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Caroline Krause

Professor Cathy Hartman

ED 112 Intro to Professional Educator

7 April 2023

Meaning Making Reflection

For my meaning-making experience, I was engaged with Rebecca Koch, a breakthrough

coach. Before she came to visit us, she sent us a video with information regarding her past in

education, what she does now, her impact word, and her artifact. This allowed our group to get to

know Rebecca better before she talked with the rest of the class. After her talk with the class, my

group had to figure out how to make the presentation. We started by all picking different parts of

the project to do based on the requirements in the rubric. Ben, one of the members, was sick the

day Rebecca came to talk, so we had to find a way to communicate with him and involve him in

the project. In addition, our group was unable to meet in person to put together the presentation.

To still collaborate effectively, I made a Google Slides presentation and sent it out to the group

so we could still work together without meeting in person. I also emailed Ben to ask for his

number so we could add him to our text group chat as well as give him a piece of the project to

do that he could complete without having been there for the in-person talk with Rebecca. Over

the next two days, we worked on Google Slides to put together the presentation and sent any

questions or comments in the text group chat. For our presentation, Amanda started out with

Rebecca’s journey of being an educator, and then I went over her impact word (evolve) and her

artifact (the spiral). For the spiral slide, I included pictures of spirals found in nature, because

that was one point Rebecca touched on and I thought it would be a nice visual. Although
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Rebecca included both of these topics in her talk, we still wanted to review them and go over

them in a bit more detail with the extra information our group received in the introduction video

that Rebecca did not share in her talk. After, Ben talked about how Rebecca’s story connected to

Dr. Buchanan-Rivera’s mentor text. He made the connection between Dr. Rivera’s idea of

mindful affirming spaces, and how these environments can promote growth, or evolution, that

allows for opportunities that lead to upward spirals, all things that Rebecca was passionate about.

Then, Leah talked about the two-minute habit, which is one of the ideas that Rebecca told us

about. She included the ideas of consciously incompetent, consciously competent, and

unconsciously competent. I thought this was a good idea to include because I feel like seeing

those terms visually on the board helped me understand them better than just hearing them out

loud. Some people in our class then shared their two-minute habits and even gave Professor

Hartman some ideas on how to drink more water (which was the habit she wanted to implement).

Finally, Jaymeson explained the class activity. This was inspired by our classmate Katie who, on

the day of Rebecca’s talk, said that she sounded like she could be on a TED Talk because of her

energy and motivational speaking. We originally thought that the class activity could be

completing the next two steps of achieving our next breakthrough that Rebecca told us about, but

those were time-consuming and personal. Instead, I suggested that our class could come up with

a name for Rebecca’s TED Talk. Jaymeson then also added coming up with the main focus and

key takeaways from the speaker. To do this, we gave everyone in the class a piece of paper to

write their ideas down on and then we invited them to share with the class. It was really powerful

to hear about what everyone gained from Rebecca’s talk with us. While our class was writing,

Amanda suggested to our group that we could take the names of all the TED Talks and form

them into a spiral (Rebecca’s artifact) as our gift to her. Then, she would be able to see the
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impact she left on us. I thought this was a great idea and some amazing on-your-feet thinking

from Amanda. Our group then gave suggestions on what the easiest way to do that on the

computer would be, which utilized our technical skills and knowledge. Overall, I think our group

worked well together despite some of the challenges we faced. Everyone did their part of the

work on time and thoughtfully. We were open to sharing ideas and worked well both collectively

and independently. I really enjoyed Rebecca Koch’s story and talk, so I felt lucky that I was able

to engage with her more through the meaning-making. I appreciated how her introduction was in

a video format because it gave us a better sense of her energy and passion, which was also

displayed in her in-person talk. At my table in class, we compared her energy to Renee Isom,

though we said that Ms. Isom had a bit more of a chaotic energy (in the best way). In addition, I

enjoyed working with my group on this project. It was cool to work with people that I don’t sit

next to every class and to be able to collaborate and present with them. Group projects usually

stress me out, but I think for this one, our group did well together and I wasn’t worried about

anyone not doing their work. Although we could not meet in person to practice, I think our actual

presentation went smoothly. Everyone seemed confident in their portion of the work so that

confidence was able to carry on to our presentation. I often strongly dislike presenting in front of

a class, but I think our class has been able to form a community in that I feel safe and

comfortable, so I wasn’t too nervous. I also appreciated the participation of our classmates, and it

showed that they were engaged in our presentation. If I could have made any changes to our

project, I would have added more interactive elements throughout our presentation rather than

just at the end. I feel like this would have made the presentation more engaging and interesting,

rather than having our classmates just listen to us review Rebecca’s talk. I feel like we did the
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best we could considering we were unable to meet in person and that we only had two days to

put it together, but I do acknowledge that we could have done more.