CCTRPP - JSNarrativePage

Jeremy Szteiter - Reflective Practitioner Portfolio

Exhibits:

602: Creative Thinking: Final Reflective Essay (Fall 2006)

Through this course, my approach to my work showed a shift of thinking
from
believing that I was creative and figuring out ways to access creativity
to
assuming that I was creative and simply allowing the creativity to come through when needed.

In my reflective essay, my writing is a culmination of the idea that all of the parts of me could be related to each other, and that creativity happened at the "intersection" of these different areas, which was how I could recognize not only my own creativity but also my own unique way of expressing it. Before I entered the CCT program, I had been reading a number of sources about adult education and lifelong learning, and I was able to identify this as the true focus of my lifelong work. I was then able to approach the course with this focus and more greatly appreciate how my other interests would connect with that, rather than think of them as separate fields. At this time, I was also increasing my exposure to these other interests outside of class, including improvisational theater, philosophy of film, technology as a medium of learning, art, and social life, music, community-based non-profit work, and organizational development.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: recognizing how my view of creativity related to my family influences from childhood; understanding how the complexity of defining creativity in itself could lead to experimentation that was creative
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: final project in the course examined what it meant to revise the practices of a collaborative learning group through the lens of creativity; reflective essay suggests many of the ideas that I thought that true "lifelong learners" would be considering on a lifelong learning journey
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have been a little more dangerous in my writing and presentations, in terms of showing ideas in ways that went beyond writing about the idea directly.

612: Seminar in Creativity: Humor: Humor Journal (Fall 2006)

At first, I saw this course as an academic study of the relationship between humor and creativity, perhaps as a way to make more legitimate the idea that knowing about humor can identify some analogies that support creative thinking. Over time, I learned more about my “sense” of humor, so to speak, merged with my use of imagination in creative thinking. For me, creating humor has much to do with placing myself in a particular role within a conversation, and then acting out that role when I speak, exploring the hidden meanings and implications of what is being said. I recognized humor as being strongly related to language for me personally: humor comes from interpreting language too literally; humor comes from the timing of particular words and phrases; humor comes from creating verbal imitations of life and nature. I was able to connect my writing ability to humor by noticing how my humorous writing comes from the way that I identify with myself while taking on the role of another.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: humor has more to do with risk-taking than I had recognized previously, humor is a form of social art; it is possible and sometimes necessary to distinguish humor from play and fun, as each of these three concepts have different implications when it comes to studying them and creating them, as opposed to recognizing them.
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: was able to think about humor in terms of the collaborative experience and how it can often be a “safety net” to the experience (teaching, group meeting, etc.) – when the actual subject matter of the experience is difficult, incomplete, use of humor can help everyone to stay in the moment and remain pleased about being engaged; opportunities for humor can be built in to the experience ahead of time to make it more likely
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have shared more of my humor creations with others in the class and spent more time listening to feedback about it.

601: Critical Thinking: Critical Thinking Manifesto (Spring 2007)

My progress through this course felt the most natural to me out of any courses that I took during my time in CCT. Connections that were being made between teaching, learning, classrooms, and thinking had been the ones that I had been considering for a while, and participating in discussion with others gave me a chance to renew my understanding of the real barriers to integrating critical thinking into learning. Our discussions quickly moved from abstract “should be” to concrete “how it really is”, which led me to develop my critical thinking manifesto as a sort of celebration of the inherent contradictions and tension between ideas. In this course, I finally really started to give up my idea of “answers” in more general ways and started to thinking about learning as a process of question-finding.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: recursive reality of critical thinking – very often, one must talk about it and do it in order to make sense out of it, which then allows one to talk about it and do it
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: final project consisted of a model and curriculum for developing a collaborative learning workshop for for instructors of community education; direct ancestor of synthesis work focusing on collaborative learning toward the Teaching Mind for all lifelong learners
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: my note-taking in this course resulted in sets of notes that were generally segregated based on the chapters in the Developing Minds book and other readings, but I found eventually that this caused related ideas to be spread out. I should have organized myself a little better ahead of time so that I considered the categories of critical thinking as they related to my own work and then wrote my notes according to my own categories (adult learning principles, teaching practice, etc.) instead of simply according to the actual book chapters/articles.

