Every time I sit down to reflect on the work I’ve done with this project, I feel like I’m revis­it­ing a liv­ing doc­u­ment, one that has grown and evolved along­side my teach­ing prac­tice. The process hasn’t always been smooth, and there have been plen­ty of moments where I’ve felt stuck or ques­tioned the direc­tion I was tak­ing. I’ve spent many full days and late nights work­ing on this, espe­cial­ly dur­ing Christ­mas break and one or two sick days per week in Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary. The phys­i­cal curse of deal­ing with major back issues became, in an unex­pect­ed way, a bless­ing in gained time to focus deeply on this work as sit­ting was the only com­fort­able posi­tion I had. But through the ups and downs, I can con­fi­dent­ly say that this project has been a mean­ing­ful jour­ney. Here’s a break­down of the major changes, the strengths I’ve leaned on, and the chal­lenges I’ve nav­i­gat­ed.

Major Changes and Omissions

1. LACI’s Six Cs of Sup­port

The Lan­guage-Based Approach to Con­tent Instruc­tion (LACI), devel­oped by de Oliveira et al. (2021), offers a com­pre­hen­sive frame­work for scaf­fold­ing Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers through its Six Cs of Sup­port: Con­nec­tion, Cul­ture, Code-break­ing, Chal­lenge, Com­mu­ni­ty and Col­lab­o­ra­tion, and Class­room Inter­ac­tions. Each of these ele­ments fos­ters mean­ing­ful engage­ment by con­nect­ing stu­dents’ expe­ri­ences to aca­d­e­m­ic con­tent. What makes this approach so effec­tive is that each ele­ment is dri­ven by guid­ing ques­tions:

• Con­nec­tion: What will you do to con­nect the les­son to stu­dents’ pri­or aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing, back­grounds, and expe­ri­ences?
• Cul­ture: How will you link the new con­tent skills and con­cepts to stu­dents’ cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic resources?
• Code-break­ing: What will you do to explic­it­ly teach ways of doing school, aca­d­e­m­ic lit­er­a­cy, and con­tent-spe­cif­ic skills?
• Chal­lenge: What aspects of dis­ci­pli­nary lit­er­a­cy and high­er-order think­ing will you address?
• Com­mu­ni­ty and Col­lab­o­ra­tion: How will you engage stu­dents in col­lab­o­ra­tion and build a com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice?
• Class­room Inter­ac­tions: How will you use inter­ac­tion­al scaf­fold­ing in the class­room?

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant addi­tions to my project has been cre­at­ing my ver­sion of LACI’s Six Cs of Sup­port tai­lored to wood­work projects and Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers. I real­ized ear­ly on that this frame­work need­ed to be more than a check­list for me; it had to be embed­ded with­in hands-on learn­ing expe­ri­ences. For exam­ple, dur­ing the laser-engraved box project, stu­dents researched cul­tur­al­ly mean­ing­ful ani­mal sym­bols, learn­ing about First Peo­ples’ beliefs and how to rep­re­sent these through engrav­ings. For Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­er stu­dents, this wasn’t just an art or tech­ni­cal project, it was an exer­cise in con­nect­ing with cul­tur­al nar­ra­tives (Cul­ture) by link­ing their designs to mean­ing­ful sym­bols and sto­ries. They also engaged in col­lab­o­ra­tion (Com­mu­ni­ty and Col­lab­o­ra­tion) by gath­er­ing feed­back, brain­storm­ing ideas, and refin­ing their work togeth­er.

Beyond col­lab­o­ra­tion, the project also pro­vid­ed mean­ing­ful Con­nec­tion by link­ing pri­or aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing about cul­tur­al sym­bols with hands-on appli­ca­tion in design. Stu­dents had oppor­tu­ni­ties for Code-break­ing as they learned to decode instruc­tions, under­stand design soft­ware, and grasp tech­ni­cal vocab­u­lary relat­ed to laser engrav­ing. The project also empha­sized Chal­lenge, as stu­dents had to push beyond basic design skills and engage in crit­i­cal think­ing to ensure their engrav­ings effec­tive­ly con­veyed cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance. Final­ly, Class­room Inter­ac­tions were fos­tered through struc­tured peer dis­cus­sions, teacher-led cri­tiques, and inter­ac­tive demon­stra­tions that pro­vid­ed the scaf­fold­ing nec­es­sary to com­plete their designs effec­tive­ly.

