The Teacher I’ve Become…
By: Lauren Woods
When I graduated from my undergraduate teaching program in 2004, I was a new, enthusiastic, well-meaning teacher. I had all of the theories and methods under my belt as well as some practical experience, but I was missing the experience of a seasoned, veteran teacher. As I entered my first classroom job, I had so many fears about how my knowledge would play out in actuality. I was met with fear and uneasiness with parent meetings wondering if I would know the right words to say and whether I could convince the parents of my confidence and expertise, when I felt unsure at times. I made it through the first year and then through several more each year gaining confidence and experience which has made me into the teacher I am today.
During my second year of teaching, I was feeling much more comfortable with my job and knowing that I knew how to teach children. I had grown in my confidence dealing with students, parents, and co-workers. Yet the further I went in my teaching experience, the more I knew that there was so much more to learn. I began thinking about a graduate degree and seeking out programs to help build my knowledge.
I found the graduate program at Michigan State University and knew that it was exactly what I needed. Michigan State offered me the opportunity to tailor my degree into the concentration areas that I felt were beneficial for me. I knew that the concentrations of literacy and special education were where I needed to focus. I had the experience to know that my undergraduate education could not prepare me for every situation and the new mainstreaming policies were causing me to have more and more students with IEP’s. I had to learn how to teach those students and what strategies were successful to help them behaviorally. At the same time, I have spent six years teaching kindergarten and my knowledge of various literacy methods and strategies has been vital. I was at the point where I was ready to expand my horizons and compare or contrast teaching strategies to decide what worked best for my students.
The graduate program at Michigan State gave me everything I wanted and exceeded my expectations. I am exiting the program as a more knowledgeable, targeted, and confident teacher. Definitely my skills have improved in the areas of literacy and special education, but I have also grown in all the curriculum areas. Now I am a teacher who knows what to do, but also why I am using that strategy. I can evaluate curriculums and research-based strategies, being able to decipher whether or not they are valuable for me and my students. I do not just follow the current trends and curriculum in my school, but I take a proactive approach to be ensured that my students are learning and meeting their goals.
The MAED program at Michigan State requires three courses in the area of the core classes. One of the first classes that all students are required to take is Concepts of Educational Inquiry, ED 800. This class was a self-paced class and therefore we were able to work through the modules in our own timing. That immediately made me appreciate the course more because I was able to control my learning. Also, this made the class less conducive in creating a collaborative environment with other students. This was one of the only courses where I was not required to make posts and be in constant dialogue with other students.
The modules required significant reading about various topics in educational topics and then a series of reflection papers about things we had learned. I learned about the foundations of American Education and many famous theorists in a new way. Since there was not a constant dialogue with students, I was forced to reflect on my teaching in a deeper way with the theorists. I had to rely on my own knowledge and not gather ideas from classmates. The papers required me to interact with these theorists and ideas in a new way.
The book that I resonated with me the most was The Girl with the Brown Crayon by Vivian Paley. At first, I thought her ideas of creating curriculum based on student’s interests were unrealistic and not fundamental in teaching students what they needed to learn. Yet, as I reflected and spent time digesting her dialogues I realized that she was absolutely correct in how we help students want to learn.
Obviously in today’s classrooms we cannot throw out curriculum and teach students entire thematic units about topics they love, yet we can integrate student’s interests into the curriculum and use it as a springboard to get students to engage with us. As I reflect on the teacher I was before this graduate program, I know that I have become much more in tune with knowing my students at a heart level. I have realized the importance of and discovered how to engage my students and integrate their interests with the required curricular goals.
Along with completing the required core classes for the MAED degree, I was also required to pick two areas of concentration. The literacy concentration was obvious to me as an area for me to learn and grow. Leaving my undergraduate teaching program I had no idea where I was going to be teaching or what stages of learning I was going to facilitate for students. However, now after over six years of teaching experience, I know that I am destined to teach the primary students. I have taught kindergarten every year and I have come to love it. Therefore, teaching kids to read has become one of my primary responsibilities. I had exposure to various language arts/reading methods, but lacked the knowledge needed to teach each and every child to read.
The literacy concentration provided me with more than I could have hoped. Not only did I meet my original goal of learning various strategies and methods to teach reading, but I also had the opportunity to dive into children’s literature and learn how to evaluate it. Along with that, I had the opportunity to study literacy assessments and to learn how to appropriately and successfully use assessment data to drive my instruction. These are just a few of the things learned in my literacy classes.
I ended up taking four classes in the literacy concentration, having taken one of my elective courses in this area. Every semester when the course calendars came out, there was another literacy course that I felt was essential for me to take. I could have taken several more were I to have more time. One of the early literacy courses that I took was TE 846, Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners. I can honestly say that this course was one of the most significant courses in changing my instruction immediately in my classroom. During this class, we read many, many articles about literacy instruction. I felt like a sponge soaking up the research and the strategies.
