4.5 Critical Reflection Journal Blog - Important Learnings Journal

What is new to my thinking or learning this past week?  How has this new information challenged me?  How has this stretched my professional growth and development?  What are the implications of this week’s learning on my professional practice?  How can these new learnings be used to impact my personal faith journey and my impact for the Kingdom? 

            The worldwide landscape of education has dramatically changed over the last two years as schools were forced to shift from in-person to online learning due to a global pandemic.  Students and teachers alike had to shift how and where they learned.  Most teachers had no experience teaching online or how to adapt their curriculum to an online environment.  So, how did they do it?  I believe they did so by trial and error. I also think that years from now, when researchers look back, they’ll find that teachers did what they could do with what they knew.

            As we looked at synchronous vs. asynchronous methods and debated the pros and cons, I thought about my educational experiences in both formats.  The thought that kept coming to mind was adaptability.  Education and how one learns must be adaptable.  I have learned about education and how it happens because everyone learns differently, so how one is taught should be adapted to the way one learns best.  I believe that the biggest takeaway from the changes we have experienced in the last two years is the need to be flexible and adaptable in the education process.

            Education is not the only entity that shifted from in-person to online.  Churches also made the shift as well.  How we worship and where we worship changed overnight. Like the adaptability that educators faced, pastors faced the same. As  I reflect on what this means to my spiritual journey, I realize that worshipping God can happen anywhere.  I don’t have to go to a physical building to worship God. I can worship God no matter where I am, day or night.

            Adaptability, flexibility, and change are all words that describe how we have had to function over the last two years.  How we handle these things will define the success or failure of everything we are faced with.  Change happens in seconds, but transitions occur over months and years.  History will be determined by how we deal with the change and transitions we are faced with.