...and all the stars were aligned?

When the stars all align, are good things supposed to happen? Is everything in your life supposed to turn upside down and re-arrange in your favor? Alignment is something that has never happened in my life. Looking back at events, I am shocked to discover that nothing I have ever done has been aligned. Maybe it's because I am so awkward, clumsy, and freakish. Maybe not. But regardless, alignment is a new concept within my realm. 

Learning what educational alignment was seemed to make sense and be a simple concept - balance everything. I left class feeling it should be easy to teach a well aligned instructional situation. That feeling lasted about the same amount of time it took me to get to my next class. I would have never noticed how disastrous the lesson was. This class requires we read 15 books throughout the semester. One a week. We are supposed to "critically think and understand" all of these novels. During class, we are lectured on something other than those books. To think critically, I believe a better pedagogy would be to discuss topics related to the novels in which we were focusing on. That would make me understand them more. Also, there is no assessment to make sure we are understanding what we are reading. This could be worked on to create an alignment that helps students learn. 

Alignment. Clearly some others don't understand it either. It wasn't just me after all.