BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Being a teacher is what I was born to do. I talk with friends in other professions, and I have a hard time even placing myself in another career even for the sake of imagination. I cannot imagine missing out on the daily conversations I get to have with my students. One thing that I appreciate about children especially elementary-aged children, is how brutally honest they are and how they are unapologetically themselves. It is for this reason that I have always kept a journal where I write down my favorite moments I have with students.
One of my most cherished interactions with a student occurred early in 2020. I teach in a school that serves a community that has a large percentage of English language learners and students living in poverty. One of my students was playing in our classroom store and asked me who was one of the fake bills she was playing with. I explained that the government makes the money, and so they decided to put the presidents on the bills. She quickly interjected,
​
“Our government doesn’t want people like me to be here.”
​
My heart broke for her. This particular student had moved to my school in first grade, not knowing a word of English. Four years later she had learned English well enough to feel completely ostracized by the country she called home. I looked at her and said, “it doesn’t feel good to feel that way does it?” To which she shook her head no. I followed up with another question.
“You know who does want you here?”
“You do, Miss Maddie.” She smiled and went back to playing.
These moments with students carry me through the days where nothing is going according to plan. Moments where I know that, regardless of the lesson, my students are in a space where they are valued, where their growth and inclusion is a priority, where they can feel comfortable taking risks and pushing the boundaries of their own knowledge. It was with these priorities in mind that I decided my education and development as a teacher would never be complete. In order to provide equitable opportunities for my students, I had to strive to find opportunities for growth within myself. The Master of Education program at Michigan State University provided me with an opportunity to improve my teaching practice from a pedagogical standpoint, a human standpoint, and a technological standpoint.
MY CRAFT
My love for teaching stems directly from my love for students with exceptionalities. I have a passion for finding opportunities and engagement that cater to individual students and get them excited about learning. In my path towards a concentration in special education, I completed a course called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Characteristics and Implications. This course helped me to adjust my mindset as an educator when it comes to students that may be categorized as neuro atypical. While ASD may be a specific neurological condition, many of the principles I studied in this course have affected my daily teaching practice as I teach students with intellectual disabilities as well as students with ASD. I have a greater respect for the neurodiversity of my students and have adopted several practices that allow me to create individualized attack strategies for specific critical skills with my students. This course further solidified my desire to create a meaningful, differentiated curriculum for my students with exceptionalities.
In addition to my passion for special education, I have always enjoyed mathematics, so much so that I pursued a minor in mathematics in college. In my few years as a special education teacher, I felt that my professional development rarely centered around creating robust, thought provoking mathematics activities for students with exceptionality. As someone who has always loved numbers, it frustrated me that I did not have a lot of direction from my undergraduate experience as well as professional development within my district in regard to this critical school subject. I decided to add an additional concentration in Science & Mathematics Instruction in order to build my knowledge in this area. One course within the concentration, Teaching School Mathematics, drastically changed my approach to teaching mathematics to my students. This experience and discussion-based course allowed me to put principles of student led mathematics activities into practice in real time. I was so grateful to the professors of this course for their flexibility in regard to my unique classroom situation, as well as their feedback in making modifications and accommodations to the assignments to meet my students needs. With their guidance, I was able to shift my focus of my mathematics instruction from teacher-led direct instruction, to student discovery instruction. This is not to say that I do not provide direct instruction to my students, but rather that I start by providing a context where students can discuss a given topic and challenge their own thinking as well as their peers. This shift has resulted in increased participation in mathematics and higher confidence in my students.
