Hello beautiful people! 

I am back again with a very interesting topic. This week blog post with be a Reflection on the TTELT’s Podcast Episode S2 49.0 “Creating a Learning Community”/https://www.ttelt.org/s2-490-creating-a-learning-community/

This podcast was hosted by Maya Moore with guest speaker Pearlie Lubin. Who spoke about creating a learning community. At first glance, without hearing anything else just by reading the title I thought okay this is going to be interesting. 

The main goals of this blog post are: 

• To discuss the usefulness of the episode. 
• The key learning I gained. 
• How I envision applying these tips in a real classroom setting.

Usefulness of the episode. 

Let's embark on this journey together. 

First, the conversation goes back to 2020, COVID-19 times, a very challenging period for teachers. It highlighted the fact that how in such hard times there were ways of adapting and overcoming obstacles. Creating a learning community is not that easy especially when the participants are from different cultural backgrounds so being open to learning about one another and raising questions to clarify and gather information becomes the key element to success. Checking whether everyone is on the right path is crucial taking into consideration the fact that every individual has their own knowledge and skill set that is different from others. Is very important to exchange ideas and find the golden mean as well as be ready to help those in need. To have that inclusion and fair share everyone must engage in certain assignments in the form of reflection. 

The key learnings I gained. 

• It is very important to show a willingness to learn. Mistakes are something to make the outcome better not to step you back. We don't know everything, but we learn new things everyday. 
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• Design the course as a group not as an individual. When creating a learning community there must be a medium of things that work out for everyone. So exchanging ideas, navigating through new platforms, testing, and challenging yourself is very useful and it encourages personal development as well and collaboration. 
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• Time for Self-Reflection: when learning something new you must think all the time about how can I incorporate this in my classroom. Is very important to look back and highlight what works and works out in things that can be better. Community learning is all about feeling comfortable in adjusting and modifying in order to learn. 
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• Utilizing Emojis for Fun and Easy Self-Expression can help in the assessment part, especially during tough times when face-to-face interaction was impossible. It provided feedback on how everyone was feeling on a regular basis and let feelings be known. 

How I envision applying these tips in a real classroom setting.

This podcast was very interesting and gave me a lot of ideas on how to incorporate community learning into my future classrooms. 

I would Integrate Project-Based Learning: projects that require students to work collaboratively and apply their knowledge and skills to address real-world challenges. Students have to identify community issues or problems that they can investigate, analyze, and propose solutions for. 

In this way, students will develop their personal skills as well as train themselves to be part of a group, to collaborate in order to reach a final goal. They will need to adjust a lot through the process. They can have their weekly gatherings to discuss their outcomes, share their experiences learn from each other. So all in all I think PBL will be a great way to incorporate students in the community learning. 

See you next week XOXO