How Do I Love Thee: Abstracting

Chaos

Restless, Stressful

Moving, Asking, Needing

Taker of time and energy

Workday

Abstracting means to remove and acknowledge the different  elements that make up a person, place, thing, situation or feeling. I struggled a bit at first with abstracting. It mainly had to do with the past few assignments. I was having a hard time figuring out a topic that didn’t feel stagnant or overused. With a little guidance I realized the interesting and unpredictable environment I expect my learners to consume my courses in. It is a bit of a shame that teachers do not get the same thoughtfulness that they put into the testing environment for their own students. They have to deal with a severe lack of time, silence and sometimes means of consuming curriculum. Understanding this changes everything. This is something that I need to keep at the front of my mind when not only creating the learning but when meeting with SME’s (subject matter experts) when they come to me with boring, elaborate, 40 minute long PowerPoints. Do I have all the answers? Not at all. Do I think I will be able to come up with a solution that solves this problem completely? I know I won’t. But if I can do my part and advocate for my learners. Be dedicated to their time and their learning like they are for their own students, then I am doing my due diligence.

In my visual representation of abstracting a teachers environment I tried to include the most identifiable elements. One being the children. Teachers not only have to Teach, engage and instruct, they must also keep their children safe and help shape their personalities and social skills. Talk about responsibility. The other big element is time. Time is something I am constantly battling for in my job as an Instructional Designer. SME’s want to cram a ton of content and may not be concerned with the amount of time it takes up. However, teachers do not get normal breaks or average working hours. Most days it is nearly impossible to consume an online module for training purposes, let alone one that takes half to most of an hour. It is imperative that I fight to keep training short for consumption and retention. Some other factors I acknowledge include internet access, as it is how we deliver our training. It is entirely possible that our teacher may have a poor connection at home and cannot connect.

I chose to do a Cinquain Poem. In my poem I wanted to focus on the chaos teachers must deal with.  Noisy and stressful. Children can be suckers of time and energy and that is a normal workday for a teacher. I am not blaming the children. It is in the nature and excitement of being an adolescent. But there is little to no way around it which is why it is so important for me to advocate for my learners and build training that fits their environment and availability.