Vita non est vivere sed valere vita est

“Life is more than merely staying alive.”

I was raised in a family where helping others and contributing to the society is given utmost importance. My father is a physician while my mother is a volunteer health worker. For them, it is more important to know ourselves, develop our potentials through education and use them in helping others than any fancy academic degrees and hard-earned money from hard work. I was also educated in an institution where we are continually reminded of the great responsibility of contributing to society and giving back to my country who gave me the privilege to be educated in a premier state university.

More than 6 years ago, I decided to resign from my very first corporate job in a company where I stayed for several years. I felt that my job is becoming a burden more than a blessing. I felt that I’ve stopped growing as much as personal development is concerned. I realized that I can still do better things with my life. My immediate supervisors, as well as my colleagues, are wondering why I have to give up my career and waste a lot of opportunities in the company. People are reminding me then about my resignation plans as there is no assurance whether I would get a better job, as “rewarding” as this one. But then, I resigned. What matters to them doesn’t matter to me.

There is more to life than financial stability. A part of me wanted to help, and I will not be able to do that if I stay and spend most of my time in that company. I have to give in to that desire and use my time improving myself and discovering my potentials in helping others and contributing to the society. This desire brought me to the teaching profession. And as they say, the rest is history.

Years ago, I faced another challenge: going back to school to improve my teaching skills. It took me some time before deciding to finally enroll in UPOU. My first term in UPOU was the hardest. Most of the times, I felt demotivated and wanted to give up due to the pressure caused by studying tons of reading materials and the challenging tasks and activities that needs to be accomplished. Not only once I did ask myself why I should stress myself out to learn when I already have more than enough experience to prove that I am an effective teacher. Then, I was reminded about my parents’ advice and the reason why I am doing these. Now, my motivation to learn is more than just getting good grades and impressive performance in completing all the tasks and course requirements. It is now about fulfilling my goal to improve myself and become a better and more effective teacher.

Having a well-defined educational philosophy will guide us to become more effective educators.  It gives us direction to effectively teach and educate our students. Educational philosophy helps us establish where we stand and strengthen the ground that we are standing on. It helps us identify our desired destination and plot the best route toward reaching and achieving that goal. Lastly, it gives us the ability to evaluate other philosophies and modify our own, whenever necessary, to meet the demands of continuously changing world.

“I was given the ability to share knowledge and the capacity to learn and there’s nothing more fulfilling than to utilize them in helping others experience learning, improve themselves and succeed in life.”

(Learning to Teach. Teaching to Learn., 2013)

Learning to Teach. Teaching to Learn.

“By learning, you will teach. By teaching, you will learn.”

– Latin Proverb

This course gave me a new perspective about learning and teaching. I learned that learning not just about acquiring knowledge while teaching is not just sharing knowledge.

As a student, I am usually an observer and consumer of information during discussions, rarely a contributor. I love reading and listening to ideas of other people and process them to help me with my own learning. As a teacher, I take the responsibility of transferring and sharing my knowledge and expertise to help my students conquer their fear and difficulties in learning.

Writing eJournal entries forced me, in a good way, to reflect, express my thoughts and process the knowledge I acquired in this course. It helped me monitor and evaluate my own learning. I am surprised how much meaningful article I was able to produce. Being able to create more than 30 entries in less than three months is not bad at all for a first-time blogger. Most importantly, it helped me conquer my fear in writing. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I had hesitation creating a blog for several reasons (or excuses): I didn’t know what to write about, I have lost my writing skills since I haven’t written anything for a very long time, and I am not good expressing myself through writing in English (the lamest excuse I came up with!).

Knowing yourself and what you want helps a lot in selective learning. I will not perform a task just because I am required to do so. I will not accomplish an activity just because everyone is doing it. Being able to identify my strengths and weaknesses helped me strategically plan my learning and use them to my advantage.

Required tasks and activities help me identify the important concepts and ideas that I should learn in a given topic. Forum discussions keep me on the right track. Exercises and assignments reinforce my understanding and deep processing. Deadlines are reminders how much time and effort I should allot and exert, helping me to strategically plan and accomplish my goals on my own pace. Quizzes and tests assess and evaluate my learning.

Assignments, projects and other requirements can be stressful only if you allow them to stress you out. Finishing a task on time does not guarantee quality of work, in the same way that quantity of activities does not mean you will learn a lot.

All of these work together to help me apply all the concepts, ideas and theories I’ve learned in this course. Putting them to practice will help me become better and more effective learner and teacher. These will then help me to continuously improve and evaluate my current behavior, social skills, strategies to learn and teach, and change them, whenever necessary, so I can keep myself motivated and so I can critically and creatively think to create new knowledge and useful products in helping others learn and teach.

