The picture is of my EPFR 315 students. They are good students, talkative, inquiring, and thinking of what they learn. Some were better than others, but I think (and hope) all have grown into better professionals. A couple of them have good writing skills, other ones have struggled a lot with writing, but improved along the semester, using my feedback.
I really hope all enjoyed the blogs (some struggled with it). I pushed them to think about the theories we learned, to reflect, and give examples of use in their future career.
Some told me that they never thought about the connections I was "forcing" them to make... I feel close to them, I really will miss meeting with them twice a week, and spending my weekends checking on their postings :-)
I won't have too much time to miss this work since I continue to teach this summer starting May 15th. I'll teach the Adolescence class I taught in the Fall (and I know at least one of these students above will take the course again, that will be fun to have one familiar face).
With the graduates I did not get as closer. Last semester my small sections were much closer. It is so much about class dynamics, it depends so much who are the students in the class. I have some great students in the graduate group. I see all of them developing and becoming better thinkers. I know, and I learned that they did not like the constructive style I used, giving feedback to improvement instead of grades for each performance. I was looking for mastery and improvement through the use of feedback. I think I did not do a good job of describing in the beginning this style, I should have been much more explicit, presenting my reasons in details. I am convinced that my style did work.
I received an e-mail from one of my students (in EPFR 515) who thanked me for using this style that made her broke the schema and scrip about what a graduate course means. She wrote that she learned a lot and will apply in her work what we learned.
This is a praise that any teacher would dream about!
I know they know more and have better skills because of this course. I also know they were uncomfortable because is a different style. I might back up a little and combine and meet them at the middle. Innovation is good, but needs to be implemented in small steps.