Annotated Transcript
Below are descriptions of the various courses that I took while getting my Master of Arts in Education degree from Michigan State University with a concentration in Literacy Education.
Fall 2012
TE 802: Reflecting and Inquiry Teaching Practice I
Christina Berchini
This class was taken during the first semester of my internship year. It was extremely helpful when it came to evaluating how literacy plays a role in the classroom. The main focus of this course was differentiating literacy instruction. We were exposed to various strategies to help students that were either struggling or excelling with the material that we were teaching during our internship year. In fact, for one of our final assignments, we investigated three of our students' written works and developed plans on how to assist those students to help and challenge them in the most effective way possible.
Spring 2013
TE 803: Professional Roles and Teaching Practice I
Kati Macaluso
TE 804: Reflecting and Inquiry Teaching Practice II
Christina Berchini
This course included fellow interns that did not necessarily have the same subject concentration as myself. However, we all had internships in a similar area. This course focused more on classroom management tactics and strategies than content instruction. We also were prompted to use our own experiences during our internship to participate in class activites and discussions.
Although this was a continuation of TE 802, there was more of a focus on how we interacted with our peers and staff members in this course. For example, we taped ourselves while teaching lessons during our internship and provided each other with feedback on how to improve these lessons in the future. Furthermore, we investigated a key question regarding our practice, and presented our research on those questions to our peers. This course allowed me to reflect on my identity and goals as an educator.
Summer 2014
ED 800: Concepts of Educational Inquiry
Steve Weiland
TE 846: Accomodating Differences in Literacy Learners
Amanda Smith
This course was the introductory course for my MAED. It allowed me to reflect about inquiry in various ways and to apply this knowlegde to my practice. In each of the six units covered, I discovered why inquiry is essential for an effective teacher and how to utilize it in the classroom. Each unit required synthesizing the material learned and reflecting upon it in an essay. It served as a great introduction to the material that was explored in my future courses.
This course allowed us to focus on one student in particular, developing a plan that included various strategies in order to make this student a more successful reader and writer. We tracked this student's progress throughout the course of the semester. My journey with this student throughout this course allowed me to obtain new strategies to help stuggling students. It also helped me to reflect on my own identity as an English teacher, and what strategies I already use to help struggling students.
TE 838: Children's Literature in Film
Laura Apol
This course focused on various pieces of children's literature and their film adaptations. We were required each week to read a new book and watch its film adaptation, recording our weekly responses in essay format. For our final project, we chose a pairing of a book and film that we might want to use in our class, and discussed how it could be implemented using the resources we were given throughout the semester. I not only learned more about how film can be used as a tool in an English classroom, but I also became a more critical reader of children's literature.
Fall 2014
TE 850: Critical Reading for Children and Adolescents
Jon Wargo
This course really pushed me to be an extremely critical reader of children's and young adult literature. For each text that we were exposed to, we read an expository analysis that had to deal with its content, and wrote a short essay refelcting on our analysis and understanding of the piece. This course allowed me to reflect on my identity as a reader and how that shapes the role I play in the classes that I teach. Furthermore, it taught me the meaning of the word critical, and how it plays a role in the analysis of ANY form of literature.
Summer 2015
CEP 815: Technology and Leadership
Ben Gleason & Sarah Keenan
This course focused on what it means to be a technology leader in your school district. We were required to reflect on the technology resources from our schools. In addition, we were also challenged to come up with ways to communicate to stakeholders in the community about that technology. Lastly, we devloped a manifesto, in which we set goals for ourselves and provided a plethora of resources in order to reach those goals.
ED 870: Capstone Seminar
Matthew Koehler
Summer 2016
CEP 883: Psychology of Classroom Discipline
My Lien
This course focused on various strategies that teachers can use in order to establish effective learning environments for students of all ages. Each week, a new case study was presented, and we used the readings from the week to work with our assigned groups in order to come up with a plan on how this student could be successful. We also were required to apply the strategies that we encountered in this course to our own experiences as students in the classroom. At the end of the course, I created a classroom management plan for the following school year; in this plan, I used many of the strategies we discussed as a class.
The ultimate focus of this course was to implement all that I learned from the various courses that I took in order to think about my own career and education. Throughout the semester, we constructed a digital portfolio that displayed our personal and professional identities. Throughout this process, we collaborated with our peers in a digital forum to provide and receive feedback about our portfolios from one another. In short, this courseallowed us to reflect on our past experiences and courses and set new goals for ourselves as educators.