Essays

            Being complacent is never something that we should settle for in life. There is always room for individuals to grow, to learn new things, and become a better person. I truly believe that teaching is a learning profession, and that each and every day we walk away with new information that will guide lessons to come. However, I believe that it is incredibly important for teachers to seek out new opportunities in order to not only better themselves, but their classrooms. It is for this reason, that I chose to enroll in Michigan State Universities Master of the Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program. As a teacher, I strive to make every student within my class feel welcomed, and confident in their learning experience and I feel that the opportunities that I was granted through this program has made me a better teacher.

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            With each class that I took, be it in my internship year after completing my undergrad, or within the MAET program itself, I felt as if I were truly getting a vast amount of knowledge. While it may not have been the easiest at times, I do feel like I walked away each day having learned something new that I could ultimately apply to my classroom. Recalling my experience within this program I can say that there were three classes that challenged me in my thinking, while also helping me become the educator that I see in myself today. These classes played an integral part in the way that I conduct myself within the classroom, as well as how I view my role within the school amongst my colleagues. The classes that I am referring to were TE 803: Professional Roles and Teaching Practices, CEP 810: Teaching for Understating with Technology, and lastly CEP 815: Technology and Leadership.

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            When going through my transcripts and thinking about what courses played a significant impact on myself I would argue that TE 803 had one of the largest, if not the largest, impact on my teaching. During my undergraduate years in the teaching program at Michigan State University I always had an idea on the teacher that I wanted to be. Someone who was approachable, kind, and caring towards all of their students. I wanted to mimic the teachers that had played such a tremendous role in my life, Mr. Brunson and Mr. Henderson, and establish positive and healthy relationships that created a safe and exciting learning environment. While these ideas on what a teacher should be came to fruition before taking TE 803, what did come of it was just how incredibly import those relationships you create with your students are. During my time in this course we were tasked with have one of our students within the classrooms that we taught be a case study. The case study that I chose, for privacy purposes we will call him John, is a student who I have nothing but positive memories of and someone whom I still keep in touch with to this day. However, looking back through the papers that I wrote for that, my relationship with John was not always the greatest. He was someone who was constantly getting removed from class and valued the image of being the class clown, and “cool kid”. What I really valued about this my experience in this class was that we were required to get to know our case studies and build a professional working relationship with them. While it did take some time for me to reach John, I eventually was able to establish a connection with him. In reading through previous work, I saw John go from a student with consistent discipline problems where ever he went for class, to being a leader within my classroom and receiving the highest grade within the class. At the end of the year, John used his final project in his woodshop class to make me a wooden box for my desk. While it might not seem like much to others, when he gave me that wooden box it meant to world to me. I saw just how much of an impact a teacher could have on a person’s life and from that moment on I have made the effort to establish a positive healthy relationship with every single one of my students. It could be as simple as creating a handshake with my students, to going to their sporting events, chaperoning school dances, and even being a leader of a club. Being a teacher is so much more than teaching the subject you are certified in, and while I know it sounds cliché we are making differences in each and every one of our students and I want nothing more than for my students to know that they are supported and cared for by me.

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            Another class that has greatly affected my thinking and practice was CEP 810: Teaching for Understanding with Technology. Before entering the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program, I truly had no idea what TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) was. To me, I understood that technology was beginning to have a larger presence within our classrooms, and so whenever I incorporated it into my lessons I genuinely felt rather good about.  However, this class greatly changed my understanding of when and how to properly implement technology into my own classroom. This is a concept that was not lost on me after day one of the program, rather every day we needed to keep the TPACK framework in mind. With TPACK there is goal of hitting, as my teachers Chris Sloan and Alison Keller described, the sweet spot. That spot can be found in the middle of the diagram. This is where technology, content, and pedagogy all overlap with one another. In order to make sure that lessons are meaningful for your students, it Is important that the lesson created for that day hits all standards and can be found in this zone. From this understanding, I have brought back the TPACK framework into my own classroom. Whenever we incorporate tech, I make sure that it aligns with TPACK and that this is not tech for the sake of use tech.