So far, I am very happy and satisfied with what I have learned and am still learning in this course. And for that, I am very thankful for every person who contributes, motivates, believes and helps me go through this course.

There will come a point in your life when you want to learn because… well, you just want to learn. Gone are the days when my motivation to study is driven by getting perfect test scores, high grades, fancy degrees and numerous academic awards. And by “study”, I mean going through tons of memorization, a number of sleepless nights cramming for exams and accomplishing every requirement, and other exhausting and stressful forms of “shallow” learning.

Now, I want to learn for learning’s sake. All the time, efforts and resources will not go to waste and will be spent in continuously improving myself. I was given the ability to share knowledge and the capacity to learn and there’s nothing more fulfilling than being able to utilize them in helping others experience learning, improve themselves and succeed in life.

My Behavior and Motivation to Learn Through Time

I grew up in a very traditional family. Both of my parents are disciplinarians in their own ways. I remember my childhood being disciplined through punishments, balanced with positive and negative reinforcements. These shaped my behavior to become who I am now. Corporal and other traditional forms of punishments were implemented and employed in cases of extreme misbehavior. However, Tatay and Nanay never fail to always explain and make sure that we understand why we were punished and reprimanded. These further improved my personality, allowing me to become responsible for and take control of my own behavior. Contrary to the theory that punishment results to negative effects later in life, my personal experience was a substantially satisfying and fulfilling one. Positive reinforcements in the form of praises and recognition in cases of good performance were also used at home. As a child, receiving praises and being recognized by other people makes me feel good about myself, keeps me motivated to do well and helps me improve myself.

These behavior and practices greatly influenced how I behave in school. When I was in elementary and high school, my motivation to study is driven by the rewards of high grades and academic awards. By performing well in school, measured by high exam scores, impressive grades on report cards, and a number of academic recognition, I can say that I am doing a great job as a student. By doing this, I can make my family proud.  To make the story short, I graduated with honors – a proof that I have performed well and can be considered as one of the “best students”, at least based on our school’s standards. While I can say that this behavior and practices took my focus away from “true” learning, this helped me develop good study habits and knowledge-acquiring skills.

And then, there’s college life. After passing UPCAT, I am extremely motivated to do well in school… not until I failed one of my Math 17 exams. Throughout my student life, this is the first time I failed an exam. This greatly influenced my behavior and views in life.  However, this experience motivated me to do better. Thanks to the encouragement of my family and friends who supported me during these moments.

Now that I already gained almost a decade of experience in teaching, keeping myself motivated to learn and study is a very tough behavior to maintain. At times, I feel demotivated and want to give up because of the pressure caused by studying tons of reading materials and challenging tasks and activities that needs to be accomplished. Not only once did I ask myself why I should stress myself out to learn these materials when I already have more than enough experience to prove that I am an effective teacher. Now, my motivation to learn is more than just getting good grades and impressive performance in completing all the tasks and course requirements. It is now about fulfilling my goal to improve myself and become an effective teacher.

‘Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior that is the result of experience.’ Taking this course lets me revisit and evaluate my past experiences and how these affected and influenced my current behaviors, especially in learning.  This made me realize that to be an effective teacher, I have to continuously learn and improve myself. This will help me share my experiences with my students, so I can encourage them to be motivated and guide them to enjoy a great and fulfilling learning experience.

My Indicators of Learning

How do I know if I have learned well?

1. Explaining concepts and ideas in my own words (and other medium of communication)

If I can explain a concept without copying every word in the material, then I can say that I have learned well.

2. Creating my own unique personal examples

If I can come up with my own personal examples that are very different from the example provided in the material, then I can say I have learned well.

3. Metaphors and Analogies

If I can connect a complex idea or topic to simpler events, situations or phenomena which are not actually related to the lesson, but are very helpful for me to understand it easier, then I can say I have learned well.

4. Concept map or outline

If I can create an outline or concept map about all the important concepts and ideas on a certain topic, and discuss them without looking at my reading materials or notes, then I can say I have learned well.

5. Teaching, Explaining, Sharing and Discussing with others

As Albert Einstein say, ‘If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.’ If I can explain a certain topic to other people, especially those who are new to the concept or have no previous idea about the topic I am explaining, and make them understand the things I learned, then I can say I have learned well.

6. Practical Applications

If I can apply what I learn to practical situations and use it in and real-life challenges or tasks when it is very useful, then I can say I have learned well.

EXPERIENCE: Best Teacher, Worst Motivator

While it is true that “experience is the best teacher”, it is also my worst motivator, especially in learning this course. Not just once did I get demotivated while going through our modules and reading materials. More often than not, I become very anxious, worried and confused as to whether I can finish all the readings and accomplish all the required tasks or not.