By incor­po­rat­ing all six Cs, this project became more than just a wood­work­ing task, it became an oppor­tu­ni­ty for deep­er engage­ment, crit­i­cal think­ing, and mean­ing­ful learn­ing for all stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers.

2. Google Class­room Struc­tures

Set­ting up the main struc­tures for my Google Class­room has been anoth­er impor­tant refine­ment. This wasn’t just about orga­niz­ing assign­ments; it was about cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal space where Tech­nol­o­gy-Inte­grat­ed Learn­ing could seam­less­ly sup­port Uni­ver­sal Designs for Learn­ing prac­tices. My Google Class­room is struc­tured with sec­tions that cater to dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed learn­ing, like visu­al hand­outs and step-by-step guides for project-based tasks.

One of the biggest suc­cess­es here was design­ing dig­i­tal quizzes for safe­ty tests and inte­grat­ing for­ma­tive assess­ments that let stu­dents reflect on their own learn­ing. This struc­ture also includes acces­si­ble resources for Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers stu­dents, such as trans­lat­ed instruc­tions and visu­al aids, which address Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers Edu­ca­tion­al Chal­lenges direct­ly.

The chal­lenge here was bal­anc­ing sim­plic­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty. I didn’t want the plat­form to over­whelm stu­dents or become a dump­ing ground for con­tent. After sev­er­al iter­a­tions, I found a bal­ance where stu­dents could eas­i­ly nav­i­gate the mate­ri­als while still being chal­lenged. I believe that the lay­out of my Google Class­room is thought­ful­ly designed to pro­vide intu­itive, easy-to-nav­i­gate access to course mate­ri­als and updates.

3. Omis­sion of Con­struc­tivism

This was a dif­fi­cult deci­sion. Con­struc­tivism is foun­da­tion­al to my teach­ing as it is how I view learn­ing as an active, hands-on process. But as the project evolved, I real­ized that Con­struc­tivism didn’t need to take up valu­able space in my writ­ing. Its prin­ci­ples are embed­ded through­out my prac­tices, from stu­dents build­ing mean­ing through projects to the reflec­tive assess­ments I use. While I didn’t for­mal­ly include Con­struc­tivism in the paper, its pres­ence is felt in the exam­ples and teach­ing strate­gies I describe.

4. Omis­sion of SAMR

I ini­tial­ly planned to dis­cuss SAMR (Sub­sti­tu­tion, Aug­men­ta­tion, Mod­i­fi­ca­tion, Rede­f­i­n­i­tion) in-depth, but as I refined the scope, I real­ized it didn’t align as well as I thought. SAMR is part of how I view Tech­nol­o­gy-Inte­grat­ed Learn­ing, but my project focus­es more on prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions of Uni­ver­sal Designs for Learn­ing and the inte­gra­tion of tools that direct­ly sup­port Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers. While SAMR remains part of my dai­ly prac­tice, I chose to focus on the frame­works that have a clear­er con­nec­tion to my paper’s pur­pose. In par­tic­u­lar, TPACK (Tech­no­log­i­cal Ped­a­gog­i­cal Con­tent Knowl­edge) aligned bet­ter with the project’s goals by empha­siz­ing the inter­sec­tion of con­tent knowl­edge, ped­a­gogy, and EdTech. Unlike SAMR , which pri­mar­i­ly cat­e­go­rizes tech­nol­o­gy use, TPACK pro­vides a frame­work to inte­grate EdTech tools, such as Google Class­room, Com­put­er Aid­ed Design soft­ware, and laser machines, in ways that sup­port both Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers and wood­work projects through thought­ful plan­ning and prac­tice.

 

Strengths: Where I’ve Thrived

1. Adapt­abil­i­ty

One of my biggest strengths has been my abil­i­ty to adapt as new chal­lenges and ideas come up. When I real­ized that LACI’s Six Cs could be adapt­ed specif­i­cal­ly for wood­work and Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­er stu­dents, I didn’t hes­i­tate to explore that path, even if it meant reshuf­fling parts of my project. I’ve also adapt­ed based on feed­back from Michael and from my peers, refin­ing the Google Class­room struc­tures and ensur­ing that key ideas like Uni­ver­sal Designs for Learn­ing remain front and cen­ter.

2. Con­nect­ing The­o­ry to Prac­tice

I’ve been able to take the­o­ret­i­cal ideas and make them work in a prac­ti­cal wood­work­ing class­room set­ting. Whether it’s inte­grat­ing visu­al aids for Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­er stu­dents or cre­at­ing scaf­fold­ed assign­ments through Google Class­room, I’ve kept the focus on how the­o­ry can enhance stu­dent learn­ing. I think this is where my back­ground in wood­work real­ly shines, as I’m used to prob­lem-solv­ing and iter­at­ing until I get it right.

