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Lessons That Carry On

Course That Have Shaped Me

            I feel like I have been going to school all my life and I will continue to go to school until I am done with my career. This may seem like a nightmare for some, but for many of us that went into education, this is where we feel most comfortable. Many people like to learn, but we like to talk about how we learn and ways to improve learning. Talking about learning and education can sometimes feel like an argument with no end; arguments about methods of instruction differ greatly between educators and even the purpose of education can be debated near endlessly.

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            What makes pursuing educational knowledge so intangible is that it is completely contextual. Instruction that worked for one person in a certain situation is not guaranteed to work for a different person coming from a different background trying to learn different material. This challenge intrigues many of us to go further into the minutiae of education, to find what education looks like for others and what it ultimately means for ourselves in our own context. This is ultimately why I went into education in the first place and why I continue to find myself spending time, effort, and money to learn more about it.

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            When I decided to apply to graduate school, I chose to pursue a Master’s of Arts in Education degree at Michigan State University with a concentration in P-12 school and postsecondary leadership. I currently teach high school chemistry and I would like to continue to do that as I still find it challenging, engaging, and worthwhile. I chose to concentrate on leadership so that I could grow the learning community within my own school district, regardless of what official leadership role I currently occupy. I have done meaningful work throughout my master’s program and I hope to transfer as much as I can to my current duties as a teacher and fellow colleague within a learning community.

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            Some of the courses I have taken during this program do not directly apply to my position currently, but I can think of at least three that will have a direct impact on my teaching practice starting immediately. My Concepts of Educational Inquiry class (ED 800) changed the way I reflect on my own instruction. Diverse Students and Families (EAD 822) changed my perspective on how certain students are oppressed with our educational system and what I can do to subvert it. Finally, Leadership and Organizational Development (EAD 801) taught me how to approach complicated challenges within our educational context so that we may someday overcome them.

            I technically started my master’s program when I was originally getting my teaching certification. I took some graduate courses during my student teaching that focused on lesson planning and teaching practice. I then found a job teaching at Reeths-Puffer high school. A couple years into teaching, I decided to work towards my master’s degree and Concepts of Educational Inquiry (ED 800) was one of the first classes that I began taking.

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            This was a great course to get at the beginning of my master’s program as it focused on many of the foundational philosophies of education. We started our discussion on early educational philosophers such as Plato and we read chronologically through the evolution of education until we got to the more modern educational theorists. It was interesting to compare my own teaching to theories and philosophies people have held over the years. I found it most fascinating that even though the advancement of technology has changed how we learn, many of the instructional trends that seem modern today were thought of and debated many years earlier.

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            The course also took a broader view into how society views education and what purpose it serves. Some view education as a means to an end or more specifically, a necessary step for a student to get their desired job. Some view education as a way to create workers for jobs that society needs. Even more progressively, others view education as a means to simply better ourselves and create a society filled with better thinkers. All of these purposes for education have a place in our instruction as educators and keeping this in mind can make education more purposeful for our students. This type of thought, however, is very ideological.

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            The more pragmatic parts of the course focused on how to approach evaluation. One of the books that really captured my interest was written by Vivian Paley entitled The Girl with the Brown Crayon. The book is a narrative of Vivian Paley’s last year of teaching an elementary class. She focuses on how her students interact, play, tell stories, and how all this relates to their learning. Even though the book is about an elementary class, I found it to be a useful example of how we can utilize storytelling as a means to reflect upon our own teaching.

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            Paying closer attention to how my students interact and thinking about how it reflects on my instruction seems like an obvious practice, but doing this with intention can make a huge difference for me and my students moving forward. I fear that I sometimes get too wrapped up in teaching the content and spend too little time observing and learning from my students. I am confident that the more I can intentionally do the latter, the better my instruction will be.

            Diverse Students and Families (EAD 822) was another course that made a powerful impact on my widespread view of education while also providing enough focus on lower level issues to make an immediate impact in the classroom. As a white male, many of the privileges I have and disadvantages others have have been largely invisible to me. The analogy that was discussed was that privilege is like water to a fish; fish are surrounded by water their entire life and because they know no different, they are not aware of the water much like how those who are privileged are not aware of their privilege.