At times, I doubt if I can complete all the assigned readings and activities given to us. There are so many things to do and accomplish, yet so little time! I have to juggle school, work and social life all at the same time.

Why am I doing this? Can I really do this? Do I really have to read all of these so I can learn about teaching and learning? Is it really worth the effort and time?

I’ve been teaching for almost a decade now. Relatively, I have more than enough experience and gained more knowledge in teaching than these reading materials. Positive results from my students as well as positive feedback from their parents can prove that. Why do I have to punish and torture myself by going through all these stuff that would only stress me out, knowing that reading and writing are actually not my strongest learning styles?

The problem with the voice of experience? It never shuts up! The experienced teacher in me is always arguing and battling with the knowledge-hungry learner in me whenever I am faced with relatively difficult challenges. And most of the time, unfortunately, the “experienced” one wins.

What I am missing out during these moments is the fact that learning is an experience itself. That through continuous learning, I will be able to gain more knowledge and experience which will improve my teaching skills.

For me to become the best teacher that I want to be, I have to be the best learner that I can be. Realizing this will get me back on track. I will be motivated again. I know that by experiencing these learning processes, I will be able to relate and connect to my students more effectively.

Letting the knowledge-hungry learner in me rule over the experienced teacher in me, allowing it take charge in gaining more experience at times when I feel demotivated while facing difficult tasks and challenges, will keep me grounded and motivated to improve my learning and teaching skills. This will keep me inspired, in control, “in the zone” and in the flow of my learning experience.

Learning and Teaching Redefined

(Because learning is not just knowing and teaching is more than just sharing/transfer of knowledge…)

LEARNING

“Learning is an enduring change in behavior, or in the capacity to behave in a given fashion, which results from practice or other forms of experience.” (Schunk, 2012)

What constitutes learning?

• Change
• Endurance over time
• Consequence of experience

Learning can be defined as the relatively permanent change in an individual’s behavior or behavior potential (or capability) as a result of experience or practice (i.e., an internal change inferred from overt behavior).

TEACHING

“Teaching is not giving knowledge or skills to students; teaching is the process of providing guided opportunities for students to produce relatively permanent change through the engagement in experiences provided by the teacher.” (Huitt, 2011)

WAD: Writing Anxiety Disorder (On Learning Styles, Teaching and Motivation)

Yes, I have a name for it. It’s an infectious ‘wad’ (acronym and pun intended) growing in my brain.

I am very anxious about writing. Writing down what’s on my mind is not how I learn and assess my learning. This is not my thing. I would rather act it than write about it. For me, being able to apply what I learn in real life is the best way to check and evaluate my learning.

For several years, I’ve been dealing with numbers: thinking, analyzing, and reflecting… learning and teaching Math. By learning the concepts, principles and theories in math and sciences, I can learn and create things by actualizing their practical applications. For almost a decade now, I devised a number of techniques and strategies on how to learn and teach math in easier and more convenient ways. I would rather answer a book full of Math problems than write a one-page essay.

Moreover, I am not confident writing in English. Maybe this is the reason why I think I am not good at writing in general. The moment I read the guidelines about this eJournal, I immediately sent a private message to Teacher Malou: “I would like to know if entries on our personal eJournal should be strictly written in English. I just thought that there might be times when I can ‘express myself’ and share my personal thoughts and learnings in Filipino, a language I am more comfortable with. ” To which she responded, “It is more important that you are able to express yourself well. Enjoy!“. Well, maybe this is another one of my lame excuses to write. Because after a couple of weeks, I still don’t have my first entry.

It’s not that I’m not reading, reflecting and learning our modules. I swear,  I read them all. I clicked on every link and read all the pages available. I reflected on each and every guide questions. Everything is deeply-processed in my mind. And I swear I have my best intentions to write. However, when I start trying to write them down, I cannot find and think of the right words to express them. So I always end up being stuck on thinking, reflecting, processing and not writing at all. It took me days to write my first entry and almost a month to finish the second.

We are more than halfway finishing this course and I only have two entries in this blog. Why should I keep writing? Is anybody reading them, anyway? Everybody else is busy writing their own eJournal entries. Does Teacher Malou have enough time to read them all? As long as I know I am learning and able to communicate and transfer my learning to others, then I am doing a great job.

And then it hit me: I need to express myself well so I can communicate with others. Since when is writing NOT a form of self-expression and communication? In an online environment, especially in distance education, this is the most effective and convenient, and at some instances the ONLY way to communicate with your teachers and co-learners. And to improve my writing skills, I have to read and comment on other eJournal entries, and communicate and exchange ideas with my classmates.

