Guessing what they learned from my class and...me?

Thank God. Finally, I almost finished my first-semester course for MC students. Looking back, the only thing I can say is thank god. Never could be said that I was prepared or competent. My limitations should have been revealed and confessed to my students. When things went too bad, I had to write a letter for my students to share my emotions and thoughts. My mission that is settled deep in my heart was always whispering that I would like to help my students and my class would be of note for their life. Even though it was not easy to change or improve my course dramatically, my attitude has never changed. I am a person who never ever gives up and always does my best from the bottom. If there is one thing that my students are taught me, that might be that there was a teacher who really wanted to teach and help them sincerely.

At the last class of the Wednesday section, I prepared a handout to look back on what they have learned so far. A bunch of sources were there though, the Gibbs' reflective cycle became the basis of my handout since it has a clear route that can connect an incident to a learning point. It has 6 steps with a question to answer respectively, which might guide students. It is technically designed to be repeated as the name postulates. Because the purpose of the last class was to have a clear one sentence that they learned, I set up the last question; At the end of this class, what do you think you learned? Once the handout was filled out, students were asked to submit their last answer to the shared screen using Kahoot.

I am sorry but... it became clearer that students were still hovering somewhere they were in there before this class. The main expected outcomes were to understand who they are a little bit more and how to behave when they confront a certain situation. The reflective process I suggested for this class was a core method to identify or confirm what exactly students experienced. The results that students submitted, however, were not able to go beyond a level of common sense. Those were lack of specificity and just mundane sentences: I learned about social and emotional learnings; how to better communicate with my peers. Some students took a way different route that I intended, answering the last question like this: that people really like competition; I learn that it feels great to win; I learned that even though teens are young adults we still like to have fun like little kids.

Hovering. That is the word that popped up in my head after all the hassle and bustle passed. Some wonderful students understood what would be the point of this course and tried to learn something. Other students were confounding between what I really wanted to do and what they were practically required to do. And some, but blunt, intentionally ignored and just pretended to do something to obtain points. Among three different groups, I was also hovering to grab and push students into an acceptance group, changing curriculum details.

Social and Emotional Learning. There could be various reasons but I would like to point my finger at the characteristics of SEL first. Due to its obscure, hard to be assessable and context-related characteristics, students and I had to struggle. Without clear and definitive procedures, a visible task, Mission possible project, was solely processed instead of a medium to connect activities to a deeper level of reflection. In addition, students' characteristics should also have been considered. Their former experience was influenced detrimentally and their prior relationship halted them to focus on the project. At this point, I had to accept that it was a great chance for me to understand where I need to move on to the next step as a researcher. Even though it can be said a good class, I learned something important as a teacher and a researcher.

In the end, I still want that my students had a great time with me. I hope they have learned something from my class and me as it is. Let's prepare for the next semester.