From Obstacle to Advantage
Introduction
To be honest, when I applied for the Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program at MSU, I originally viewed it as a stepping stone more so than a learning experience. Little did I know, what I saw then as simply another hoop to jump through became a learning experience that I have and will continue to apply to my practice. The courses that I took to obtain my MAED in Literacy Education not only provided me with more content knowledge to apply to the English classes that I teach at South Lyon High School (SLHS), but they also gifted me with strategies and methods for how to convey this knowledge to students. Furthermore, many of my courses concentrated outside the realm of content area, and were focused on other important aspects of being an educator, such as developing relationships with students, establishing yourself as a leader among peers, and creating a positive environment for students to thrive in. Therefore, my perception of what the MAED is has drastically changed for the better throughout the course of four years, as this degree has helped me with three key aspects that contribute to my success as an educator: establishing relationships in the classroom, developing creative ways to convey content, and adapting lessons to fulfill the needs of ALL students.
Establishing Relationships
When it comes to building successful relationships, and, in turn, a warm environment in my classroom, my CEP 815 (Technology and Leadership) and CEP 883 (Psychology of Classroom Discipline) courses stand out among the rest. While CEP 883 was geared toward helping teachers to establish positive teacher-student, student-student, and teacher-parent relationships, CEP 815 focused more on identifying yourself as a leader amongst your peers. To illustrate, I learned a great deal from CEP 883 regarding the importance of relationships in the classroom, one key point being that in order to build these relationships, expectations and goals need to be a primary focus from the beginning of the year. As a result, I will establish a few goals and expectations at the beginning of the following school year, communicating these clearly to both students and teachers. Furthermore, I will take extra steps to both model and enforce these goals and expectations so that students fully understand their importance. Also, I will make an effort to utilize some of the various strategies covered in this course to ensure that my students feel comfortable, and in turn are fully grasping the literature that we cover in class. For example, for students that enter into my class later in the semester, I will create a strategy to catch these students up to speed with classroom procedures and expectations so that my class doesn’t seem as daunting.
On the other hand, CEP 815 not only provided me with the skills and strategies needed to become a technology leader in my district, but it also covered what it is to be a leader in general, as well as the characteristics of successful leaders from around the world. This knowledge was enlightening, as I will not only apply it to being a leader to students in my classroom, but being a leader and effectively communicating among my peers as well. For instance, one concept that this course addressed had to deal with instrumental versus missional thinking, and the idea that, while it is important to implement new and innovative strategies into the classroom, acknowledging HOW these strategies will be implemented successfully is just as important. I will apply this type of thinking into my career, as I hope to one day implement a new course into the SLHS curriculum, Film as Literature, as is discussed in my Future Learning Goals Essay. Therefore, both of these courses have been a tremendous help when it comes to interacting with students, parents, peers, and administration.
Teaching Creatively
Aside from relationships, coming up with creative and innovative ways to convey knowledge (in my case literature) to students is an aspect that holds a great deal of importance when it comes to being an educator. How are students going to learn from me if they are not engaged with the material? That is why I believe that the courses that I took to help me with this aspect, TE 838 (Children’s Literature in Film) and TE 850 (Critical Reading for Children and Adolescents) to be specific, were so crucial to my learning experience. Both of these courses provided me with new and intriguing ways to teach literature in my English classes. TE 838 emphasized the importance of visual and media literacies; the class spent the first portion understanding how to evaluate film effectively, as well as determining why this was a crucial part of an English classroom. I used this course’s resources, combined with my own, as I have a minor in Film Studies, in order to create engaging lessons in my classroom. For example, in my senior English course that I teach, Reading and Writing for the College Bound, we devote an entire unit to film study, using many of the same methods that I learned in class to “read” and analyze these films and clips as if they were texts. At the end of the unit, students choose any director they wish and evaluate that director’s style using the terminology and strategies that we have discussed in class.