One of the most significant strategies that I learned about was the Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) program (http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/pals). One of the articles we read during the class described the PALS program and the research about whether or not it was successful in facilitating reading learning. I was intrigued and found the website to investigate the program more. I began using it in my classroom and found it to be one of the best strategies that I’ve found to reinforce letter recognition, letter sounds, and sight words. It made a significant impact in my classroom and on my student’s learning; however it also was a defining moment for me.
Through my experience learning about the PALS program and beginning to integrate it, I realized that I had the power to change the curriculum to meet the needs of my students. Before this, I had not realized there were so many supplemental curriculum programs that were reasonable, in terms of time and money, to integrate into my classroom. It opened my eyes to the opportunity that I had to teach my students in the ways that I thought were most successful as their teacher, not predetermined by school curriculum committees. This might seem somewhat trivial or common-sense, but for me it was the beginning of a new style of teaching. I was in control of the destiny of my students and I now had the knowledge and confidence to guide my instruction.
This was not the only thing in TE 846 which made a significant impact on me. Our final paper in that class was a case-study where I was required to tutor a student using two different teaching strategies and then analyze the data to decipher which was more successful. To put it mildly, I was scared to death of this assignment. In my mind, case-studies were in the articles that I read about in professional journals. There was no way that I was knowledgeable enough to be able to do that. I felt that surely people would see through me.
However, as I progressed through the assignment, I realized that I could do it. I was a graduate student and I had the knowledge and experience to be able to speak to other teachers. I was not still the first-year, inexperienced teacher, but I was a matured, knowledgeable, and strategic teacher who had the expertise to share with others. This significantly changed my outlook throughout the rest of my graduate program. After this class, I was more confident and focused realizing that it was my time to be a leader in my school, sharing my knowledge with co-workers who may have more experience than me.
One of the other courses that I took as a part of the literacy concentration was TE 844, Classroom Literacy Assessment. I was looking forward to this course more than any other in my graduate program. I love math and I love assessment data, which is not always to the delight of my co-workers. However, for me the current trend of using data-driven instruction is what I love. So I could not wait to learn about more assessments to diagnose reading skills and help my students to learn more strategically.
This class was not exactly what I had expected, but had a significant impact on how I assess. In the class, rather than learn about various assessments and how to use them, we analyzed current assessments that we use and created literacy assessment plans to know how to use the data to drive our instruction. Throughout the course, I learned how to evaluate literacy assessments and created an individual literacy assessment plan for my classroom. This was an excellent, practical assignment as I was finally able to put together pieces that I had for assessment into one comprehensive plan. The final project gave me a framework to have various types of literacy data at my fingertips and to have several different types of assessments correlated to use them more successfully. It is something that I will use long after I receive my graduate degree and I have no doubt that it is something I will pass on to other teachers to help them as well.
The second concentration that I originally chose for my MAED program was special education. This was honestly not an area that I was excited about, but an area in which I knew was essential for me to learn and grow. I was not excited about the proposition of having to teach special education children in the general education classroom, but my courses in this concentration helped me attain the skills to do it. Naturally as I found my skills growing, my confidence and enthusiasm for teaching these students grew as well. I would not say it is an easy proposition, but I appreciate the challenge in teaching these students and the growth that I am able to see them making.
The most significant course in this concentration for me was the final course I took, CEP 842. The course was labeled Instruction in Inclusive Classrooms. The title may seem somewhat generic, but it was definitive about learning specific strategies and methods for teaching mathematics, science, and social studies to special education students. What I learned throughout this program was that while some students are classified as “special needs”, all students have different needs educationally. I found that many of the strategies that I discovered in this class were just as beneficial for my general education students as my special education students.
The distinction for me was a mental change, realizing that my job is to teach all students in ways that they learn most successfully. The classification, while sometimes helpful in creating proactive strategies for learning, is not the criteria for me to create an individualized plan for learning. That is something that I should be doing for all my students and I am, but I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. This class helped me to make the mental transition to realize that the special education and general education students in my class were the same…they were all individual students who needed to have instruction and assessment tailored to meet their individual needs.
One of the defining projects for me in this course was an 18 hour professional development program where I would instruct fellow teachers in supplemental math curriculums which might help meet the needs of certain students. This assignment was quite time-consuming but I learned so much as I completed it. I finished the assignment, wishing that I could find an opportunity to share this with my colleagues. I feel that throughout this graduate program I have learned so many things that I have made me a better teacher and I want to be able to share that with others.
