5320
Blended Learning Innovation
Reflection and Compilation

My focus for my implementation of rotational blended project-based learning will focus on 8th grade science, more specifically advanced 8th grade science learners in a rural school district just outside of the greater Houston area. In order to successfully give learners tools to be able to solve the authentic learning problem, students will move through digital and face-to-face lesson elements that will guide their knowledge and thinking about the content as they work to solve a real-world problem. Over the course of this program I have expanded upon my basic idea and added depth and my whole heart into making this a cohesive implementation project ready to be implemented fully.

Start at the Beginning

To understand my innovation project fully, you have to start at the beginning of this journey, because to be honest without the sometimes difficult lessons and experiences with COVA + CSLE which forced me to evaluate my own learning philosophy and beliefs, none of this would be possible. Before this program, I had never experienced this type of learning and I will never forget my learning paralysis I had to grow through when I was given complete freedom over what I would be creating, how I would document all my work and learning, and ownership of the learning. I was so afraid of choosing the "wrong" thing to base my project on for the next year I really struggled to get started. I can safely say without the help of some of the most supportive and patient professors I have ever learned from, I would still be in the very beginning stages of my personal growth and innovation planning journey.

Thanks to the input and guidance I have received as I worked on perfecting and tweaking my original innovation plan I have created something that I am so proud of and passionate about it has taken on a life of its own. The COVA + CSLE approach paired with a growth mindset made this possible by continually pushing me just a little more outside of my comfort zone to add another layer of depth and substance to my innovation plan. Building in a reflection component to the learning process after every major step helped give me perspective and a chance to acknowledge just how far I had come after that struggle period. The reflection helped prevented burn out and overwhelm from the discomfort of being pushed out of my comfort zone at the beginning. Over time in this program I acclimated to this style of learning and that is when I started thriving and became fully comfortable with being uncomfortable with new challenges in life.

The learning approaches have radically changed me in all facets of my life including my personal, professional, educational, and even parenting. I feel that this program's biggest impact in my life has been that all the potential I have had has finally been unlocked and I no longer feel like I am the prime patient for imposter syndrome anymore. I have become comfortable in leadership roles, which I never thought possible. I have come to realize that leadership is not knowing everything or being arrogant enough to stand in the face of adversity and not back down, while that is a minor component, humility, relationship building abilities, and interpersonal skills are much more important tools for success of an effective leader.

The Future of COVA and CSLE

The more I learned about leadership and creating change, the more passionate I became about actually implementing the innovation plan I came up with at the beginning of the program, the more I advocated for my students and the more I pushed to implement my innovation plan. It was recognized by others and I was put into a leadership position within my team and on my campus. I have implemented COVA in my own classroom this year in my new role as the advanced science teacher and I have seen huge improvements on my students’ academic performance and their personal attitudes and ideologies about learning.

It was a struggle at the beginning as many students just wanted to check boxes and memorize facts, so I definitely learned a lot about how I need to better facilitate project-based learning at the beginning of the year to help with the anxiety of the process. I am going to incorporate the use of examples in which I show a finished product of another student coupled with some round table discussions that I believe will "hook" students in the content and ignite their curiosity or passion for the topic that can then be built upon to create the basis of their project. The hardest part both personally and from what I have observed is getting the original idea that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. Adding more resources and support at this stage will make all the difference, I believe.

Through my own changes in perspective of learning and starting the process of changing from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset I have noticed that I am passing on this type of thinking to my students naturally, because they see me modeling this type of behavior and thinking on a daily basis. My students have seen me take their advice about things that have not really worked in the classroom and then I made changes and made things work better for everyone. I have embraced that I constantly need to learn and grow and my students have also done that. I have seen much more positive interactions and just an overall boost in the positivity of our classroom culture.
I am hoping that over time, I can win my colleagues over to a blended learning environment that promotes COVA and the growth mindset, however, that is not proving to be an easy task. Many educators are so caught up in their whirlwinds that even mentioning changing the way they teach causes them to shut down. They don’t want to change the way they are teaching because it sounds like too much work and they are already struggling with the impossibly long to do list they are faced with. I am hoping that as I win people over and they start seeing positive changes, they will pass the word along and change to this type of teaching and learning philosophy will change across campus with a grassroots approach. Another problem we are having is dealing with issues with cybersecurity and our internet being attacked/at risk. As a result many colleagues that were already not comfortable using technology have lost faith in its reliability and effectiveness, which is going to make adopting COVA approaches more difficult for the foreseeable future.
All I can do is continue growing on my own blended learning and growth mindset journey and hope that all the positive things I am seeing will win over my colleagues. I truly believe that COVA is the way to win over our students that are sick of school because they are tired of feeling like they are failing year after year and believe that their effort and time is wasted at school because they will never use the information in their real life. COVA and CSLE are just one of those things in life that you have to experience for yourself to understand it. I know the real key to success of COVA and CSLE lies in this approach's ability to give learning a true purpose which allows students to become more engaged and willing to think critically to try to understand real-world issues related to our science content. We aren't just throwing facts at our students we are igniting passions and unlocking potential that is stored within them, which will last a lifetime.

