Getting Used to Miracles Here
Module 8, Collaborative Classrooms
I am getting used to miracles here because the transformation I have experienced this week is absolutely phenomenal. It started with an emergency visit to my family during which I was offline for three days and is resulting in a profound acceptance of myself as not only a human being but as an online facilitator. I am so happy and excited to be making this miraculous discovery that, by dint of extensive work and insight, finds me transformed into someone who believes in myself in old ways and new ways, and who experiences myself as a Professional at life and can see the light at the end of the tunnel of being a professional online instructor. Triumph!
Only after I came back home from being with my family and got back online did I realize that this very week, this last week of my regular classes for the E-learning and Online Teaching graduate certificate, was also the same week as the beginning of being an online instructor!!! Up until Thursday, I didn't realize at all the extent of pre-course work -- or Module 0 -- involved. But somehow, weathering and working these transitions, happening during the same four days, of ending life primarily as a student and beginning it as an instructor, has got to be the beginnings of uncovering mastery.
Now, four days later, after working almost all my waking hours, I have discovered online teaching professionalism in my DNA. It all has to do with being down to the wire and having so much blessed work to do that it's like marathon swimming under water and coming up for air only sometimes to breathe. In order to do this work, and really get into it and allow its excitement to flow, I have to really get into it! Which means diving into the present moment and concentrating on the work, following where it leads me, and not worrying about the amount of time it's taking! I can't enjoy it without allowing myself to lose track of time, and enjoying it is paramount. I'm allowing the present moment to be like a puddle, and I'm diving in and the moment is expanding outward and I'm just staying there, floating and swimming and breathing -- and working.
It's been beautiful and hard -- but not so hard! First I finished up my Mod 8 classwork for Collaborative Classrooms and then I did much of what I must do to get ready for student teaching and the practicum; and then I updated my exercises based on feedback from the Amazing Dr. Kay and the Rad Rebecca Brink on this website and started reflecting on those changes, and that is where the magic came in! Imagine that! I swear, it has to do with the excitement Professor Bonk (2011) talked about when he wrote, "Life at Internet speed is highly accelerated, personal, engrossing, and exhilarating!" For when I started actually writing my reflections on my website, within the Internet, as I upgraded my work, I transformed before my very eyes. And heart. Astounding. What is this magic of combined reflection with writing on the Internet? What is it??? Dr. Ruben Puentadura (2014) talked about it in his SAMR ladder when he wrote about the highest level of integrating computers into learning: "Redefinition: Tech allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable." It's the "previously inconceivable" part that means exciting, and reflection must be involved for the magic to really take off. And I learned long ago to trust excitement.
Risky, I know, but what is life without risk and the courage to take it?
