AWF EDUC 554

I have always loved foreign language and I majored in Spanish in college. My original professional goal was to be a Spanish teacher, but I am honestly not a huge fan of children (even high school aged ones), so I switched to thinking about becoming an ESL teacher and living abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. While I had done the initial research of what becoming an ESL teacher would entail, ultimately my career path took a turn and I let that idea (better yet dream) go away. Revisiting this topic this week has made me consider the possibility of marrying that youthful dream to my current professional skill portfolio. While I do not intend of using this sub-field in the practicum, I am not considering the potential of using the skills I have honed as an adult educator and seeing how I could maybe leverage them in this space.  I had also always thought that children were better equipped to learn language, so I was heartened to learn from the article by Smith and Strong that "Rese...

  From the article, Community-Based Education by Christine J. Villani and Douglas Atkins, I really appreciated the sentiment that, “Community-based education is centered on the student’s ability to recognize and support the needs of the surrounding community.” While community-based education is a sub-field that I am not currently involved in, the philosophy of it is one that I always hope to foster in my classroom. My approach to facilitation is not beholden to my participants learning a set of facts or data. It is much more about connection and social learning. Ultimately, each of my participants is a member of the community that comprises his/her workplace. If they are able to build connection and learn together, those are helpful skills that will undoubtedly assist them back in the “real world” of their workplace.

  Given the global pandemic, both the students at UVA as well as all the faculty, staff, and health system employees have converted to participating in courses through online means. While I was familiar with online learning and had facilitated course through Zoom, Adobe Connect, and WebEx, I was not really familiar with the concept of a MOOC. This lead me to investigate all the different MOOCs offered by UVA and I fell down the proverbial rabbit hole of them. Of particular note are the ones offered by Darden, UVA's business school:  https://www.darden.virginia.edu/online This led me to contacting several of the professors within these programs and to begin fostering a community of practice with them. Not only are we sharing best practices, but we are helping each other assist our community (internal and external) as we adjust to and expand online learning.  Again, this area, along with continuing professional development, will be my focus area in the practicum.

  This week, I found the Education to Employment video to be especially impactful. Since I work in higher education, I sometimes lack this perspective, but I have been reading about it more and more. As the video showed, less than 2/3 of employers interact with educators. This disconnect within the pipeline is resulting in young people being unprepared for the workplace. I see this consistently as an adult educator. Skills around effective communication and leadership are the ones most commonly lacking. Public speaking is another deficit. This field is one that I am immersed in and it will be the one that I utilize for my practicum experience. I think creating connective tissue between employers and educators is imperative to creating a successful workforce – that’s not to say that my role isn’t important, but I think my role could be expanded if the individuals coming into the workplace had strong baseline skills.