So that brings me back to my initial thoughts about the teacher that I’ve become. I am definitely more knowledgeable, more strategic and targeted, and more competent. I’m also more confident, reflective, and reactive. I am a teacher who does not just follow the trends, but fully investigates her teaching methods and strategies. I am a teacher who is sure that her students are learning and knows how to successfully use the data to support those conclusions. I am a teacher who has had the privilege of learning and growing through an intensive master’s program and am ready to share that knowledge with colleagues to impact the world beyond just her students.
During my second year of teaching, I was feeling much more comfortable with my job and knowing that I knew how to teach children. I had grown in my confidence dealing with students, parents, and co-workers. Yet the further I went in my teaching experience, the more I knew that there was so much more to learn. I began thinking about a graduate degree and seeking out programs to help build my knowledge.
I found the graduate program at Michigan State University and knew that it was exactly what I needed. Michigan State offered me the opportunity to tailor my degree into the concentration areas that I felt were beneficial for me. I knew that the concentrations of literacy and special education were where I needed to focus. I had the experience to know that my undergraduate education could not prepare me for every situation and the new mainstreaming policies were causing me to have more and more students with IEP’s. I had to learn how to teach those students and what strategies were successful to help them behaviorally. At the same time, I have spent six years teaching kindergarten and my knowledge of various literacy methods and strategies has been vital. I was at the point where I was ready to expand my horizons and compare or contrast teaching strategies to decide what worked best for my students.
The graduate program at Michigan State gave me everything I wanted and exceeded my expectations. I am exiting the program as a more knowledgeable, targeted, and confident teacher. Definitely my skills have improved in the areas of literacy and special education, but I have also grown in all the curriculum areas. Now I am a teacher who knows what to do, but also why I am using that strategy. I can evaluate curriculums and research-based strategies, being able to decipher whether or not they are valuable for me and my students. I do not just follow the current trends and curriculum in my school, but I take a proactive approach to be ensured that my students are learning and meeting their goals.
The MAED program at Michigan State requires three courses in the area of the core classes. One of the first classes that all students are required to take is Concepts of Educational Inquiry, ED 800. This class was a self-paced class and therefore we were able to work through the modules in our own timing. That immediately made me appreciate the course more because I was able to control my learning. Also, this made the class less conducive in creating a collaborative environment with other students. This was one of the only courses where I was not required to make posts and be in constant dialogue with other students.
The modules required significant reading about various topics in educational topics and then a series of reflection papers about things we had learned. I learned about the foundations of American Education and many famous theorists in a new way. Since there was not a constant dialogue with students, I was forced to reflect on my teaching in a deeper way with the theorists. I had to rely on my own knowledge and not gather ideas from classmates. The papers required me to interact with these theorists and ideas in a new way.
The book that I resonated with me the most was The Girl with the Brown Crayon by Vivian Paley. At first, I thought her ideas of creating curriculum based on student’s interests were unrealistic and not fundamental in teaching students what they needed to learn. Yet, as I reflected and spent time digesting her dialogues I realized that she was absolutely correct in how we help students want to learn.
Obviously in today’s classrooms we cannot throw out curriculum and teach students entire thematic units about topics they love, yet we can integrate student’s interests into the curriculum and use it as a springboard to get students to engage with us. As I reflect on the teacher I was before this graduate program, I know that I have become much more in tune with knowing my students at a heart level. I have realized the importance of and discovered how to engage my students and integrate their interests with the required curricular goals.
Along with completing the required core classes for the MAED degree, I was also required to pick two areas of concentration. The literacy concentration was obvious to me as an area for me to learn and grow. Leaving my undergraduate teaching program I had no idea where I was going to be teaching or what stages of learning I was going to facilitate for students. However, now after over six years of teaching experience, I know that I am destined to teach the primary students. I have taught kindergarten every year and I have come to love it. Therefore, teaching kids to read has become one of my primary responsibilities. I had exposure to various language arts/reading methods, but lacked the knowledge needed to teach each and every child to read.
The literacy concentration provided me with more than I could have hoped. Not only did I meet my original goal of learning various strategies and methods to teach reading, but I also had the opportunity to dive into children’s literature and learn how to evaluate it. Along with that, I had the opportunity to study literacy assessments and to learn how to appropriately and successfully use assessment data to drive my instruction. These are just a few of the things learned in my literacy classes.
I ended up taking four classes in the literacy concentration, having taken one of my elective courses in this area. Every semester when the course calendars came out, there was another literacy course that I felt was essential for me to take. I could have taken several more were I to have more time. One of the early literacy courses that I took was TE 846, Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners. I can honestly say that this course was one of the most significant courses in changing my instruction immediately in my classroom. During this class, we read many, many articles about literacy instruction. I felt like a sponge soaking up the research and the strategies.