618: Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Organizational Change: Final Project: Plan for Practice (Summer 2007)

I took this course over three summer weekends, and I found that the condensed timing prompted me to think about the content of the class in a much more focused way, which meant that I probably reflected less upon my own relationship to the topics and more on the idea of taking action more quickly and finding particularly practical applications for my workplace practice. We focused on the ideas of diversity, teamwork, and organizational collaboration, and I believe that in many ways my new understanding of these topics became part of my decision to leave my current full-time work as an educational program manager at a Boston settlement house. I was a one-person department, so any teaching, administration, and other client issues were solely my responsibility, but I had no team of my own to share my work. In this course, I started to see the incredible potential of collaboration, and I felt that I was missing something valuable by allowing myself to remain in an environment where this concept was not embraced as I thought it should be, in spite of actually liking my workplace and colleagues very much.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: new insight and appreciation for the idea of exploring "hidden diversity" in group work as a way of uncovering a broader range of perspectives to make my own work/creations more inclusive, rather than find conflict; understanding of many new ways to reduce the effort needed for planning collaborative activities, since in many ways before this I found myself "trying too hard" to develop elaborate frameworks for collaborative learning
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: my Plan for Practice helped me to develop the idea of collaboration as a necessary condition for the way that I would choose my future work, rather than a extra benefit of it; my synthesis in effect takes the notion of lifelong learning and projects it onto a collaborative framework that is fundamental to the idea
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have spent a little more time within the three weeks of the course to review the suggested optional course bibliographies, since many of the works cited would have led me to the literature for my synthesis a little earlier, preventing me from having to discover them on my own after allowing time to pass and forgetting about them.

651: Cognitive Psychology: General Principles Journal (Fall 2007)

From the beginning, I felt close to the content of the course as it helped me to find a modernized and expanded understanding of my undergraduate major in cognitive science. In summary, this course restored my disposition to think about critical and creative thinking with a scientific eye and become more attentive to the idea that viewing critical and creative thinking in relative terms might not be beneficial. In particular, moving through this course made me keenly aware of the importance of using the mind in active ways in thinking -- that I must develop the habit of looking at problems and decisions at different scales, that I must guide my mind to do work in a certain way to achieve a certain type of learning, and that it is important to understand that many of my "ideas" about human learning are really theories that can be tested, and that I should be prepared to be surprised at the results.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: tools for supporting my own ability to use metacognition to identify my own thinking, particularly the use of writing to explain my thinking and the use of games as experimental situations for testing my thinking
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: the general principles journal led me to explore the connection between problem-framing and issues of social change, where I was able to learn a great deal about how the use of language in particular helps to create a reality about how social issues are viewed and how people often take action that reflects their beliefs about the nature of a problem as much as their intended consequences; this understanding helped me to take much more seriously how I approached my explanations of lifelong learning as, and through, social change
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have tried to develop my general principles writings in consideration of more global perspectives -- although I found numerous personal examples, I would have liked to explore more how the principles of thinking related to issues reflected in media and culture.

692: Processes of Research & Engagement: Self-assessment in relation to 10+10 goals (Fall 2007)

