Module #1 Course Introductions: Who am I and What Gives?

Well, it's good to get the ball rolling finally. It’s taken awhile to get here as I've been pondering what to do for the last year and a half. Thanks to, or perhaps, no thanks to the pandemic, things have been put in a holding pattern. I was originally in the LCLE EdD program here at IU. However, after my first semester, I was left with a sort of empty feeling. Since I had a master’s degree in LCLE, I felt that I was simply rehashing things that I had done before. After careful thought, I decided to step back for a moment and contemplate what I really wanted to do in my career. However, let me digress and briefly introduce myself as the person I am.

I came to South Korea in 2002. After living in the cornfields of Indiana for most of my life to that point, I felt compelled to go! To where? To the furthest place I could find, and SK was as good as place as any. After jumping the pond, I found myself teaching EFL to young Korean children…and it changed everything. I never thought I would be an educator; it had never crossed my mind. In all honesty, I never really liked school, from elementary to high school; I was a wanderer. But I was in and was 100% involved in the education of my learners. After a few years, I wanted to make changes using my own ideas and beliefs about what should and should not be included in my learner's education. So, I opened my own language institute. I wanted to bring the wonder of technology to my learners. It just felt right to give my learners all the tools necessary for allowing them to express themselves. I believed that and still do. However, it was difficult to convince the most important shareholders on how vital it was to provide my young learners with an outlet to express themselves; those shareholders being the parents. Having my own language institute was a very exhilarating, but exhausting experience. It had its ups and downs. Yet, I continued my quest to be a better educator as I felt I had gaps in my knowledge and had more to learn. After considerable thought, I decided to go for my master’s degree in LCLE, feeling my learners deserved that. I worked full-time running the institute as a full-time student, eventually earning my master’s degree. The master’s program opened my mind and introduced me to the potential of using technology in the classroom. After time, I closed the school and found employment at a university teaching ESOL and Multimedia English Language Learning; I suppose one may consider that similar to CALL. Anyway, I have bounced around different educational settings teaching English, juggling my career and a young family, biding my time until I could get back to my own education and fill in those gaps in my knowledge that I feel I still have.

That brings me back to the present as I’m beginning my IST certificate program. It’s a new page, and a new direction. I’ve been at the university teaching English for many years; however, I need a new environment...I need new skills and more diversity. If I may pull something from Dewey this week which I believe adds to the idea of diversity. He stated, “I believe that the teacher's place and work in the school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.”

I can’t agree more that the teachers place is to not control or not to impose beliefs and ideas onto the learners, but their job is to open the learners mind and give them a better opportunity to make their own decisions based on the current circumstances. This will allow the learners to bring their own diverse ideas into the community or organization, if thinking in corporate terms. As we've learned not only in science but also in humanities, diversity is best for improving the chances of survival. I believe the same could be applied to educators or trainers…the more diverse the skills they can apply, the greater the opportunities that can be opened to them. I feel the pull of the corporate world and believe delving deeper into IST and adding diversity to my skills can get me further to my goals as a corporate trainer or as a learning and development specialist or director. I simply need to connect the thread and diversify my portfolio.

I strongly believe that IST can make this happen and have already noted thoughts from Module 1’s readings which have luminated the gaps in my knowledge I had mentioned. With my goal of entering the corporate realm in mind, I thought the concepts of efficiency, effectiveness and facilitated learning were especially intriguing and enlightening….and undoubtedly something I should have learned and considered before. As Dr. Molenda stated in his interview, “Facilitative learning…information/message design, how to craft messages that attract attention, hold interest, reduce distraction and focus attention on important things…amateurs don’t how to do that. Amateurs don’t know facilitated learning and information design. Professionals have (work-processes) systematic approaches to problem-solving…thought out work processes. We include processes that value efficiency, effectiveness and humaneness….faster, better and cheaper if we use efficient and effective work processes. We need those who understand how to create learning environments efficiently, effectively and humanely.” I believe my gaps reside in those processes and those concepts. To me, effectiveness and efficiency, faster, better and cheaper bring to mind a corporate environment, however, play a role in any environment in which learning takes place.