As an educator I am always encouraging my students to continue learning. Whether that be new content, new skills and especially learning from one’s mistakes. I encourage my students to face any situation with the idea that as long as they learn something then it was worth their time. I encourage my students to take risks, think creatively and become lifelong learners. In order to instill this idea in my students, I must lead by example. I need to show my students that no matter how old you are, what stage of life you are in, as long as you are learning you are making strives to become a better version of yourself. This was the mindset I brought when I started my Master of Arts in Education (MAED) at Michigan State University. Through this program I was given the opportunity to take a wide range of classes, covering different topics and areas of teaching practice. I was given the opportunity to expand my horizons and step out of my comfort zone in my own teaching practice. In the MAED program I learned how to better develop a curriculum, how to be a researcher in my own classroom, how to differentiate learning for individual students in my classroom, and how to use technology as a tool for leadership. Over the course of the two years I spent in this program I have learned a great deal about my teaching practice and have also learned how to continue developing my teaching practice over time. I have learned how to be a lifelong learner. 

 

     Developing a Curriculum

 

In TE 861A (Teaching Science for Understanding) and TE 861B (Inquiry, Nature of Science and Science Teaching) I learned a great deal about how to develop my own science curriculum. I learned how to look at a big picture idea (i.e. A scientific phenomenon) and use a backward design approach to develop a Unit Sequence around that phenomenon. By planning a unit around a scientific phenomenon, I was able to connect my content with a real-world observation for my students. These two classes helped me to reach one of my initial MAED goals of making science relevant to my students. In TE 861A I worked on developing a unit plan for teaching the gas laws. I started with a big picture problem (an imploding tanker car) and used this idea to work backwards, using modeling and deliberate questioning techniques to help students be able to explain why the tanker car imploded. I continued this idea while taking TE 861B. I learned that my use of questioning can help me understand what students know and where they have misconceptions. In this class I chose a different scientific phenomenon and developed individual lessons that would lead up to the final idea that students would be able to apply what they learned to explaining a new scientific phenomenon. The idea that every topic I teach in my science class can be directly applied to something that students observe in real life has really shaped how I teach my classes.  

 

     Research

 

In TE 861C (Action Research in the K-12 Science and Math Classroom) I learned what it means to be a researcher in one’s own classroom. Prior to taking this course I had a very different view of what educational research looked like. I thought that this meant having an outside person come into a classroom for a short period of time, observe, take notes and analyze how students were learning. I believed that classroom research was often looking at a small snap shot of a classroom. This class taught me that you do not have to be a doctoral student or outsider to conduct research in the classroom. This course taught me that, in fact, sometimes the most qualified person to conduct research in the classroom is the classroom teacher. The classroom teacher is able to observe students every day over the course of a year, no longer is the research and data collected just a small snap shot. It can now be a long-term observation of growth over time. At my school our year-long goal has been focused on data collection in our classrooms. This class has helped me a lot with working toward this school wide goal. Over the course of this class I was able to conduct research on student understanding during inquiry-based activities. I have continued this research and data collection since taking this class and have aligned it with my school goal of collecting data to measure student ability to make a claim using multiple pieces of evidence and sound reasoning. In this class I learned different forms that research can take, research can be informal notes taken while students are doing an activity, research can be samples of students work over time, research can be individual interviews with students over a topic that has many misconceptions. This class taught me how to conduct research every day in my classroom and how to use the research to better my teaching practices. 

 

    Differentiation

 

When teaching 150 different students everyday it is not surprising that one would come across students with differing learning abilities, differing learning styles, and differing learning needs. It is unwise to assume that all students need the same things when it comes to teaching. In TE 846 (Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners), I spent time understanding how students read in different curriculums, I learned that literacy may look different from one content area to the next, and therefore helping students to be better readers needs to look different for each content area. I learned diagnostic tools to analyze an individual student’s literacy needs. Prior to taking this course I assumed that it fell on early elementary school teachers to teach students how to read, but upon taking this course I realized that reading in my science classroom is a new skill that students need to learn.  I learned how to ask questions to determine where students struggled with the reading and also learned how to develop guided questions to help students extract information from a reading. Students that may be considered proficient readers in an English class may be considered struggling readers in a science class. I worked with an individual student to help him develop techniques to better his own science literacy skills. Since taking this class I have used the techniques I learned and developed them to help all of my students with their scientific literacy skills. I have since incorporated a piece of scientific literature in each of the units I teach, this helps my students to continuously develop their literacy skills, but also helps them to connect what we are learning in class to a scientific phenomenon that they observe in their own lives. For example, in my Honors Chemistry class, when teaching a unit on Electrons, Energy and Light, I had my students read an article on how fireworks are made. This directly connected to what we were learning, and also required them to practice their scientific literacy skills. When reading these articles I teach students different reading strategies to help develop their literacy skills.

 

 

 

 

     Technology and Leadership

 

In CEP 815 (Technology and Leadership), I was taken out of my comfort zone by asking me to take the role of a technology leader who was responsible for managing relationships between technology, teaching and learning. When taking this course, I had never been put in a leadership position at work. These ideas were all new to me, and I was asked to navigate situations that I had never considered to be in my wheel house. CEP 815 asked me to navigate technology integration in a school, while considering ethical and social implications.  This assignment really hit home, being that I work in a school with a 1:1 technology program, it had not occurred to me all of the situations that needed to be considered prior to implementing a technology program. In this course I developed a professional development program integrated with technology. The technology I chose to use (an online lab journal) ended up being something that I implemented in my own classroom and have since helped other teachers to develop for use in their own classrooms. Through the many projects in this course I learned what it takes to be an effective leader. I learned that an effective leader needs to have a clear vision for what they want to see in the future but also needs to understand the present situation. Only then can a leader develop a plan to move forward. A good leader understands the stakes and that each individual may have differing goals for the changes being implemented. The culminating project for this course was to develop a vision statement for me and my colleagues. My vision statement was to develop clear goals as a school for our students, and to collect data in order to measure our progress on these goals. After taking this course I was given the opportunity to be a grade level leader at my school, this leadership role has allowed me to implement aspects of this vision statement as well as research and data collection tools I have learned in other MAED courses. 

 

Throughout the course of my MAED program I have learned many things and have been able to implement them into my classroom as well as my leadership roles as an educator. I think the most beneficial part of the MAED program was that I was taking courses at the same time that I was teaching. This allowed me to immediately put into practice the skills, techniques, and new ideas that I was learning. This allowed me to put something into practice in my classroom, evaluate how it worked in my personal circumstances and then adapt and revise it to meet my unique needs. I learned to be a reflective learner and teacher, I learned how to take feedback and adjust to better my own learning. I learned how to better communicate ideas verbally and written. I gave feedback to peers and took their feedback. I have learned that to be a continuous learner does not always mean learning from a textbook, that many things can be learned from listening to peers and getting their feedback. Even though I am done with my MAED program, I will never stop learning. I am proud to be a life-long learner, and I will continue to learn something new in everything that I do.