I think that this was the course that I really started to 'take myself seriously" with respect to some key interests that would define my synthesis work. First of all, in trying to understand what CCT meant to me, I discovered an area of exploration where the following two key ideas intersected: 1) my own life as a critical and creative thinker and reflective practitioner, and 2) what it meant to apply critical and creative thinking to my own work as an adult educator. Although this may seem obvious, I tended to focus on one or the other during my previous CCT career, but during this course, I found that what I really wanted to do was to figure out what I needed to do to engage my own critical and creative thinking more generally, while at the same time "putting" critical and creative thinking into my specific work in adult ed., and doing this in such a way that the two ideas would nurture each other. I think a goal of this course is to learn how close the gap between research and self-interest, which allows the research experience to become richer -- we want to actually do more than just read about a topic if we choose it ourselves rather than get it handed to us from elsewhere.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: understanding of learning more as knowing the questions rather than knowing the answers (this sounds simple but it is not, and takes a long time to develop as a natural habit and involves a prerequisite of shaping one's mind to feel comfortable with growing complexity and ambiguity as more work gets done); appreciation for the way that research (in our context) involves finding others who have ideas, listening to the ideas, processing them to make them our own, and then feeding them back to others to get reactions; greater awareness of my own development as an adult educator as a process of pursuing my interest in social change, not simply becoming "better" as an adult educator
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: I focused directly on the relationship between three core ideas: social change, theater arts, and lifelong learning -- all three became central to my Synthesis topic, although I found that they worked at different orders of magnitude within the work.
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have been more active about sharing some of my writing with other students, such as directing others to my wiki or other documents for comments and brief feedback; I also would have been more ambitious about organizing informal discussions and face-to-face meetings with others outside of class time to help keep momentum going for the work.

616: Dialogue Processes: Final Project: Dialogue in Action (Winter 2008)

No doubt about it - this course was noticeably transformative, given the high, consistent level of (almost) daily contact with the other participants over a three-week period. Previous to the course, I understood the formal dialogue process as a tool of engagement, but I had not been patient enough to understand the potential of how it supports relationships that foster reflective practitioner growth outside of the actual dialogue experience. What struck me most was that inevitability of finding common ground with others when given enough time with them and the proper environment. This level of deep sharing occurred with the others in the course, and my particular insight was to understand that if this could happen in this particular experience, wouldn't it probably happen in any other experience? In that case, why not just assume the potential connection with anyone who crosses my work, and skip over the initial feeling of pressure of trying to "get to know someone" first? In other words, know that there is some shared perspective with another person, and start from that point when engaging with someone new during my future work, rather than asking that person to show it to me first before I take on an empathetic view?

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: I believe that I found a particular balance in the way that I communicated verbally; if we consider the following two extremes, 1) explain myself so thoroughly that I leave no doubt about what I'm saying and 2) summarize my thoughts quickly to leave ambiguity and allow for immediate feedback, I was able to find a middle point, where I was more willing to make my point quickly but find ways to say to others, "don't take what I just said as my final and complete sentiment-it was incomplete so please be open to questioning me further without assuming that my position is fixed".
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: my final project identifies the "elements of transformation" of adult learning, which I feel reflected the spirit of the dialogue process and connected my particular interest to the practice of dialogue; this project was the start of my exploration of what it meant to make learning "accessible" to lifelong learners, which would factor in heavily to my Synthesis.
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have used the dialogue process more directly in my work as a classroom teacher sooner, in small ways, to help create a growing understanding about it.

501: Foundations of Philosophical Thought: Final Project: Technology and Education (Spring 2008)

Most of all, this course reminded me of my love of philosophy as a way of being and way of engaging with others. I had taken several philosophy courses in previous schooling, and I had always thought of philosophy as a separate field of study, with its own subject matter and practices. Through my CCT experience and this course, I found a way of thinking about philosophy not as a field of study but as a mental activity that could span all areas of life, especially the practical areas in which I was making day-to-day decisions. This course helped me to see my life as present within a series of concentric systems, where personal decisions were part of a system created by my personal history and culture, and these were then within a system of community, which was in a global system.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: as mentioned above, I feel that I learned much about my own conversational style with respect to what causes me to engage with others and makes me interested and interesting in the course of certain types of discussions. I understood more about how and why I am not so well engaged in discussion that involves getting to "right" and "wrong" but prefer talk that ends up with myself and others having let go of "answers" that we thought we had before. Also, through my final project, I came to better terms with my experience with technology and concurrent growth as a teacher in adult ed. I had been somewhat uncomfortable with the association previously, because I perceived that others assumed that I: 1) unconditionally supported the growth of technology in teaching in all possible ways, and 2) was more interested in being a technical administrator than in being a teacher. This project helped me to feel more comfortable living with these misconceptions rather than trying to struggle to eliminate them.
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: to a large degree, this final project forced me to think about my personal ethics as a teacher and make choices about how I might identify areas of ongoing professional growth; this idea directly influenced the strong emphasis on the collaborative, group, face-to-face nature of the exploration of the Teaching Mind.
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: similarly to other courses, I would have made a greater effort to maintain a regular student informal discussion group outside of class and also extend myself to any such kinds of groups (in any form) outside of the university.

