Wanda's Reflection on...
Reflection As a Way of Life

Welcome to Wanda's Blog for PME 811

Some stepping stones

Hello everyone and welcome to Wanda’s blog for PME 811! To fully understand where I am coming from, I would like to begin this post by relating how I chose to make it into the PME program and where I am at at this time. I invite you to follow the stepping stones. I do hope you'll enjoy the ride as much as I do!

It is the dreariness of Covid that got me thinking about how to use the static time at my disposal to accomplish something that would have significance in my life on many levels. To be sure, the decision to go back to school to complete a Master’s program would firstly help me keep focussed during the pandemic, steering away my anxious thoughts. Second, it would allow me to make my life’s dream of earning a Master’s degree come true. And third, the learning involved in Queen’s University’s PME program would – hopefully – prepare me to take a stand on issues pertaining to the Italian school system that, in my eyes, desperately requires the electric shock treatment dispensed say by a defibrillator. Having had to reflect on this situation in past courses, I finally termed the Italian school system the ailing patient.

As one of the themes of this blog will be the importance of “reflection,” let me say that a very long period of reflection underpinned my decision to take on the PME program. My little angel kept saying “come on, Wanda, you can do it;” my little devil was saying “are you losing it? you in a Master’s program? it’ll be so difficult and demanding.” Furthermore, to give this dream the opportunity to even exist, I decided that I would not discuss my plan with anyone… not with my therapist, my sister or even my husband. No interferences, no encouragements. This thing would be between me and me.

As for what got me into this course on innovation in teaching and learning, let me simply say that it is the word innovation that struck a chord. Any process that I

could master to further this vision that I have of applying shock therapy to the ailing patient, was made for me. And so here I am getting ready to harvest all the arguments and strategies that I can then use in my dream job of “education activist,” a job that I believe I have invented for myself. As an education activist, my role is/will be to connect with parents wherever I can find them – in the school yard as they are waiting for their kids to exit, in the shops where they purchase textbooks for school or even in a café, a supermarket or a cinema. Anywhere is good, as long as the message and the tone are right. No belligerence, only information and kindness to construct a knowledge base for parents who are many times disheartened by the system’s shortcomings, but who don’t know what to do or who to turn to. My job would then include contacting and connecting with the Veneto region’s governor Luca Zaia to expose the community’s qualms and concerns. Ultimately, my job would be giving this population a voice on what should be one of the country's most important building blocks: education. Now, here is a topic I will shortly touch upon once again to elucidate the state of education in Italy today.

I have been following the PME program (at my pace) since 2022. This course is my 8th so I am nearing the end of this program that I stepped into on my tiptoes. My concentration is International Education, but I have also been very keen to learn about connecting with diversity, creativity and creating connections of all kinds. The field is so incredibly vast and my first course Creating Connection in Culturally Diverse Classrooms was a huge eyeopener. An epiphany of sorts. If teacher and theorist Gloria Ladson-Billings had very sensibly designed Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) some three decades ago, why has it not been adopted in classrooms in Italy where I reside and where there is a crying need for this sort of innovation and connection?

And now, here's something that I put out to you, dear readers. Could a pedagogy such as that developed and upheld by Ladson-Billings some 30 years ago not be qualified as a form of innovation in teaching and learning today? Clearly, Ladson-Billings’ CRP is not a new pedagogy per se, but can it still be considered new or innovative in this country where an entirely Italian-based curriculum is still being dispensed with frontal instruction? I believe it can.

I will come back to this blog, especially since taking the time to write things down has always helped me in my reflective process. Writing crystallizes my thinking process. Stay tuned!