Innovative and Transformative Educator Equiping and Inspiring Students to Actualize Their Full Potential

Methodology

Greetings! I provide interactive lessons that will assist learners in grasping core concepts in business administration, psychology, sociology. My philosophy is that learning, similar to gardening, is an active and a delicate process that revolves around the active engagement of each plant (learner). My role, as the instructor, is similar to that of the husbandman who facilitates the process by creating an atmosphere (classroom), embracing the differences and similarities among the leaners. In nurturing each learner’s development and growth, I determine what is necessary for each learner to move from seed form (old knowledge), through maturation (current knowledge), and to full bloom (construction of new knowledge), tilling the soil (their minds), providing each with sunshine (course material, enrichment activities, instruction), and watering (discussion, evaluation, feedback) as necessary. Therefore, I believe a successful learning situation will result in the construction of systems of meaning that evolve from learners’ acquiring information, building on current and old information (i.e., the content covered in class discussions, learning materials, feedback, and ideas they already have), constructing new knowledge (i.e., understanding), and thus being transformed.

The course subject, discipline, and learning context could vary, so it is likely that the course objectives, educational goals, and the state of the learners will also vary, but I believe that the effectiveness of my contributions will either foster or impede learners’ success, regardless of these. From my experiences as a counselor, outreach minister, scholar-practitioner, and Sunday school teacher of adult learners, I have come to appreciate the autonomy, the independence, the need for adults to understand the relevancy of what they learning, and the need for adults to be self-directing. I believe that presenting and elucidating new concepts using knowledge that they already have and allowing them to discuss similarities and make comparisons among themselves, not only meet their psychological needs but also help promote connections to and scaffolding of new understanding.

To assist information processing, create opportunities for application, as well as encourage and promote critical thinking and peer-peer social interactions, and depending on the course, some experiential learning activities that I like to use include case studies, collaborative simulations, cooperative small group projects, peer evaluations, and role-plays, combined with the required readings and research. Administering several low stake quizzes over complex and relevant course materials also promotes long-term memory, allowing learners to practice retrieving the information, but similar to plants, leaners’ levels and rates of development, growth, and transformation vary. Therefore, I believe that criterion-referenced assessment is an effective way to evaluate outcomes of effective teaching, and low stake quizzes and major projects (e.g., analysis/critiques of movie characters, current events, other people, and or themselves, and reflective journaling) provide pathways for evaluation while also allowing learners free range to be as creative as they like, deciding, evaluating, and presenting. Because preparing scholar-practitioners to succeed in our ever-changing, global environment of the 21st century requires continual creative thinking opportunities and effective leadership, I plan to continue to enlarge my repertoire, refining my approaches and ensuring that my gardening/teaching methods commensurate best practices.