693: Action Research: Weekly Reflections on Class Wiki (Spring 2008)

In this course, I extended my project in the Processes of Research and Engagement course, where I focused on the relationship between theater, learning, and social change. I introduced the idea of "play" into lifelong learning and group processes, seeking to understand what was required to remove the barriers that keep adult learners from engaging in play as a natural learning process. My weekly reflections show a progression of thought as I move from the theory of play to the challenges of supporting and encouraging play in my real-life workplace. I was able to take some small steps to implement my action research plan but found that I was introducing a new idea to others that might take much time to establish, and that the steps of an action research plan may be simplified to make them achievable, while the expected consequences may take a much longer time to appear. By the end of the course, I was able to think about action research steps within the context of scope rather than an ordered list of "to-dos" -- some steps are purely personal and short-term, some steps involve the support of constituents, colleagues, and supervisors, and parts of all of these can be done concurrently in action research (i.e., it is possible to be working at several points in the action research cycles and epicycles at a time).

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: realizing that my future work was about lifelong learning in support of social change and lifelong learning as an area of social change; new appreciation for my own need to play in learning and sensitivity to the challenge of risking to play; understanding of subtle uses of play and games in learning where play is not forced or imposed but can be more spontaneous by creating an environment where play is natural
How this Work Foreshadowed My Synthesis: helped me to think about my interest in lifelong learning as a more fundamental idea related to my interest in adult education, and this led me toward my final synthesis topic as something that is a long-term focus of my worklife rather than a single project; the idea of play is used in the synthesis as one underlying principle to be used in the practical group learning setting related to understanding what it means to be a teacher
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have been more conscious of my own use of play and learning in my encounters with other learners outside of CCT and this course; this might have involved identifying small actions that I could take to learn more from my real-life situations; also, I would have started my personal "database" of lifelong learning concepts at this point (an ongoing, growing organized set of information related to my topic)

694: Synthesis: Exit Self-assessment (Fall 2008, Spring 2009)

I believe that the Synthesis process helped me to find a way to think about lifelong learning in a way that was both unique and represented the integration of all of my personal abilities, dispositions, and interests. I focused on lifelong learning through a more structured approach to learning to become a teacher for all people, which allowed me to break out of my own understanding of learning within formal schooling, provided an outlet for my interest in storytelling, dialogue, and theater principles, and generally supported my own pursuit of lifelong learning and especially my career interest in helping others to find this as well and be as excited about it as I.

Key Areas of Growth and Learning: greater acceptance of my potential to create change through my daily work life; development of personal ethics to help guide my choices about my work; confidence in my view of lifelong learning as something more than what just "happens" to learners through arbitrary actions and coincidence; ever-growing appreciation for the way that the CCT program is not just an incubator of personal critical and creative thinking and professional reflective practice, but also a model of what is best about lifelong learning
How this Work Foreshadows my Future Work: the synthesis process has given me an invaluable set of tools to help me to identify myself and maintain my ideas in the face of challenges and questions; I have the strength to keep seeking ways to use the idea of the Teaching Mind as a compass for all future work
If I Had Known Then, What I Know Now: I would have found additional ways to break apart my actual writing and share small pieces with others outside of the CCT program while asking for specific kinds of feedback -- I did this verbally in many ways but not with the writing itself, which soon became long enough that I found it difficult to find the digestible pieces that could be shared with others outside of CCT who were less aware of my topic.