However, while TE 838 has clearly played a large role in how I teach film and film adaptations to students, TE 850 has provided me with various ways to teach traditional literature. The course concentrated on children’s stories and young adult (YA) novels that I was very familiar with and looked at them through a new set of lenses; I was able to take this information and use it to my advantage when teaching YA literature in my own classroom. For instance, when reading YA literature that covered controversial topics, such as Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, a story about a teen who was raped, we read several articles that were both for and against covering these mature themes in a genre of literature that was meant for thirteen-to-eighteen-year-olds. I used these articles as an introductory activity for my seniors before we started our YA literature circles. I had students read each viewpoint, and created a debate over which author they agreed with the most. This demonstrates one of the many ways in which I have used material that I encountered during TE 850 to my advantage when coming up with various ways to keep my students engaged with the material that we are reading.
Adapting for Students' Needs
While relationships and successfully conveying content knowledge to students are important, one of my biggest weaknesses even to this day is modifying or adapting lessons to fit the needs of all students. I find that I have a difficult time not only making sure that students that struggle are on the same page, but also making sure that high-level students are challenged. There is no doubt that the MAED program has helped majorly to improve this weakness, especially my TE 802 (Reflecting Inquiry Teaching Practice I) and TE 846 (Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners) courses. Both of these courses provided me with ways to reach below or above average students, in turn making me that much more effective of an educator. TE 802, a course I took during my internship year, was devoted to learning strategies to teach students that were either excelling or struggling with the material at hand. This course proved to be extremely helpful, as I not only developed ways to assist students that didn’t fully understand what we were covering, but also came up with ideas on how to meet the needs of students who did not seem to be being challenged enough. For example, because the senior English course that I teach has such a wide range of abilities, ranging from potential valedictorians to students with IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) that are barely getting by, I have methods that I use to challenge high performing students just as much as the other students in the class. One primary way that I do this has to deal with my implementation of literature circles, a concept that we discussed in depth during TE 802. Students are given five books to choose from, all from the same genre. I purposefully assign students that need to be challenged to the most difficult text to analyze, and in turn assign students that are struggling the least difficult text. Activities acquired from my time in that course such as this have allowed me to reach a wide range of students in my English classes.
In addition to TE 802, TE 846 also played a large role regarding how I adapt lessons for students with diverse needs and interests. For this course, we focused on one student that we had in particular, evaluated that student’s work, and devised a plan for how to improve a particular aspect of that student’s work with respect to literacy. Because I chose a student that has many of the same issues as many others in my classes, helping him in turn has helped some of the other students that struggle in class as well. To explain, the student that I chose to focus on benefitted greatly from me using topics that he was interested in as the subject matter of our lessons; that way, he was more engaged and in turn understood the material better. I now use this same principle with other struggling students, especially when teaching grammar, an aspect of English that many students have trouble with. To elaborate, for each grammar lesson, I have students choose the “theme” of the lesson (Marvel superheroes, college football, Spongebob Squarepants, etc.). I will devote our grammar lesson of the day to that theme, using example sentences that have to deal with whatever they choose. This seems to engage the students a bit more and in turn improves their grammar scores on their midterms and final exams. Using concepts that I learned worked with that particular student from TE 846 for my classes as a whole has allowed me to take major strides forward when it comes to ensuring that ALL students’ needs are met. Although this will probably be a struggle throughout the course of my career, adapting lessons and material to meet diverse needs is something that I feel a bit more confident about because of material covered during the MAED program.
Conclusion
While I initially chose to complete my MAED these past few years because of a time requirement, I now believe that getting my MAED during the first three years of my career was an extremely beneficial choice. While I was gaining more experience in my classroom at SLHS day after day and trying to establish my identity as an educator, I was simultaneously receiving countless strategies and ideas to help me improve my practice. Therefore, synthesizing what I learned from this program into my classroom was that much easier. My Capstone Seminar for my MAED degree, ED 870, allowed me to identify and analyze the manner in which these courses have shaped me into the teacher that I am today. My only hope is that the knowledge that I have obtained from this experience continues to shape who I am as an educator, so that I may have a positive impact on my students and colleagues. To conclude, while I once regarded my MAED as an obstacle, I now identify it as an advantage that I have to become that much more effective of a teacher.