Making Learning Fun and Being the Change

Charles Hopkins analyses his journey to becoming the teacher that he had wanted to have in school, and how he is continually learning how to make learning engaging for his students.

I started out teaching like many did in our profession. Getting the teacher edition, recording formative and summative grades, all counting towards one grade in the end. Focusing on the wording of our daily objective more than planning how students can contribute to the classroom culture. Making sure not to smile until December, had to make sure those routines were down. Also, all the xeroxes, copies for days. This is how I started, but I’m a lifelong learner, and I have kept growing. 

The structure I started with helped me see the classroom as a series of routines and planned actions. As I continued to explore within the profession of teaching and broke my boundaries of educational learning, from in my classroom, to outside, so many other things came to light. I became a teacher because I loved to teach, and battled it, because I hated school. When I was reflecting on what I was doing it was the same things that made me dislike school as a student. I wanted to be the change, I wanted to make learning fun for my students, unlike how it was for me. Here are some of the things I changed to make that happen. 

When going through teacher training and starting in a ‘day one, page one’ kind of school, testing becomes what you do. The concept of ‘doing’ as an assessment came through my IB training. Watching someone assess an interpretative dance of how water particles act when temperature changes was one that stuck out in my mind. I wanted to move to project based learning. I took that challenge to new levels. From models of mars rovers, to making a working speaker to map how electromagnets work, documenting how it was done along the way and assessing their portfolios, there was so much more opportunity for useful feedback! Changing daily lessons based on immediate identification of misconceptions changed the classroom completely! 

“Don’t smile until December”, this was an actual saying I heard, and used, when I started teaching. Make sure the routines are in place, you are there to teach. As I continued my journey and started reading educational research, I found out how important making connections with students was. Kindness and taking time out of your day to converse with the students is important. This is difficult to do with didactic teaching. When making projects you can sit with students, coach them, and even work on projects and after unit reflections with their input. Students have some great ideas that can have a massive impact when you take some time and listen. 

I wasn’t a science and design person before… well… I got placed in the position. I love teaching, and had to gain an understanding of the subjects I was asked to teach. Learning alongside my students made me excited, and when they found something new and shared it with me, the whole class was excited. This energy is contagious, so if you’re asked to teach something you don’t feel comfortable with, take the chance. It could be way more fun than you asked for, and you could learn to share your love of the subject as your own love for the subject is blooming. 

Then sometimes you find a subject you don’t have the love for. One for me was weather. I mean, now I can look it up on my phone, and I haven’t watched the weather channel in years. So, I needed to find a way to share the love. So, I found a friend who got his pilot training license, asked him what he needed to use weather maps for, and invited him to speak to my class. Now I’m changing the unit based on what it is like getting a pilot’s license, and the students love the idea. If you don’t particularly have the passion, find someone who does. Like I said, the energy is contagious. 

These are just some things that helped me, I plan on continuing to grow and change as we make learning more accessible to all, and more fun!