One of the most significant strategies that I learned about was the Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) program (http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/pals). One of the articles we read during the class described the PALS program and the research about whether or not it was successful in facilitating reading learning. I was intrigued and found the website to investigate the program more. I began using it in my classroom and found it to be one of the best strategies that I’ve found to reinforce letter recognition, letter sounds, and sight words. It made a significant impact in my classroom and on my student’s learning; however it also was a defining moment for me.
Through my experience learning about the PALS program and beginning to integrate it, I realized that I had the power to change the curriculum to meet the needs of my students. Before this, I had not realized there were so many supplemental curriculum programs that were reasonable, in terms of time and money, to integrate into my classroom. It opened my eyes to the opportunity that I had to teach my students in the ways that I thought were most successful as their teacher, not predetermined by school curriculum committees. This might seem somewhat trivial or common-sense, but for me it was the beginning of a new style of teaching. I was in control of the destiny of my students and I now had the knowledge and confidence to guide my instruction.
This was not the only thing in TE 846 which made a significant impact on me. Our final paper in that class was a case-study where I was required to tutor a student using two different teaching strategies and then analyze the data to decipher which was more successful. To put it mildly, I was scared to death of this assignment. In my mind, case-studies were in the articles that I read about in professional journals. There was no way that I was knowledgeable enough to be able to do that. I felt that surely people would see through me.
However, as I progressed through the assignment, I realized that I could do it. I was a graduate student and I had the knowledge and experience to be able to speak to other teachers. I was not still the first-year, inexperienced teacher, but I was a matured, knowledgeable, and strategic teacher who had the expertise to share with others. This significantly changed my outlook throughout the rest of my graduate program. After this class, I was more confident and focused realizing that it was my time to be a leader in my school, sharing my knowledge with co-workers who may have more experience than me.
One of the other courses that I took as a part of the literacy concentration was TE 844, Classroom Literacy Assessment. I was looking forward to this course more than any other in my graduate program. I love math and I love assessment data, which is not always to the delight of my co-workers. However, for me the current trend of using data-driven instruction is what I love. So I could not wait to learn about more assessments to diagnose reading skills and help my students to learn more strategically.
This class was not exactly what I had expected, but had a significant impact on how I assess. In the class, rather than learn about various assessments and how to use them, we analyzed current assessments that we use and created literacy assessment plans to know how to use the data to drive our instruction. Throughout the course, I learned how to evaluate literacy assessments and created an individual literacy assessment plan for my classroom. This was an excellent, practical assignment as I was finally able to put together pieces that I had for assessment into one comprehensive plan. The final project gave me a framework to have various types of literacy data at my fingertips and to have several different types of assessments correlated to use them more successfully. It is something that I will use long after I receive my graduate degree and I have no doubt that it is something I will pass on to other teachers to help them as well.
The second concentration that I originally chose for my MAED program was special education. This was honestly not an area that I was excited about, but an area in which I knew was essential for me to learn and grow. I was not excited about the proposition of having to teach special education children in the general education classroom, but my courses in this concentration helped me attain the skills to do it. Naturally as I found my skills growing, my confidence and enthusiasm for teaching these students grew as well. I would not say it is an easy proposition, but I appreciate the challenge in teaching these students and the growth that I am able to see them making.
The most significant course in this concentration for me was the final course I took, CEP 842. The course was labeled Instruction in Inclusive Classrooms. The title may seem somewhat generic, but it was definitive about learning specific strategies and methods for teaching mathematics, science, and social studies to special education students. What I learned throughout this program was that while some students are classified as “special needs”, all students have different needs educationally. I found that many of the strategies that I discovered in this class were just as beneficial for my general education students as my special education students.
The distinction for me was a mental change, realizing that my job is to teach all students in ways that they learn most successfully. The classification, while sometimes helpful in creating proactive strategies for learning, is not the criteria for me to create an individualized plan for learning. That is something that I should be doing for all my students and I am, but I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing. This class helped me to make the mental transition to realize that the special education and general education students in my class were the same…they were all individual students who needed to have instruction and assessment tailored to meet their individual needs.
One of the defining projects for me in this course was an 18 hour professional development program where I would instruct fellow teachers in supplemental math curriculums which might help meet the needs of certain students. This assignment was quite time-consuming but I learned so much as I completed it. I finished the assignment, wishing that I could find an opportunity to share this with my colleagues. I feel that throughout this graduate program I have learned so many things that I have made me a better teacher and I want to be able to share that with others.
So that brings me back to my initial thoughts about the teacher that I’ve become. I am definitely more knowledgeable, more strategic and targeted, and more competent. I’m also more confident, reflective, and reactive. I am a teacher who does not just follow the trends, but fully investigates her teaching methods and strategies. I am a teacher who is sure that her students are learning and knows how to successfully use the data to support those conclusions. I am a teacher who has had the privilege of learning and growing through an intensive master’s program and am ready to share that knowledge with colleagues to impact the world beyond just her students.
