TeachMeets are fantastic events for teaching and learning. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be part of a big one at the ATP (TMWR2012); big enough to be featured in the Sydney Morning Herald: Lesson in Numbers.
The TMWR2012 journey began for me from the moment I volunteered to be part of the organising committee, a cross-sectoral team of dedicated educators who really want to celebrate teaching and learning TeachMeet style (Simon Crook tells a better and more complete story in his post). It was a joy to be at the Registration desk and say hello to my edu friends, old and new. I am deliberately not mentioning names here as this would end up like the sign-on sheet! 🙂
This post is also to share my 2-minute pecha-kucha entitled, “Are you listening?” It’s about how challenging it is to listen nowadays and yet when we do, we learn. I shared a few stories where this was definitely true for me and what listening entailed, ie. the listening diet.
E – empathy – feel the other, their questions, their struggles
A – attention – focus on what they are saying, or not saying
T – take the other seriously – what they are saying is true for them at that moment, in that context
The stories I shared are all in this blog – 2 minutes is not very long to share 3 stories and plant a seed; I don’t think I even stopped to breathe :). These are:
- Claire’s art to express dyslexia
- Pedagogical shifts in teaching Algebra – Introduction via Rihanna, Big-Picture Style
- Crowd-sourcing “How do we teach empathy?“
These are among my favourite blog posts because these experiences were moments of real learning for me; real examples of me employing the listening diet.
As an aside, I’m really glad I’m doing the 365+1 photo project this year as my Flickr stream provided (CC-licensed) photos for my presentation.
I also decided to join SlideShare and embed my presentation here, such as it is.