In the fall of 2011, I decided it was time for me to build onto and improve the skills that I possessed as a teacher.  Being three years removed from receiving my Michigan teaching certificate, I realized that I better start continuing my education to receive the 18 credits required by the state. I decided to go one step further and get a master’s degree as this was the best option to help me as a teacher.  At the time, I taught at a school that was an hour from where I lived and had aspirations of coaching if I stayed in education.  Because of this, I felt it would be difficult to attend class at a campus throughout the school year.  However, as a student, I always seemed to find a way to procrastinate and at times, was not disciplined.  Knowing this, I took a leap of faith and joined Michigan State University’s online program for a Master’s in the Art of Education (MAED).  Surprisingly, I made an excellent transition to learning online and am thrilled with the benefits that the MAED program at MSU have provided. 

 

              I completed my undergraduate work at Grand Valley State University and at that time, a professor once told me that one in five teachers are out of the profession within five years of starting their career.  I bring this up because I was nearly the one in five who gave up on the profession.  My first three years were very difficult, as I lacked leadership skills and a solid approach to teaching that would make for an effective teacher.  When I finished my third year of teaching, I decided to do some self-reflection and figure out if I wanted to continue a career in education and if I did, what were the skills that I needed to improve, so that I could have success as a teacher and enjoy myself while teaching.    Within MSU’s MAED program, there is a large variety of concentrations that you can follow, to make the learning individualized for the student.  Understanding the skills that I needed to improve, I decided on a P-12 School and Postsecondary Leadership Concentration.  I can say without hesitation, that what I learned in my graduate studies at Michigan State University has allowed me to have a great amount of success in teaching, while thoroughly enjoying every bit of teaching over the last few years.

 

              Knowing that I needed to change my approach to teaching, I took Creativity in Teaching and Learning (CEP818).  As the title suggests, this class focuses on ways that teachers can make learning for the students much more engaging.  When I first started this class, to me, an engaging lesson involved the use of a PowerPoint and I would teach my 7th and 8th graders as if they were college students attending a lecture.  Surprisingly, Dr. Punya Mishra and Kristen Kereluik had a different perspective on creativity!  Within this class, I had my very first experience of creating a website.  Doing this showed me that education was headed in the direction of technology.  It also showed me that I should think outside of the box when looking at ways to engage my class.  For the rest of the semester, we definitely spent the entire time outside of the box!  I found myself analyzing different ways that my students could perceive material.  This led me to write a song about the Civil War and believe me, this was my first experience of even thinking about writing a song.  Later, we focused on abstracting information and how making connections to different pieces of material can help engage a student and help them learn.  With this, I found a way to use O Captain! My Captain!, an abstract poem by Walt Whitman, to connect the feelings of American citizens after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.  Finally, I had to focus on embodied thinking, leading me to write poetry about a Civil War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although nobody at the time understood PTSD as a psychological disorder.  By the end of the semester, my vision of an engaging lesson completely changed from my students listening to me lecture about an event in history, to students creating a piece of work to show their understanding of that same event in history.

 

              Immediately the following semester, I took Leadership and Organizational Development (EAD801).  This class opened my eyes, helping me understand valuable qualities to being a leader and showing the relationships that should exist between staff at all levels.  As a leader, I learned that you need a strong sense of emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.  I felt like I had a good grasp on these qualities, yet I did not focus a ton of attention on developing meaningful relationships, which is probably the single most important quality of being a good teacher.  Before this class, I viewed my students as only someone who would learn from me and nothing more.  This did not help my cause for student behavior within my class.  Also previous to this class, I viewed my relationship with administrators for punishing students and also for evaluative purposes.  This thought definitely changed and transitioned to viewing administrators as a confidant, who is there to assist in anything that I need to improve my teaching.  I also viewed my position differently, understanding that I need to take steps to managing behavior in my classroom and use the principal only as a last resort.  Most importantly, this class helped show the importance of collaboration with fellow teachers.  My first couple years of teaching, I isolated myself on an island that I called my classroom.  I didn’t seek the advice and guidance like I should from fellow teachers and I did not provide any sort of help if other teachers did in fact need help.  Because of this, I value teamwork within teaching and view this as one of the most important factors to having a successful school. 