I invite you to continue reading about my blended learning initiative by exploring the links to my other work below and reading about my innovation planning journey as I reflect on this program and my growth throughout it.

"The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you've come"

While the days have felt long, the year in this program flew by. I feel as if I blinked once right after I created my initial innovation proposal and rough outline and here I am at the end getting ready to initiate final testing before my big department-wide roll out next school year. As you see in my innovation project roadmap, I have come so far in such a short amount of time. This idea looks as if it grew overnight and I am able to effectively pitch my innovation to stakeholders quickly now, but so much of my time and passion has been involved in creating this innovation plan, building it from the ground up.

I never thought when I wrote my first rough outline and planting my little seeds of an idea into the universe that it would turn out to be such a profound change in the way I teach. As you can see by following my work listed on each page in the section below, - starting with the innovation proposal and working your way down in order- my work built like small drops in a bucket to become a formidable movement that is beginning to catch the attention of others in my building. The change in learning and overall environment of my classroom has become palpable and truly alive.

The next big chunk of updating occurred when I created my 3-column table for my project-based blended units, the UbD outline, and the prototype blended learning units. During this stage I had to apply everything I had found in my research as well as knowledge and tricks I learned from my personal experience to create the meat of my initiative. At this stage my ideas went from a theoretical dream to a real living initiative that students and my fellow colleagues could interact with and learn from. In order to build a successful prototype I knew that the entire unit needed to be built around not only the student's interest, but around the important guiding question. I wanted the guiding question to not only be mastered at the end, but I wanted every lesson activity to connect to it while each student saw the guiding question over and over throughout the entirety of the lesson cycle. I speak in depth about this meticulous process on my 5318 page.

My work in 5304 centered around creating and influencing change within an organization. While I did develop a strong goal that guided me in my prototype creating I previously mentioned, I didn't do much else with the invaluable knowledge I gained from this course until I created lessons and materials for effective professional learning. To effectively plan professional learning I not only needed to explore how I would influence change in favor of project-based blended learning on my campus in depth, I also needed to anticipate the needs of my audience and create supports that were meaningful and relevant immediately. Peer collaboration among my course peers and my professional colleagues was crucial in creating a professional learning program that could achieve targeting the needs of such a diverse group of educators that I have the pleasure of teaching with on my campus, but in the end this collaboration is what allowed me to understand the perceptions of those I would be influencing on a much more personal level than would have been otherwise possible. By doing this, I was able to create an effective game plan for professional learning communities that I am currently working on expanding upon and detailing more fully for the next school year - read more about that process here.

Blended project-based learning is now a life long passion that I will continue to fight for at any school or educational institution that I find myself at. My next step is to get real data and complete field testing and action research within my own classroom. I also have a close friend and esteemed colleague that is implementing a very similar program within her classroom so I will be drawing on her students for data and insight as well. This will be conducted during the second half of the year and combined with the data that has already been collected during fall semester. With this data, I will then reflect on changes and improvements that need to be made before science department as a whole rolls this blended project-based learning model out for the next 25-26 school year.

-BTS, Butterfly

Keeping it moving

While planning and implementing various components of my innovation plan has taken some dramatic changes and updates throughout the course, I have much work left to do. I have built this from the ground up and at every step I have noticed that there was room to grow. Reflecting on this process, I feel that I can honestly and succinctly summarize by the old adage "if it was easy, everyone would do it" because while my ideas seem very simple, creating an innovation plan that is successful through all the trials and tribulations has proved to be quite the journey. Below I reflect on my progress and identify what could have gone better as well as some plans for further development of my idea that I envision for the future.