Innovation from educators or anyone for that matter takes flexibility, grit, creativity, and a learner's mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. Your greatest achievements can come through the ability to collaborate with others whether it is sharing your innovation plan, finding a sponsor to fund the innovation, or simply receiving feedforward from colleagues or mentors.
Education is a deliberate and systematic process designed to impart specific knowledge and skills to others, while learning is a natural and ongoing process that happens throughout life. I have always been open to learning new things in life whether it be in my career field or my personal life. In order to be equipped with a learner's mindset you have to be able to learn through self-study, exploration, observation, and experience. Our explorations, observations, and experiences help to shape the self-study and reflection within ourselves. I can ask myself what could I have done differently and be willing to make changes to improve myself as an entire being...intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I am definitely flexible. The campus that I work at requires us to be flexible. We often make changes to adapt to the needs of our students which are constantly changing based on internal and external factors. As a campus, I believe that they are flexible in the incorporation of blended learning, but I am not sure how flexible they would be with such an extensive innovation plan of implementing project-based learning with student reflection through e-portfolios. However, for years I have been committed to finding ways to integrate technology into the classroom through different applications and learning programs. I believe it opens up another avenue of learning and the students enjoy their time using technology. We have to understand that these children were born into a tech-savvy world.
Long-term I strive to give students choice, ownership, voice, and authentic learning experiences through project-based learning methods. Even if it can't be integrated all the time given my proposed implementation outline, I will find ways to periodically offer this type of learning environment.
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