Growing up, academia was always a part of my life. My mother worked with children at a family resource center, my father is a professor, and my grandfather before him was a professor and the vice president of Michigan Technological University. All three of them have always inspired me, although I didn’t originally plan to become an educator. When I first enrolled in college at Michigan Technological University I declared my major as undecided. I began extremely interested in Physical Therapy and strongly considered entering the field. Then, I took a job as a Learn to Skate instructor within the Michigan Technological University Department of Education and this is where I started realizing my passion for teaching. I truly enjoyed the reaction from my students when they would master a new skill and it was so much fun to celebrate with them. After thinking about it, I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in education and decided to transfer to Michigan State University after doing research on multiple education programs throughout the country.
I decided to pursue Elementary Education because as a Learn to Skate instructor I was teaching children under the age of ten-years-old and really enjoyed it. During my fieldwork in undergrad I was placed in 4th grade classrooms. I enjoyed it, but I went into education wanting to teach 1st through 3rd grade. When my internship year came about, I was placed in a 4th grade classroom. I was hoping that I would be placed in a lower grade to gain some experience in a classroom with younger students, but I was excited for the opportunity regardless. I enjoyed working with the students where I was placed and started to realize that I might be the perfect fit for teaching older students. Fortunately for me, because I attended Michigan State University’s Elementary Education program, my certification would allow me to teach kindergarten through fifth grade and my selected subject of English Language Arts for grades sixth through eighth. The first job that I accepted was at a middle school in Charleston, South Carolina. This is how I realized that I was a better fit for teaching older students. I have always been interested in novel studies and having informed and in depth class discussions about literature, and this is something that is much easier and more productive with older students. I continued working with middle school students and am currently in my fifth year of teaching 7th and 8th grade.
After my third year teaching, I decided I wanted to do something that would expand my knowledge as a teacher and that could broaden my options moving forward in my career, so I applied to the Master’s of Arts in Educational Technology Program (MAET) at Michigan State University. Throughout my enrollment in the program I have learned a lot about teaching, technology, and myself as an educator.
The first course I took for this program, CEP 810: Teaching for Understanding with Technology was the perfect attention grabber for me; in it I learned about Punya Mishra’s TPACK model (Mishra, 2018). This model explained that technology, pedagogy, and teacher content knowledge all worked together to create understanding. There was a strong emphasis on learning the importance of choosing the right technologies for certain tasks. In all transparency, before entering the MAET program I didn’t believe myself to be very technologically savvy. I was thrilled to be learning about how to better incorporate technology into the classroom as technology is so widely used by all and continues to advance.
In the beginning of this course we focused on how people learn. It seems obvious to me now, but during our first assignment, after having read some research by Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000), I learned that addressing students preconceived notions about given topics is vital to understanding. All people experience things differently and as such bring different ideas to new things they learn. This knowledge has been invaluable to my teaching practice because it has helped me individualize my lessons for my particular set of students. I have always considered my ability to build rapport with my students as one of the strongest skills I bring to teaching. I have now strengthened this even further by understanding how my students' personal experiences affect how they view things that I teach them. One of my first concerns now when teaching a new topic is to ask my students what their ideas are about it.
Another specific assignment from this course was very interesting and, afterword, enlightening. We randomly selected a task to perform with randomly selected tools. My task was to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using a bowl, a plate, and a fork. The goal of the assignment was to understand the importance of selecting appropriate tools for a given task. Fortunately, my tools didn’t make my task very difficult, but it did spark the thought of how much more difficult it could have been had I not been given (somewhat) appropriate tools. This has made me seriously consider not only what I am teaching my students, but what tools and methods I am using to teach them.
The next course is my favorite that I have completed throughout the MAET program. It has tremendously impacted my teaching and my ideas about issues of practice, and the specific issue of practice that has affected me the most. The title of the course is CEP 812: Applying Educational Technology to Issues of Practice. I learned a lot about how to select and use technology to help solve problems within my teaching practice. Particularly, I identified students' inability to self-regulate and researched what type of technologies could help alleviate this problem. I was excited to find a particular website and application titled Smiling Mind for multiple reasons. I think today mindfulness is an important practice for all as we have so many more distractions and access to technology and information. I also liked that this application did not focus on academics. It was my idea that if students took a break from academics and focused on their actions and how they affect other people, that this could help them develop empathy. I created a this blog post where I detailed just how this could help. The book A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger was utilized for this course, and I absolutely loved it. While reading the book I learned a lot about how important asking the right questions is. It really enlightened me personally and professionally. I wrote this blog post and in it I asked a beautiful question of my own. In my opinion, student-teacher-parent relationships are one of the biggest issues in education today and I wanted to explore how to nurture and foster these relationships. I came up with the idea that there should be professional development opportunities that involve all four parties affected by these relationships: students, teachers, parents, and administrators. This has not only improved my communication with parents and students, but it has with administration as well. It has significantly helped many students of mine in the classroom.
Another course that I was very interested in, somewhat to my surprise, was CEP 822: Approaches to Educational Research. In this course I learned about different types of research methods and how to analyze them. I enjoyed this course because I got to work a lot with problem solving skills and critical thinking; two things that I think are lacking in students of the 21st century. I did a lot of research on my chosen topic of problem-based learning and its effectiveness in the classroom.
For one assignment we had to create a “critical making” activity using a Tech Tool of our choice. I used the Makey Makey to create a lesson based on a book I was reading with my 8th grade students at the time. The main character in the book has Cerebral Palsy and requires a Medi-Talker to communicate. The goal for the students participating in this lesson was to create their own Medi-Talker using everyday items. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic and a quarantine that affected my class, we have not yet participated in this lesson. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment because it very clearly was made so that we would create lessons that required students to critically think and collaborate to solve a problem. This assignment directly related to my concerns.
This course also required that we created an annotated bibliography. I chose to research the efficacy of problem-based learning, because this method of teaching and learning also relates to the problem of outdated methods of practice. For the most part, I found that problem-based learning was effective and this strengthened my desire to continue using this method in my classroom and affirmed that it would help my students learn.
As I complete my Master’s of Arts in Educational Technology, I realize how much I have learned and added to my teaching practice and personal knowledge. I have learned that some of my previous ideas about teaching and learning weren’t as enlightened as they could be. I learned that everyone has different experiences that affect how they learn. I have learned that it is very important to approach issues of practice with well thought out questions and try your best to not give in to frustration, as a lot of these issues are wicked problems and have more than one possible solution. The two most important and valuable things that I have learned are how to ask good questions and how to approach solutions to issues in my practice. I have come to many realizations throughout this program. Most importantly that building empathy within the classroom is vital, and that it is important to always be expanding my personal horizons and continue to look for and pursue new opportunities, both educationally and professionally. I am excited to see what is to come and am determined to never stop learning.
References Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (2000), How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368.