 

              As I grew as a teacher, I began to understand the importance of giving quality instruction that meet the needs of all learners.  Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners (TE846) helped me improve my ability to differentiate instruction to help all learners succeed to their highest capability.  Within my first couple years of teaching, I always used a one size fits all method to the instruction that I gave.  This method worked for many learners.  Unfortunately, it did not work for all of my learners.  What I liked best about this class is it provided proven, best practice methods to teaching students of all different levels.  Before this class, I simply would provide a way that I thought would work for reading and simply not understand why a few of my students did not understand what they read.  After taking this class I understood the importance for pre-reading, while reading and post-reading exercises.  These methods gave me a toolbox of ways that I could actually help unlock the barrier that stood in the way of my students learning.  Finally, this class gave me the opportunity to practice what I learned, then evaluate these methods on a student.  This was important for me, because I knew the methods I began to use truly worked if I applied the methods correctly.

 

              Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology (TE831) also had a tremendous impact on how I teach today.  Technology is rapidly changing how we interact with one another, how we learn and how we really don’t have much of an attention span anymore.  I mentioned earlier that when I first started teaching, I loved to use PowerPoint in my lessons.  Because I used PowerPoint, I truly felt that my amazing slides would have a huge impact on my students learning.  How wrong I could be.  TE831 shifted my thoughts on technology.  I believed that teacher centered technology meant students benefitted from being able to “use” technology.  Instead, I found that technology should be student centered to the point where the students are creating a finished product, instead of viewing a teacher’s finished product.  This class introduced me to new technologies and forced me to research other technologies that may not appear within the class.  Once I had a good understanding of the technology, we needed to implement the technology into our class.  This helped improve student engagement, making students excited to learn social studies.  Examples of technologies introduced are Today’s Meet, Poll Everywhere and Glogster.  Today’s Meet provides what they call a back channel within the classroom.  While the class goes through a lesson, Today’s Meet will allow for students to have a conversation in a blog with everyone in the class.  Often time’s students will seek assistance, or ask a thought provoking question.  What’s great is the lesson continues to flow, while everyone in the class can serve as an assistant to helping others or bringing up new ideas.  Of note, everything put into the blog is monitored by the teacher.  For Poll Everywhere, a teacher can create a poll and have the students answer using either a cell phone or computer.  Simply seeing the faces of eighth grade students when the teachers requires them to get their cell phone out is priceless.  Within the program, they can’t see how other individuals voted, allowing them to share their true opinion about a topic.  With Glogster, students create a platform that is similar to a digital poster.  Within the platform, they can imbed music, video, photographs, text, etc.  I used Glogster for a Reconstruction Era project the last two years and am very happy to see the work created by students, but also, the engagement that they sustain throughout the project.

 

              Although taking the Capstone Seminar (ED870) scared me when I first started the class, it has provided an excellent opportunity to reflect on my learning over the last five years, while also helping me understand the importance of creating a professional online portfolio.  Life can move at such a fast pace that we often forget to look back on the past and only look toward the future.  Before this class, I really never gave much thought to all that I have truly learned over my five years at Michigan State University.  In this process, I at times, even rediscovered things that I learned in the past, but never applied in my teaching.  It also helped me reflect on learning that I did apply to my classroom and analyze if I could improve the way I use these methods to better help my students grow.  This class also has me looking into the future in different ways.  First, where do I go for my learning once I finish my MAED program?  As you have seen in the essay My Future as a Learner, I highlight three different opportunities, including professional development from the National Council of the Social Studies (NCSS), a useful website to improve ways that I could use technology in the classroom and an opportunity to develop my golf coaching skills to better help my team succeed.  ED870 also has given me the thought of having my eighth grade students create their own learning portfolio starting next school year.  With the ease of creating websites, I think my students would benefit in knowing they have the ability to not only create their own website, but also have the ability to look at the progression of learning that took place over the course of the school year.

 

              As my MAED program at Michigan State University continues to wind down, I am thrilled to have taken the opportunity to learn within an online community.  This program further demonstrates the importance of not only understanding technology in education, but also, how to use technology to benefit students.  The staff at Michigan State has always found a way to help me learn, from posting in a forum about my thoughts and receiving feedback about my post, to having chat sessions to answer any questions that I may have at the time.  Because of my education at Michigan State and my perseverance to stick with a profession that I knew I could have success with, I am a great teacher that looks forward to every day spent in the classroom.