JACK OF ALL TRADES, NOW MASTER'S IN ONE
Synthesis Essay
Becoming Intentional
As highlighted in my graduate work showcase, my experiences in Michigan State University’s Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program have made me more intentional and strategic in my work. I came into the program with enthusiasm about science education, teacher professional development, and educational technology, but I did not always have the thoughtfulness or rationale behind my planning and design. My excitement led to a willingness to dive wholeheartedly into adopting new ideas and practices without examining the big picture of what I wanted to accomplish first. Throughout the MAED program, I have had the chance to innovate and test out my new learning grounded in theory and research to develop my conceptual understanding. My colleagues and friends have commented that I have become more deliberate in my actions – Deliberative is now one of my CliftonStrengths – and show more confidence as a leader. In the section below, I share three courses that have had a profound impact on my personal and professional growth.
Changes in My Practice and Thinking
Sparking Curiosity
Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) have always been my passion. Like most children, my dream job changed over time – from meteorologist to accountant to environmental lawyer to biomedical engineer. Even though the exact career changed, STEM was the consistent theme. My teachers and parents encouraged me to seek answers to my increasingly complex questions about the world around us and embraced my curiosity. When I pivoted from engineering to teaching science, I wanted my curiosity and passion for STEM to be contagious. Being a successful science teacher meant inspiring all of my students to ask questions about the way things work and to grapple with how much humanity still needs to learn to answer those questions. My nontraditional background provided me with rich content knowledge as a teacher, but my lack of pedagogical knowledge made it difficult to reach my vision of success.
A rich science education has the potential to capture students’ sense of wonder about the world and to spark their desire to continue learning about science throughout their lives.
-National Research Council, 2012, p. 28
After being out of the classroom for four years, I took TE (Teacher Education) 861B: Inquiry, Nature of Science, and Science Teaching. I deeply explored the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for the first time and learned the driving principles behind the new standards. While reading A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (National Research Council, 2011), I was drawn to the quote, “a rich science education has the potential to capture students’ sense of wonder about the world and to spark their desire to continue learning about science throughout their lives” (p. 28). This idea embodied my experiences as a child and what I aspired to provide my students as a teacher. Fortunately, this text was a primer for exploring pedagogical practices, aligned with the Ambitious Science Teaching framework, that could provide students with a rich science education. These practices represented a shift away from a teacher-driven learning towards student-centered classroom.
As a part of our exploration, my classmates and I completed a video observation series that highlighted how a teacher, Bethany, planned and implemented a phenomenon-based unit in her classroom. It was powerful to hear Bethany explain her planning process, as she was able to use anchoring phenomena in a more cohesive way than I did as a teacher. I realized that in my planning I missed finding the bigger phenomenon that could unite the subtopics. In TE 861B we discussed structures and ways to facilitate student dialogue about scientific concepts that led them to generate and refine their own hypotheses. Coupling the course readings and video observations, I created and taught a lesson sequence that gave students opportunities to engage in observations, discourse, and sense-making around the everyday phenomenon of rust. This was a sharp contrast to how I taught chemical reactions in my Physical Science classes, but it turned a concept that many students considered boring and not relevant into something that sparked curiosity. After the initial chemical reaction that students measured and observed, they began wondering why aluminum was reacting with the copper (II) chloride and other materials did not. Students were hungry to understand what was happening instead of considering the content to be another thing they had to learn for the sake of a class. I am now incorporating these teaching practices into my curricular design to capture students’ sense of wonder and use it to fuel their learning.
Cultivating Trust
Throughout my career, I have had informal and formal leadership roles. My colleagues have described me as a “servant leader,” someone who leads by considering the needs of people. I believe that this is not a unique trait; it is one embodied by most educators. We relentlessly work in education to provide students with the best learning possible – that is the need of the communities we serve. As I transitioned from the classroom to supporting teachers, I have had to consider how the needs of adult learners differ from the needs of K-12 students. EAD (Educational Administration) 824: Leading Teacher Learning underscored the theory behind my experiences in teacher professional development and teamwork while providing concrete strategies for effective team-building and adult learning.
Trust was one of the first themes we examined in the course, and it is one that has appeared in many of my other MAED courses. Even beyond the education industry, trust was listed as a key factor in productive teamwork and learning: “Trust is absolutely essential for human survival. Until we feel that we can rely completely on the person to the left of us or the person to the right of us, we can't really achieve anything great” (Sinek, 2015). It is easy to take trust for granted in schools and educational organizations; we can easily assume that everyone sees our actions as working towards that same goal of supporting students. As discussed in the course readings, relational trust between colleagues takes effort and ongoing work to build. While it is rarely intentional, actions and words can erode trust and respect over time, so it is important to keep in mind the impact of what we do and how we communicate to build collegiality and strong relationships. I have not always prioritized explicit trust-building, assuming that my colleagues knew that we are all in
Trust is absolutely essential for human survival. Until we feel that we can rely completely on the person to the left of us or the person to the right of us, we can't really achieve anything great.