3. Embrac­ing Diver­si­ty

My com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing an inclu­sive learn­ing envi­ron­ment for all stu­dents, espe­cial­ly Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers, is anoth­er strength. I’ve incor­po­rat­ed First Peo­ples’ Prin­ci­ples of Learn­ing into my projects and designed activ­i­ties that hon­our stu­dents’ diverse back­grounds. This has allowed me to cre­ate mean­ing­ful learn­ing expe­ri­ences that go beyond tech­ni­cal skills.

Challenges: Where I’ve Struggled and Survived

1. Bal­anc­ing Breadth and Depth

One of the biggest chal­lenges has been decid­ing what to include and what to leave out. Omit­ting Con­struc­tivism and SAMR wasn’t easy, and I still sec­ond-guess those choic­es. There’s a part of me that wor­ries about whether I’ve left out some­thing crit­i­cal. But at the same time, I know that focus­ing on few­er frame­works has allowed me to go deep­er into how Uni­ver­sal Designs for Learn­ing, scaf­fold­ing, and Tech­nol­o­gy-Inte­grat­ed Learn­ing sup­port Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers.

2. Time Man­age­ment and Writ­ing Struc­ture

Between teach­ing, fam­i­ly com­mit­ments, and this project, time has been a chal­lenge. There were moments when I felt over­whelmed, espe­cial­ly when I had to revise large sec­tions or rethink my Google Class­room struc­tures. How­ev­er, hav­ing all that extra time off with one or two sick days per week gave me unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to work on revi­sions and improve­ments. I cre­at­ed a good sys­tem by first read­ing jour­nals and cre­at­ing cita­tions of key quotes along with my per­son­al reflec­tions. I then orga­nized dif­fer­ent Google Docs for each main top­ic to store all rel­e­vant quotes. From there, I select­ed an array of quotes for each top­ic and copied them into my main Word doc­u­ment. Final­ly, I worked around these quotes to cre­ate my full writ­ings. This struc­tured process has been invalu­able, serv­ing as both a time man­age­ment and orga­ni­za­tion­al tool for my writ­ing. I’ve learned to lean on my orga­ni­za­tion­al skills and accept that not every­thing will be per­fect the first time around.

3. Nav­i­gat­ing New Tech­nolo­gies

Although I’m com­fort­able with most of the tools I use, there were times when inte­grat­ing new tech, like Google Class­room and dig­i­tal assess­ments, felt over­whelm­ing. I had to trou­bleshoot issues and ensure that every­thing was acces­si­ble to stu­dents, espe­cial­ly those fac­ing Eng­lish Lan­guage Learn­ers Edu­ca­tion­al Chal­lenges. I also faced frus­tra­tions with Microsoft Word while writ­ing this paper, from for­mat­ting glitch­es to ver­sion con­trol issues between desk­top and 360. Despite these set­backs, in the end, these strug­gles have made me more con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ty to prob­lem-solve and adapt to my tech­nolo­gies.

Final Thoughts

Reflect­ing on this jour­ney, I’m proud of how much I’ve grown as a teacher and a learn­er. The major changes, such as the delib­er­ate omis­sions of Con­struc­tivism and SAMR and the refine­ment of my Google Class­room, have strength­ened my writ­ing and focus with­in the paper. The process of care­ful­ly decid­ing what to include and what to leave out was chal­leng­ing, but it enabled me to focus more deeply on the frame­works that mat­tered most. The chal­lenges I’ve faced, par­tic­u­lar­ly in refin­ing my Google Class­room to pro­vide intu­itive and effec­tive access to mate­ri­als, have been valu­able learn­ing expe­ri­ences, remind­ing me that writ­ing is as much about the process as the out­come.

As I move for­ward, and with a major part of my writ­ing com­plet­ed, I know this project will con­tin­ue to evolve. There will always be new chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties to refine my writ­ing, but I’m eager to see how this jour­ney will shape not only my future projects but also my teach­ing prac­tice.

References:

de Oliveira, L., Brax­ton, D., & Gui, J. (2021). Plan­ning for Instruc­tion using a Lan­guage-Based Approach to Con­tent Instruc­tion for Mul­ti­lin­gual Learn­ers. Jour­nal of Eng­lish Learn­er Edu­ca­tion, 13(1). https://stars.library.ucf.edu/jele/vol13/iss1/2