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            A large portion of this course was spent realizing the privileges we all have that are dependent on our seen and unseen differences. On top of that, we also explored how the privileges we enjoy are oppressing others. This was not to put unnecessary guilt on the privileged, but to open our eyes to the situation so that we may do something about it. The challenging part is that this oppression is the product of a system that favors some and neglects or even punishes others. What responsibility do I have then when it is the entire system at fault?

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            As educators, it is our duty to observe what role we play within this system and work to subvert its oppressive nature. This could mean standing up for people whose voices have been silenced or broadening the context of your content so that it may include more diverse perspectives. Being “color-blind” does not help defeat racism or sexism; this passive approach merely perpetuates this societal behavior.

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            As a chemistry teacher, what is my responsibility in attempting to not only minimize my role in an oppressive system, but to work towards social justice? The most obvious is to step in when comments are made that intentionally or unintentionally marginalize or all out demean a group of people. Doing this can be uncomfortable and depending on who you are, you can choose to confront this in many different ways. On the occasion that I hear someone say something that I feel could marginalize a person or group of people, I calmly ask the person to not say that word and explain to them and others in the classroom how some people might find what they said demeaning or oppressive.

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            This can be a very difficult thing to do. I do not want to speak for a group of people, but I want the students to think about how what they say can affect people’s feelings, thoughts, and in our context, their learning. I believe this approach is a much more impactful and long-term solution than simply reprimanding the student and giving them a detention. This educational approach to handling comments made by students can also be used for staff, which admittedly would be even more uncomfortable, but finding your own way to do it and saying something can go a long way.

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            The hardest part is looking at myself. Understanding that some of what I unknowingly do can negatively or positively impact my goal of teaching effectively to all students is the driving force I use to continually monitor myself and reflect on what I say and how I say it. An example might be that I might ask a louder more outgoing student to share their ideas more often instead of giving the class a chance to hear from a quieter student. Different cultures have different expectations when it comes to speaking up and favoring one type of student may ultimately favor one type of culture and suppress another. Because of this Diverse Students and Families course, I have raised my awareness of this and have become more inclusive and have made my content more accessible to more students.

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            A master’s degree in education with a concentration in leadership would not be complete without a course like Leadership and Organizational Development (EAD 801). From the outside, this course seemed like it was going to present information I have already seen in different forms throughout my course of becoming a teacher. This course, instead, forced me to look deeper into what makes the organization I belong to unique in terms of its strengths and challenges and how it affects what types of changes need to be made in order to address our important issues.

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            Our school, like many schools, continually look for new ways to adapt our instruction in order to better meet the needs of our students. We look for quick technical fixes that can include changes such as reviewing more vocabulary before introducing a unit or changing what year students take biology. This level of change within educational systems is common because it is low risk and does not take much work. Unfortunately, many of these changes result in minimal improvement. The other, more difficult option, is to attempt to make large systemic changes that can make a huge impact, but can be risky and involve much more time and effort.

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            In order to address large important issues, organizations must be willing to make large changes that involve risk and adaptability from all stakeholders. This can be a scary approach, especially in education when test scores, funding, and students’ futures are at stake. In order to make substantial positive change we need to be willing to take chances and experiment with our approach. We also need leaders who are willing to work outside of their expected role to push educational organizations outside of their comfort zone so that meaningful development can occur. I will, over the next few years, work towards becoming this type of leader.

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            The other classes I have taken were also very useful, but I found that these classes made the most immediate impact on my own teaching philosophy a practice.  Concepts of Educational Inquiry class (ED 800) reintroduced me to many of the foundational teaching philosophies and made me reevaluate and think about my own. Diverse Students and Families (EAD 822) allowed me to broaden my perspective and become more aware of the various backgrounds my students come from to better serve my classroom. Lastly, the Leadership and Organizational Development (EAD 801) course I took may have been my most important class because it has given me the courage and hope that with the proper steps, the knowledge I have gained could not only make an immediate impact on my own instruction, but could eventually help my colleagues and their students as well.

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