-Sinek, 2015
this work for the same reasons. EAD 824 instilled in me the need to be more cognizant and intentional about how I build and maintain trust with colleagues and how to cultivate it across my team and organization.
I used to think that building trust as a leader was just a matter of being present and being willing to listen to others, but now I think it requires more vulnerability and intentional effort to establish strong, trusting relationships across a team. Using the group development framework from EAD 824, I have worked with my manager to incorporate time to consider norms and discuss values in our team meetings. I try to model vulnerability with my teammates by sharing my growth areas and by asking for more feedback even though we have a flat team structure. Investing this time now into cultivating trust can provide a strong foundation as we expand in the years to come.
Designing for All
As a teacher, I attended a few professional development workshops on differentiation. These sessions provided me with some analog tools to support the range of students in my classroom, but the presenters shared strategies with a superficial understanding of what it meant to have an inclusive learning environment and offered no guiding principles. After the workshops, I was energized to try out my new strategies in the next few weeks of teaching, but I typically failed to incorporate them comprehensively and in a long-term way. Several of my MAED courses reviewed the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines and highlighted how the guidelines promote accessible and inclusive teaching. In CEP (Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education) 820: Teaching Students Online, I had the opportunity to more deeply reflect on the UDL Guidelines and how to incorporate them in my work.
Education is for everyone, but the way in which we deliver education—and the way in which students receive it—is not the same for everyone.
-Sams & Bergman, 2013, p, 20
In an article on the flipped classroom model, Sams and Bergmann (2013) underscored UDL’s call for providing multiple means of action and expression, representation, and engagement: “education is for everyone, but the way in which we deliver education—and the way in which students receive it—is not the same for everyone” (p. 20). Beyond providing alternative text for images and using easy-to-understand language for my learners, I need to create opportunities for autonomy, collaboration, knowledge transfer, and strategy development in my design. I realized in CEP 820 that the UDL Guidelines are more than a checklist of things to incorporate for accessibility, they are principles for developing learners who are “purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, and strategic and goal-directed” (CAST, 2018). My previous approaches to teaching were targeted to the average student in my classroom with some scaffolding for students who struggled; this was a disservice to all students and likely stifled their learning. I did not fully consider the range of ways I could deliver content or the different ways my students were receiving it.
In CEP 820 we were tasked with proposing and implementing changes aligned to the UDL Guidelines in the online courses we were building. Given my “aha” moment with UDL, I challenged myself to integrate more than just the representation principle of the guidelines. I instead chose to research different functions of my Learning Management System (LMS) to uncover how technology could help me address the other principles. Rather than just seeing technology as a way to make learning more exciting, I began to consider how technology could serve a larger purpose: to provide learning options to meet all learners’ needs. In my course design, I utilized the MasteryPaths option in my LMS to build students’ fluencies in a way that matched how they learn best, offered digital tools to provide students with more autonomy and choice for approaching their tasks, and created a digital portfolio structure that allows students to reflect on and track their learning and progress over time. Similar to the differentiation workshops I attended as a new teacher, I incorporated concrete strategies that I was learning. But I now understood the larger principles – the what and why behind how to differentiate – to influence my practice beyond a specific lesson. As I design learning for instructors and students alike, I think more holistically about addressing the UDL guidelines to design for all of my learners.
Lasting Impacts
These examples highlight the overarching changes I have noticed in myself as a result of the MAED program; I have become much more intentional in my design, practice, and thinking. I have added specific practices and frameworks to my educator toolbox that I want to use throughout my career in STEM education, online learning, and adult professional development. In addition to these hard skills, I feel more comfortable making decisions, my ability to build consensus, and the ways in which I can serve as a leader in any role because of this program. Through my newfound intentionality, I am more articulate in my rationale and can better diagnose where I may need to be more thoughtful. The course content I have learned also gives me confidence that I can find the right path forward to address any gaps or growth areas I face. Going forward, my learning and professional development will be more focused and better support the communities I serve. I have enjoyed having a career that has made me a jack of all trades, getting to develop a variety of skills, and I am excited to have earned a master’s in one.
References
CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org
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National Research Council. (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core
ideas. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.
Sams, A., & Bergmann, J. (2013). Flip your students' learning. Educational Leadership,70(6), 16-20.
Sinek, S. (2015, May 15). Simon Sinek: How do you get your colleagues to trust you? (G. Raz, Interviewer) [Audio file].
Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2015/05/15/406453811/how-do-you-get-your-colleagues-to-trust-you