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The views expressed on the CTE Educator website, blogs and posts are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Greater Johnstown School District, the Greater Johnstown School District Board of Directors, or Administration.
A Journey Worth Taking:
When starting the DLL program, I did not understand that it truly is a cohesive program, not a series of classes. It has been a rewarding journey, with triumphs and pitfalls along the way. From a hurricane at the start of the program, the big freeze, the amount of time required was far more than advertised, and personal issues to conquer. During the DLL I was recovering from back surgery, then getting Covid, my wife was hospitalized with Covid pneumonia, and another surgery to remove a mass from my upper right arm. As I sit typing this, I have 34 stiches in and on my right arm. I am grateful for the journey and overall, enjoyed the process involved in becoming a better educator.
From the DLL program, I have learned to be a better, reflective teacher. The need for fundamental change in my organization and education across the board. We are reactive instead of proactive as an industry, dealing with unprecedented challenges in the past two years. As the pandemic winds down, we need to step back and take a more planned approach to our educational model. In the e-book, “Choice, Ownership, and Voice through Authentic Learning Opportunities”, (Harapnuik, Thibodeaux, & Cummings, 2018), one of the concepts that struck me is where we seem to be right now, “anything we do helps…” This was fine during the pandemic, however we need to become reflective learners as well as educators. I have learned to be this reflective educator, relying on my DLL experience to choose more appropriate tools for my classes.