Learning Specialist/Instructional Designer

The school in which I just started working at has a great technology presence in the school for all subjects. Students all use chromebooks for almost 90 percent of their classroom work. Since I am a co-teacher for various classrooms it a bit hard to try a pilot experiment in those classrooms especially given the fact that students are already exposed to enough technology. Therefore, I decided to do my pilot experiment in my resource classroom which is 4 students who need the most assistance. The students here have a harder time with reading comprehension so I for my experiment I will be using a podcast along with a slide show to show a lesson on financial literacy. Students will be learning about financial literacy and going to college this semester in their civics class which is the reason I will be doing the pilot experiment on this subject.

After implementing this pilot experiment I have noticed that my students are very interested in the subject area. Its a small class of 6 students but only 2-3 show up daily which makes it hard to catch up with all them because they are at different stages due to their attendance. I do have the work on google classrooms for them to review and not fall behind but since this period is not one of their mandatory classes they do lack that motivation to attend.

 I learned that being a change agent takes certain skills such as being courageous, rational, thorough, intentional, creative and strategic. There was a quote on the article 5 Steps to Being An Effective Change Agent that says, “Change is necessary”. This phrase alone is very important because not everyone is able to adapt to change, many people have problems doing this. I myself strive for change and seek it which is the reason why I work as a teacher only on temporary assignments. Many teachers have told me that they would not be able to do the job that I do because they need the consistent in their work whereas I am able to easily adapt to new surroundings, new students, new schedules easily. Another quote from this article states, “Being a change agent means that you will force those around you to think more critically,” as a teacher this is very important because our job is to make sure our students are being mentally challenged and not being given a simple lesson. And also, just because a teacher can make their students think more critically does not mean that they are able to do the same with other adults. After reading the articles I believe there are different levels of being a change agent, it does not necessarily have to be a change agent that makes a huge impact with the whole school but a person can be a change agent if they are making that impact with only their students. Lastly, not everyone can be a change agent because not everyone has the required skills that are needed to be a change agent.