Help! I need somebody... (to discuss AOL's with)
Hey everyone - hope you all had good weeks. I started my new teaching role this week so I am pretty tired now and haven't managed to do as much work as I had hoped to this week.
I wondered if anyone would be willing to talk about the Areas of Learning essays? I have a few brief ideas so I'm just looking at how to develop my ideas a bit more in a sense of getting my original subject titles off the ground and to start writing!
I have two ideas for subjects of the essays, the first being
Nurturing students as a teacher - I feel the broad range of people I have taught have allowed me to develop a strong sense of nurturing students during class and trying to help them become the best they can be. I think this could be partly down to my own training where I felt I could have been more nurtured during my experience (of course this is just my perception of it) and also down to teaching smaller children and then teaching adult from specialist population groups who were not training to become professionals. This allowed me to think about them as people and what they needed out of my class (why were they there? To escape life? To get fit? To make friends? To keep up training from their professional days?)
But then I also felt this linked in to how I have been able to differentiate my teaching in classes due to the wide range of people I have taught. Asking those questions as to why someone is there in my class has allowed me to adapt my teaching and exercises to suit everyone and make my classes inclusive. This is also due to my exercise instructor training, as there is a big focus on making classes inclusive by having modifications to exercises to suit the student, rather than everyone having to be exactly the same.
I also feel my delivery of classes is something I am good at, making the classes fun through how I explain exercises and how I instruct the class to perform them, I feel my classrooms contain engaged students who generally have or leave at least with big smiles on their faces. I enjoy making my students feel good and happy, and I like hearing laughter in the classroom as I know this makes the classes more fun. This may be partly down to having run a business with my dance classes - I knew the more fun I made the classes the more people would want to return. I think it could also be linked to my performance training; I have always liked to make people laugh and smile, so my classroom is no different. But is this a strong enough subject? I feel at the moment I can expand a few paragraphs on these but I'm not sure I have enough for essays.... I suppose I won't know until I write more though.
Would love your opinions on the subjects and how you are either looking at your AOL's at the moment or how you looked at yours if you are in modules 2 or 3. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks and have a great Sunday x
I wondered if anyone would be willing to talk about the Areas of Learning essays? I have a few brief ideas so I'm just looking at how to develop my ideas a bit more in a sense of getting my original subject titles off the ground and to start writing!
I have two ideas for subjects of the essays, the first being
Nurturing students as a teacher - I feel the broad range of people I have taught have allowed me to develop a strong sense of nurturing students during class and trying to help them become the best they can be. I think this could be partly down to my own training where I felt I could have been more nurtured during my experience (of course this is just my perception of it) and also down to teaching smaller children and then teaching adult from specialist population groups who were not training to become professionals. This allowed me to think about them as people and what they needed out of my class (why were they there? To escape life? To get fit? To make friends? To keep up training from their professional days?)
But then I also felt this linked in to how I have been able to differentiate my teaching in classes due to the wide range of people I have taught. Asking those questions as to why someone is there in my class has allowed me to adapt my teaching and exercises to suit everyone and make my classes inclusive. This is also due to my exercise instructor training, as there is a big focus on making classes inclusive by having modifications to exercises to suit the student, rather than everyone having to be exactly the same.
I also feel my delivery of classes is something I am good at, making the classes fun through how I explain exercises and how I instruct the class to perform them, I feel my classrooms contain engaged students who generally have or leave at least with big smiles on their faces. I enjoy making my students feel good and happy, and I like hearing laughter in the classroom as I know this makes the classes more fun. This may be partly down to having run a business with my dance classes - I knew the more fun I made the classes the more people would want to return. I think it could also be linked to my performance training; I have always liked to make people laugh and smile, so my classroom is no different. But is this a strong enough subject? I feel at the moment I can expand a few paragraphs on these but I'm not sure I have enough for essays.... I suppose I won't know until I write more though.
Would love your opinions on the subjects and how you are either looking at your AOL's at the moment or how you looked at yours if you are in modules 2 or 3. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks and have a great Sunday x
I looked at my experience and distilled it down into skills, almost like one would look at a university catalog and see the classes listed there. So mine were, IIRC, teaching--20 credits, technical theater--15 credits, performance--10 credits, choreography--10 credits, arts administration--10 credits, transfer credits from old university--10 credits. They didn't take the transfer credits (not sure why) but upped the credit levels on a few other areas so it worked out.
ReplyDeleteI picked that approach since I've done a bunch of random things in different areas and wanted to get credit for all of them. But there's a TON of different ways to organize them... I just found looking at them like uni classes helped me to categorize my experience.
Oh, and I should say Helen really helped me hammer them out too. I sent a preliminary list of what I was thinking via skype and she sent back a few thoughts that helped me get them all sorted. So I'd ask too if you are feeling really lost. The online nature makes it easy to feel isolated, but I know they want us to reach out if we need help.
DeleteOh I'm so glad I read this - I was in fact thinking about where to begin with the assignment essays. I do want to focus more on the research side of Kandyan dance though so maybe I should reach out to Dr Adesola about how I can approach the essays from a research POV. Nevertheless, I do like categorising them Hannah! Good tip!
