AY 2022 Reflection Class (Ms. Inugai-Dixon)
2022 Professional Learning and Reflective Practice
Class Reflection
18th April What is education for?
This question by Carol sensei was very stimulating for me. Education is first and foremost my job. It is the most important way to earn cash to feed my family.
Education is the investment when I see my students, in their fathers and mothers, to help them achieve their dreams. This may be because I work in a private school.
As a parent, when I look at my own son who attends a public elementary school, I see education as a welfare policy, striving to achieve inclusiveness despite the many challenges the school faces. Inclusive of families in diverse situations in the community, it embodies the vision of the nation.
25th April
When I am becoming aware of the fact that my education is from a constructivist standpoint, it became easier to understand my ideas.
I want my students to construct their own ideas in my classes. To achieve this, I combine discussion and reflection. At the same time, I will assess them qualitatively through portfolios and rubrics.
16th May
I remember when people were kind to me. When I resigned my ex-school, I received a letter from a student. I was surprised because I did not expect to receive a letter from that student. I was always anxious at that school and did not think I had a good relationship with the student. However, receiving the letter made me re-think my relationship with the student. In other words, I re-established the relationship through kindness.
23rd May
Ms Inugai-Dixon mentioned about ways of knowing: disciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary.
When I was an undergraduate student, I was so impressed by Multiple Intelligence concepts by Howard Gardner, which has an analogy of cut pizza. Soon after I graduate university, I had a cognitive inspiring workshop with "6 hats" activity. But I was not sure why we need this in my teaching career.
Now I am trying to understand the origin/primitive status of what to learn. Maybe it is not fragmented, no parts missing, no broken, healthy and integrated.
30th May
We worked to match great historical figures with "what they might say".
I may think I know the famous words that person said, but I do not know the other aspects of the person. I feel like I might say every line. Every person is multifaceted.
6th June
In Japan, some people thinks, "Teachers will never know what bad learners feel because every teacher has been always good at learning." But I disagree.
Every teacher can understand some things about their students and some things they cannot. It has nothing to do with whether they are good at studying or not.
6th June
During my Japanese language class, I like to have discussions with my students in which epistemology is shaken up.
There are three reasons.
-Students can use critical thinking that way.
-The IBDP language is ultimately designed that way.
-It leads students to construct their own thinking rather than discussing the validity of opinions.
20th June
Once a week i see Carol sensei and my new cohort online. This is very precious and inspiring time for me. My cohort Emiko san explains that Carol sensei sees education in a much larger framework than just IB. So every week I re-capture my current job from the concepts of international education in the broad sense.
Starting this academic year, I try not to say "Because this is an IB class" to my students. My workplace is, first and foremost, a school with the Japanese National CoS.
So I want to avoid to emphasise the differences between the IB and the CoS.
I use Learner Profile, ATL and ATT in my classes. I don't use those elements based on IB, I use based on constructivism and IE context.
Especially DP teachers tend to talk about how to get points in exams. The final exam and the daily teaching are coherent. This is actually a great feature of IB. But I think, when we emphasise what the final exam look like, we reduce the dinamics of the international education.