?” Puzzled, I asked what made you think of that? He happily replied, “I don’t know but I like dogs.” I kindly replied, “Well that was a nice try, a lark is an animal, but it is not a dog. If we read the text closely, we can see that it can sing and fly, “The larks, still bravely singing, fly.” After I said this, the class quickly responded and could understand the imagery of the birds flying overhead looking down onto the battlefield below. It was important to be inclusive and respectful whenever students are brave enough to answer. Sometimes students answer jokingly. This could be due to anxiety, and in one case during my practicum, a student ironically ended up stating the truth. He was both shocked and proud to have come up with the right answer regarding the symbolic meaning behind the colors of the Indigenous medicine wheel. (Each color represents the different races of people in the world).