DeleteHi both - thanks for your replies. That's really helpful thank you Hannah! I think its just also thinking outside the box as to what I consider 'things I can do' and what other people would class as 'skills'. Like I didn't include any arts administration until you mentioned it - but thinking about it I did run a business for over 2 years so I'm thinking I probably have some knowledge and skill in this area!
DeleteReally like your idea of listing it all out too Hannah, and Dilini I'm glad I'm not on my own :) Let me know if you want to chat more about them!
Hi Hannah - hope you are well - is there any chance you remember any literature you read on arts admin? Everything I've found at the minute is a little vague! No worries if not I just thought I'd ask :) x
DeleteChrissie thank you for asking the question that I think many of us were thinking :)
ReplyDeleteHannah thank you, as soon as I read your comments I started jotting down my ideas into categories too :) Yeah I agree, we do need to ask for help quicker and not try to finish the work before we have even asked for feedback on our initial ideas.
Hope everyone is enjoying the work and look forward to seeing what you areas of your practice you are focusing on.
Hi Linda, you know its really nice to hear that - I was worried everyone would have already got theirs all sorted! The category idea has been super helpful, and I've bullet pointed within the categories to get a good idea of what I want to include. How I need to develop it now is.. how do I express my experience as learning? I have been reading 'Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning' by Boud, Keogh and Walker. It has lots of different ways in how we can process experience as learning. I'm just still trying to find the words to express it! How are you finding that part? Happy Saturday!
DeleteHi Chrissie thank you for taking the time to reply :) I had a super long busy day but did manage to speak to my supervisor quickly, and we will have a long chat tomorrow night finally. My AOL list is now way too long so I hope we can really get me focused on the right route. I have just managed to get my hands on the book you are reading. Will have a good read tonight. It sounds absolutely perfect to guide us on the right path.
DeleteSounds like you are doing well and just jumped over that first little hurdle
Keep up the good work :D
Hi everybody so I was also panicking about the AOL essays. Thank you everybody for the comments I feel like I have a better understanding but please correct me if I’m wrong.
ReplyDeleteSo the AOL is different areas you would like to focus on ?
One of mine would be “understanding the students” “inclusive performance”
“Choreography”. So does this mean you would write specifically on these certain subjects or have I got this completely wrong ? How many AOLS do we need ?
Sorry for the late messages I am now stressed and feel like I have no idea what I’m doing lol
Hi Tara! Hope you're ok - I'm sorry I replied to you last night but for some reason it didn't show up this morning.
ReplyDeleteYes so AOL is areas you feel have been important to your learning. And I think you should write about how these subjects (the experience of them or experience of other things) has helped you become proficient in them and where literature sits within it!
I just got an email from Helen suggesting to aim for 4 AOL essays, she said there might be one that is a bit weightier which could be for more credits and one that you have less on which could be for 10 credits.
Does that help at all? Adesola said to me last year on my undergrad to just get writing and write all your thoughts on the page, then you keep going back and trying to understand what you've written and make sense of everything and that's how it becomes an essay! Hope that helps - we are all in the same boat! :) x
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DeleteHi Chrissie and Tara! How are both of you doing? Thanks for your blog posts, it helped a lot! Chrissie how is the best way to get an answer from Helen? Is email the best way or should I try calling the UK?
DeleteHi Marianella! Good thank you hope you are well too. I normally email her in case she is busy when I ring! Is everything ok? Hope the essays are going well x
DeleteHi girls!! Ok great not just me in a mild panic :)
ReplyDeleteIt took me a little time to work out that the AOLs were such a big part of the portfolio.... 4 did Helen recommend ?
At first I didnt' realise they were all to be submitted as essays and kind of put them to the side!! In my study plan I remember saying I will hand in an essay on my 'Personal Reflection on Professional Practice' and my ''claims''. Girls are the two both overlapping or would you say the reflective essay supports the evidence in the claims?
SO one quite lengthy and maybe one a little shorter and less / not as significant as the lengthy one Chrissie? I also cant get in touch with Maria, haven't heard back from her since our 1:1 10 days ago.
Girls also how much did you write in your AOL drafts? Just a brief description of each or just the topics ?
Tara you look so on track, I saw your blog last week. You have already been reflecting on your learning and made a lot of important references.
Hope you have time to write back real soon :)
Any help would be greatly appreciated xx
Hi Linda - don't worry - I got the dates for the hand in of the drafts wrong (I thought for some reason 17th November!) so I've been panicking all week and I think its made me really run down so even further behind.
ReplyDeleteYes Helen recommended 4 to me. Can you get in touch with Maria another way perhaps? Skype chat or something? I have really only focused on one essay so far and I've done double the recommended word count (recommended was 2000) so I need to cut down a lot. I'm hoping to get a lot done today so I can hand them in asap.
I didn't realise about the reflective essay either initially! I think we have these draft dates so we can make these mistakes anyway so just think of it as another learning curve.
Hope you're ok. Let us know if you want to chat as I'm sure one of us would be available to chat through anything with you! x