The Intersections of Learning

During the ISI, we have established a tight-knit community of learners who are invested in progressing in our own practices. United by our common goals and a developed, shared language, we now attempt to articulate the experience to the best of our abilities. After exploring the theories that grounded our experience here, we constructed a representational model of the artifacts and practices we use in the classroom as both teachers and learners.

Our model shows the overlapping practices that all educators must utilize. The model shows an overlapping triangle and circle. If we begin with triangle, this construct represents the physicality of our profession. We use practices and artifacts to construct meaning and connection inside the classroom.

We create these by exploring, envisioning, and enacting. The three Es do not exist on a linear continuum, but instead are an ever evolving introspective process. We begin with an idea we want to explore and envision how to enact upon it, but at any point we must feel free to enter the continuum at different point in order to re-evaluate. As educators, when we begin to re-envision or visit another point along the triangle's progression, we now move into the outer circle of our practice. Reflection and evolution are the tools an educator uses to take risks, explore new ideas, and new practices in order to put these new ideas into action. The final component of our model, the sticky note collage, are the tools educators use in our practice. The words explore, envision, and enact exist outside of the circle and triangle in order to show that we must draw from these tools.