MY COMMUNITY
Another aspect of my career that has been greatly impacted by my master’s program has been how I see my role as a teacher within my classroom community as well as the community where I teach. The diversity of courses that I was able to take exposed me to different aspects of student identity such as background, exceptionality, behavior, and attitude towards school. This has developed my ability to attend to all aspects of a child and create instruction that is centered around more than their academic performance. One course in particular, Engaging Diverse Students and their Families, provided a new intersectional framework for me to take into my teaching practice. Intersectionality focuses on the acknowledgement that our individual traits work together to create unique, human experiences. So, as a white, middle class woman, I have different experiences and perspectives in life than my students who fall into their own unique categories. I have learned to approach these differences with acceptance and openness, and I think that framing my students and their families within an intersectional lens has overall increased my empathy and understanding in my profession and helped me to create a more flexible mental environment for my students to operate within. One that not only respects differences, but freely acknowledges them and frames them in a way that lets the students and their families know that they provide valuable capital to our classroom and school community because of those different as well as shared experiences.
Within this intersectional approach, my course of study has also helped me to increase my capacity as an advocate. Special education teachers typically have to advocate for their students within the school community for several reasons. Their students may be nonverbal, their needs within the education system may be unique, and their curriculum typically covers a broader scope that simply academics. My concentration in special education has helped me to build my competencies as an advocate. The courses I took in Autism Spectrum Disorders, behavior management, and instructional design have helped me to build my sense of confidence as an educator. The content of these courses provided opportunities to directly impact the student’s I was currently teaching, and the lessons have not left me since. I now feel more sure of my intuition when it comes to things my students or their families need, and I am less timid when it comes to speaking out when I see an issue arise. This newfound confidence is a direct result of interactions with my peers in my master’s program as well as my deeper understanding of special education as a whole.
MY CREATIVITY
The final area impacted by my experience in the master’s program at Michigan State University was my creativity. I have never thought of myself as a traditionally creative person. I am very process-oriented, and I don’t typically take a lot of risks. I thought that creativity was being able to burst out of the box and create something entirely new. A course titled, Teaching Subject Matter with Technology, really challenged what my definition of creativity in the classroom was. Early in the course, we were presented with the idea that creativity is looking at something that exists, and modifying it slightly to serve a new purpose, to increase efficiency, or to increase its visual appeal. This made “creativity” a much more attainable skill for me in my teaching practice. I realized that all of the accommodating and modifying that I provide my students was creativity at work. I began to see my ability to take a lesson plan and bring it to life for multiple types of students was one of my biggest creative assets, and I was able to showcase that through my course work. This new definition of creativity also allowed me to set reasonable goals for myself in the classroom. It helped me to see that small changes in my practice over time could dramatically change my classroom environment, my student outcomes, and my perception of my role as a teacher. I now see myself as having creative capital in my profession.
I took the course Teaching Subject Matter with Technology in May 2020, and the timing could not have been more appropriate. I had just finished up 2 months of remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was feeling a little lost. I wondered how I was going to make remote school equitable, engaging, and meaningful for my students should we return remotely the following year. The technology course exposed me to so many tools that I could use to reach learners, many of which I am still using today as I teach both face to face learners and virtual learners simultaneously. I have also shifted my focus to building my students technological literacy. I no longer see technology as a tool for me to reach my students, I see it as an access point for my students to experience more of what the world has to offer. Since completing this course, I have been able to utilize my creativity in how my students access assignments during school, and I’ve also been able to incorporate more Universal Design for Learning, which allows my students to have more autonomy and control over their educational environment and assignments.
IN CONCLUSION
If I had to sum up my takeaways from the Master of Education program at Michigan State University in one word, I would say “confidence.” My experiences in the coursework such as completing assignments, learning from professors, and interacting with my peers, all directly contributed to my confidence as an educator and advocate for students with exceptionalities. I started the program to increase my competence as a teacher, and I now feel like I either have the tools I need to address the needs of my students or I know where to go to find them. I now feel more sure of myself and my skills as a teacher when planning and implementing instruction for my students. Michigan State University has provided me with an invaluable network of resources and peers that I will continue to lean into long after my graduation from the program. I look forward to continuing to engage with my learning community as I continue to strive to make myself the best educator for my students in the future.