Final Reflection

Final Reflection 

Overall, my blog posts have reflected ways to be innovative and creative in the classroom while exploring what that means. At the start of the course, I had felt that innovative teaching was almost impossible for me to accomplish. I felt that innovative classroom practices involved changing the school system, making flipped classes, and changing the physical space. However, throughout the course I have learned that innovative classrooms can be small changes to the traditional way school has been taught and also can be the same as how others are teaching. Another important piece of knowledge that I have acquired through the course has been expanding various types of innovative teaching. For the most part, myself included at the start of the course, innovative learning did not always include social justice aspects. By allowing for these issues to be explored and included in general classroom practice I thought it was general good practices rather than an innovative teaching practice. However, it is a change in education from when I was in school to my current practice. By understanding what innovation is, I have been able to reflect on my current teaching practice and highlight some innovative approaches that I was already doing.

My blog offers a balance between literature connections and personal connections. In my original posts, I was able to share my concerns and find literature that addressed them. From the literature, I was able to blend my concerns and my own practice together to come up with a solution for the problem that I was having. DeLuca et al., (2024) article was insightful as it helped change my thoughts of what innovative teaching is. The authors highlight that innovative ideas do not only have to be truly unique, but can be shared to help all classrooms become more innovative (DeLuca et al., 2024). Furthermore, I also found the literature around AI in the classroom to enhance creativity. Kastania’s article (2024) suggests how AI can be an innovative way to have the skill of creativity develop in students. It is important to have students that are digitally literate and using new tools in the classroom to become proficient. These pieces of literature, along with others explored in this course, have helped develop my understanding of innovation and creativity, and also practical ways to embed them in the classroom and generate ideas during my professional development course. 

Comparing my first blog post about innovation in learning to my most recent blog post, I have demonstrated a great amount of growth on the topic. In my first blog post, there is an overarching theme of feeling hopelessness about being innovative in my practice, and also a struggle to understand what innovation truly is. Comparing and reflecting on this post compared to my most recent post on the topic, there is a strong, positive growth about how I can be innovative in my practice. I mention areas to be more creative in, ideas for my classroom, and an overall sense of motivation to be innovative. I no longer see being an innovative educator as an impossible task, but rather have smaller goals already set in place to continue to advance my career.  


Reference

DeLuca, C., Holden, M., & Rickey, N. (2024). From challenge to innovation: A grassroots 

study of teachers’ classroom assessment innovations. British Educational Research Journal.                     https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4065

Comments

  1. Heather McIlroy10 March 2025 at 08:16

    Hi Charlotte, I was glad to read this final course and blog reflection. Entering this course, I also felt like innovation in teaching had to be something large scale, overthrowing all of my current practices and starting over. Thinking about innovation as shifts more than overthrowing, and creativity in small-c ways, for the teacher as well as the students, has helped me to feel more positively about my work as a teacher. Even the very typical and long standing practice of "borrowing" ideas from colleagues to implement in our classrooms is a type of innovation, as our classroom situations and all unique and the ways in which we can each try out a new strategy will vary based on our expert knowledge of the kiddos in the room that year and at each moment during that year. I have also been looking at AI during the course, and I am still not sure what its use will look like in my classroom. I fear that as soon as I decide to try something AI based it will all shift and change again. All the best, Heather

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