The Trying Teacher How MAED Has Shaped the Teacher I Am Today When I first started the Master of Arts program for Education through Michigan State University, I knew that I was in good hands from my Bachelor’s experience but I could not have fully understood just how much I would learn in the courses that made up this program until now. When initially applying to this program, I primarily wanted to finish my Master’s without really looking deeper into the “why” of the program, other than the surface level aspects that would help me: the pay scale advantage upon completion, finishing my Master’s within 5 years of the internship to use those valuable credits, in addition to wanting the program done as a whole to feel a sense of accomplishment in my early teaching career. In saying this, when I now look at the scope of how much I’ve grown in the fields of teaching with technology, addressing differentiation in the classroom, and how to market myself through my portfolio experience, I feel as though I am equipped to take on an immense variety and breadth of job opportunities in the teaching field. I truly could not have predicted the advantages far surpassing the initial reasonings behind striving for the program. While I love my current position as an English Language Arts middle school teacher, I know I want to grow and expand into different roles as my teaching career progresses and I feel more confident taking on more responsibilities with differentiation, specifically in reading and writing goals. Whether this be in a general education classroom or working with smaller groups of students to find what best suits their needs, this program has shown me the ins and outs of how to best meet each student with where they are at, to then help them grow and thrive in not only literacy achievement but as a whole student. Before taking the classes that comprise this Master’s, with a concentration in literacy, I know that I was focusing way more on generalized content as a “trying teacher” in their first years in the career collectively, and as a completely new teacher just attempting to do their best in meeting the curriculum timelines that my superiors were adhering to more strictly than I would have liked. I always struggled with this, and now have a much better understanding of the curriculum being malleable to each year’s group of students. This program has changed the way I approach my job, because I am now able to have more specific teaching solutions and strategies that unpack the umbrella term of differentiation, with giving each student that was a part of this program with the specific teaching ideas to bring to the classroom, instead of just leaving the broad scope of differentiated instruction vague. I have been able to take these strategies first hand and change the way I teach, not putting so much pressure on curriculum and more time and attention to student relationships and taking the curriculum I’m given, and adding my own adjustments as I see fit as a teaching professional. I have learned concrete teaching strategies and assessment tools to bring to my actual ELA classroom, which I will be able to use far surpassing the length of this program, and I am already a better teacher because of it.
Individual classes in this program have helped me throughout the tumultuous years that have past as I’ve taken the program, due to COVID and the effects this pandemic has had on education in America. During virtual learning via Zoom when no students were in the physical classroom, my teaching with technology class gave me specific skills to address the needs of my students in an entirely online classroom format. Additionally, in my children’s literature and film class, I was able to take on principles of reading and writing through the scope of film AND written literature, and compare and contrast these different mediums, giving me diverse ways of approaching literacy content in the classroom. I also had the opportunity to take a class centered around different literacy learners, and crafted a literacy learning project focusing on a specific student in my classroom to not only help this individual student make progress with their literacy skills but throughout the experience I have also found techniques in literacy learning that can be applied to my entire classroom. I am excited to grow upon these skills that this Master’s program has been comprised of, with the concentration in literacy as it applies to my current and future career aspirations.
These courses identified above have been pivotal to my success in the classroom during the most challenging years of teaching that no one could have possibly predicted. In taking a closer look at these courses and their impact on my teaching identity and craft, Teaching Students Online (CEP 820) is a great place to start discussing specifically how the MAED program has helped shape me into a better educator. This course not only was taught by an instructor that I felt truly cared about my experiences and takeaways from the course itself, but it also showed me how to engage students via Zoom and my learning management system used by my district being Canvas LMS. The assignments that we would confront and take into our virtual classrooms using real student data, gave us a variety of ways to keep students accountable and engaged during the reality of Zoom where, at least in my district, students were not expected or required to have their videos on… leading instructors to not know if students were truly invested in learning material, or (god forbid) sleeping on the other side of the screen. I have never felt so frustrated as a teacher, trying to help my students meet their best potential in ELA while struggling to understand where each student was at with the material, in a way that wouldn’t take up an entire class period (or more) to attempt to have an individual conference with every single one of my students. My head was spinning to say the least. This course gave us defined tools to ensure that students were given the best possible opportunity for success in an all online classroom format during a time in teaching that felt like I was starting from scratch from everything I knew to be “best practices” before COVID hit and teachers’ worlds were turned upside down. I feel that without this course being taken simultaneously with my online teaching experience, that I would not have benefited my students as much as I was able to amongst the chaos and challenges associated with pivoting to an entirely online format in an extremely short amount of time. The final project of this course especially helps my students and will for years to come, as I was able to craft a grammar and mechanics “course” via a Weebly site that guides students through modules associated with NoRedInk (a platform to encourage growth in grammar and mechanics learning for various education levels). I appreciate this course guiding me through an immensely trying time in my teaching career, and I am so grateful to now, still, be able to bring the technology aspects of this course into my physical classroom today.