More than communicating with others, this is another way how I can communicate with myself. Here, I can talk to myself and organize my thoughts: to check whether I’m learning or not and to evaluate my learning, goals, strategies and change them whenever necessary.

So there, I’m writing this entry with hopes that from this day forward, my view (and fear) about writing will change. I have to act on them as soon as I can. I hope this will give me the right push to start writing what I learned from this course. As a learner, I know that writing is not my strongest skill. But I have to try; not only because I am required to but most importantly, because I have to experience this learning style as an educator and for me to become a better teacher. There will come a day that I will meet students and learners who can learn and express themselves most effectively through writing. This experience would give me a chance to relate and understand their strategies and styles in learning so I can connect and communicate with them and with anyone better.

My First Month As Online Learner (On Time Management, Learning and Motivation)

Looking back on my first month as an online learner in UPOU, I realize what I have learned and what I need to learn in order to improve my learning and teaching skills. My first four weeks was overwhelming with a lot more work than I expected.  The illusion of studying on your preferred time, place, and pace is quickly matched by tons of reading materials and course requirements. I have to juggle work, studies and social life all at the same time. Although I have been stressed out and almost gone over the edge, this very stressful month has put life back into perspective. If you want to get ahead in life and be proud of your own accomplishments, then you need to work hard. Really hard.

During the first month of school, I had multiple challenges that I encountered. One of the biggest challenges was time management and procrastination.  I have always been a procrastinator. I go into my assignments with good intentions. I plan on getting them done early so that I will not have to worry about doing them. But life seems to get in the way. I always find something else that needs to be done immediately, while my assignments are not due for a few days. I also find it very difficult to motivate myself if the assignment is not due right away. I have convinced that I do better under pressure. So I always end up putting myself in that situation. Although throughout my education so far this technique has worked, I do not believe that it will work now.

In order to change my ways of thinking about assignments and deadlines, I need to set some concrete rules to follow to accomplish them. First is setting realistic goals. I often set goals that cannot be realized. I short myself on the time needed to do an assignment, and often get discouraged when I do not meet my unrealistic deadline. Breaking tasks and assignments into parts and giving more than enough time to accomplish each task is one of the best ways to improve this. By doing this, my time will be utilized instead of wasted, and I will feel as though I accomplished something. I can also schedule a time each day to work on assignments. That way, I will be prepared to work on an assignment because I know I am going to work on it, instead of trying to squeeze it in during one of my very busy days.

Another challenge that I face is trying to think critically and go beyond the surface. To improve upon my knowledge of the subject, I could either do research or ask questions. If I do not completely understand a concept, then I cannot think critically about it. Researching and asking questions will help me think more about the concept and understand it better. One of the advantages of learning in an online environment is that access to information is just one click away. Information is now readily available on the Internet, unlike before when you have to visit a library to do research. I can also listen to others opinions and thoughts and gain knowledge from them. This is where online discussion forums come in handy. Reading and responding to posts, as well as interacting with my co-learners in this course and in other courses I am currently taking, will help open my mind to other ideas and broaden my perspective.

After realizing and acting on these challenges, I also realized some of my strengths. One is getting all of my work done. I start the habit of making time to accomplish these tasks and finding the ability and resources to get them done. This takes a lot of self-discipline. Finding something else to do online instead of focusing on studying is not an easy task for me. I also learned to listen to other people’s perspectives on subjects without criticizing them. It will not get me anywhere if I only listen and accept my own views. Listening to other views has really helped me understand things better. If I continue to use these strengths to my advantage, I know that my learning experience will be great. By listening to and interacting with others, I am learning more and seeing ideas from a different point of view. This will ultimately help me be more knowledgeable and improve my learning experience.

It’s only been a month but I have learned a lot of useful insights from this course so far. Some of them have really helped me understand myself better. I was able to identify my strengths and weaknesses in learning that helped me evaluate and improve on my learning strategies. I also learned about the different learning styles and the style that best fits me. I am a reflective visual learner. Knowing this will help me utilize my strengths and ultimately learn better.

One of the expectations that I have for myself throughout this course is to continue improving my strategies in learning and accomplishing tasks. That is the only way that one can truly learn. It helps me learn what I am supposed to be learning. I am also going to work on feeling more confident and comfortable about myself and my abilities. I have thoughts and ideas and I want to feel like I need to share them. That is going to be difficult for me because I have always been a quiet one, but I am going to work on it. I want to learn a lot and look back on this class and be glad that I took it.  Lastly, I want to learn things that I need to know in order to be the best teacher that I can be.