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            While TPACK may have had the biggest impact on myself in CEP 810, there were many other factors that have greatly contributed to my growth as an educator. During my time as an undergrad, there wasn’t much of a consideration to the different learning styles that were out there, and how we could incorporate those styles within our classrooms. While in CEP 810, part of the five foundational topics that the course was centered around was just that. Through my time in this course, I learned of the various learning styles like Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism, along with many others. Each learning style unique in its own right. Through reading and talking about these various styles within class I began to think of ways in which I could reach students who were struggling within my class. These learning styles opened the door for me to think around my teaching in order to provide all of my students with an equal opportunity to learn. My final takeaway from this course came when address the concept of effective mindsets for teaching. As a class, we were asked to come up with as many words as we could that we associated with having a positive mindset. In total we came up with 29 different words or phrases that we felt equated to a positive mindset. One of the phrases that we wrote down is that we want our students to be willing to fail, something that can be incredibly hard to do however incredibly beneficial if done right. My class is run predominantly through small group, and whole class discussions and I try and emphasize the importance of being willing to take risks. I truly believe that when students are willing to be vulnerable and put themselves out there real learning occurs. When students are so afraid of being wrong that they don’t want to ask a question, that is when learning falters.

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            The final class in my MAET experience that I felt was truly beneficial to me as a teacher was CEP 815: Technology and Leadership. In my three years of teaching before joining this program, I never really saw myself as a leader within my school. I was an active participant in the professional developments that were offered, however there was never a time when I was leading those sessions. Part of it stemmed from a nervousness/fear of being up in front of my colleagues and running an activity. However, that nervousness quickly dissipated as my classmates and I were informed that we were to be running the cross-shares the overseas cohorts partook in on Fridays. Cross-shares were a time where the year one, year two, year three cohorts, along with the teachers got together for the opportunity to discuss relevant topics facing the educational technology world. In order for this to be done effectively, collaboration was key. However, we were not just collaborating with one other person, rather with my entire cohort of students. Making sure that everyone’s voice was accounted for and all opinions were respected was incredibly important. We were tasked with coming up with the topics, and making sure that the activities that we provided them with were not only engaging, but on a topic that they were not familiar with. In total we did three cross-shares and with each one my confidence slowly rose. I can say with confidence that this course has greatly helped me with being more or a leader within my school. For example, while it did not involve technology, last week my counterpart and I presented to our colleagues on creating an equitable gradebook. This was my first time presenting in front of the entire staff and while at first it was incredibly nerve racking, I felt very confident in my abilities to do so because of how this class prepared me to be a leader in-front of my peers. Another way this course has changing my thinking is simply through advocating for teachers to think of TPACK when incorporating technology into their lessons. As addressed in previous works of mine, I feel as if there is a greater opportunity for the teachers within my school to use technology in a more effective manner. When teachers want to have a technological element brought into class they will use Chromebooks, and they are mainly used to have the students write papers that they are working on. Having gone through this program, and knowing now what I know I feel as if it provides the perfect opportunity for me to help teachers understand TPACK and the incredible tech tools that are available to them.

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            With my MAET experience now coming to a close, I can say that I will look back on this period in my life fondly. I am incredibly grateful for the friends that I have made within the program, some here in Chicago, while others much farther away in Germany, Italy, and Vietnam. I feel more confident in my ability to bring technology into not just my classroom, but my colleagues’ classrooms as well. The teacher that I am today is far different than the teacher that I was upon completing my undergraduate program. Having completed this course, I know that this is not the end of my learning experience. I believe that it is incredibly important that we as teachers continue to seek out programs that allow for us to become better leaders within the classroom. I do not know where my next steps will take me, but I am excited for the road that lies ahead.

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1) TPACK image from http://tpack.org