In addition to this technology course that shaped the presence of teaching with tech in my classroom then and now, I also took a course focusing on children’s literature as briefly mentioned above. Children’s Literature in Film (TE 838) really showed me that there is never a “one size fits all” approach to literacy learning, and that incorporating different mediums of literature can be extremely beneficial to literacy learners at all levels. This course had the unique perspective of centering around famous children’s literature like Charlotte’s Web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter, Where the Wild Things Are, and more. The incredibly unique aspect of this course was that we not only collaborated with one another on what made these texts so great (and classic), but also how the written versions of these texts differed from the cinematic versions. We also looked at the reasoning behind the changes that were made between the written work and the cinematography versions looking at things like: advertising, marketing strategies, who the filmmakers marketed as their target audience and how this may differ from the text, etc. All in all, this course showed how you can do the same strategies with your students to compare and contrast two different versions of the same story, and in the midst of diving into the “why” behind the differences between the works, students are inherently able to develop comprehension skills surrounding the works that they can then apply to their own texts and reading experiences. This course really opened my eyes to differentiated literacy instruction in the most creative way possible. I took so much from this course and the modes of literacy that we looked at, and know that my students can grow from similar experiences.
The last course that is important to me to note in synthesizing classes that shaped me as the teacher I am today, of course in addition to this Capstone course that has set me up for success in gathering the data and achievements related to this program as a whole, is Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners (TE 846). This course is the most recent course I have been involved with in the realm of literacy and different ways to engage students in literacy learning with specific goals in mind. This course’s structure gave me the opportunity to work one on one with one of my actual 8th grade students in my ELA classroom. This student in particular has been behind in his reading progression and comprehension skills tracing back to 3rd grade. This student and I developed a literacy learning analysis project that has helped him to achieve his goals, far surpassing the length of the course. In combining monitoring of his NWEA scores from Fall to Spring 2022, with considerations of the LLAP in place, progress will hopefully be visible towards the end of the school year with this student’s plan in place. This dedicated time to work with this student individually will not only help me best support this student’s literacy goals moving forward, but aid my teaching efforts for all students. This class really gave me the opportunity to plan for individualized conferencing and conversations in a real life teaching experience that I feel will benefit my LLAP student greatly.
As a whole, this Master’s program has greatly shaped my ability to teach in a way that incorporates many facets of what it means to use best practices. I’ve come a long way with not only teaching technology and classroom management skills from the program collectively, but I have also gained valuable experiences related to my real work experience that benefited my actual students throughout the format of Michigan State’s Master of Arts in Education program. This program has challenged my thinking of what it means to be an outstanding educator, putting ample attention into student relationships and how these relationships help students engage in content, while feeling supported in more ways than just classroom content. I have never thought more about relationships with my students, and it feels incredible to say that in my 4th year of teaching in my current position, that I value relationships as my top priority before content due to conversations that have occurred with colleagues throughout this Master’s program, as well as assignments that have tied directly to teacher-student relationship advice and concrete examples. I know that moving forward, Michigan State has helped shaped the “trying teacher” that I will always be. This program heavily depicts that a “perfect” teacher is not possible, and that a teacher who constantly tries to grow and evolve to meet the needs of their students, is the best teacher a student can and should have. I am very proud to be a Spartan, through and through, and how this program has helped me shape my career for the better is only more proof of this truth. Go green!