All throughout high school, I had opportunities to work in elementary classroom settings. This helped me pave the road to find my passion early on in life, which was to work with and help students. Having these experiences allowed me to confidently make the decision to pursue teaching as a career and I never looked back. I loved the classes I took while attending Michigan State University and constantly felt engaged with the curriculum. I knew when I graduated, I wasn’t saying goodbye as I would eventually return to obtain my graduate degree there. After only a few years of teaching, I explored a number of the graduate programs Michigan State had to offer and quickly realized that the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) was the right fit for me. 

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I love challenging my students and encouraging them to think creatively. The MAET program has allowed me to build upon my passion for learning new techniques and skills. These include supporting creative thinking in my students, using new technologies, and being able to back up my own teaching styles with research. The MAET program also fostered my growth as a learner and an educator to provide the best education for my students. While each class in the MAET program played a critical role in my education, three courses come to mind as being particularly important in shaping my teaching.

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One course that had a significant impact on me during the MAET program was CEP 811: Adapting Innovative Technologies in Education. This course continued to build upon the importance of using technology, which my earlier classes focused on. In finding new ways to incorporate technology, this class introduced me to the maker culture. I learned that the maker culture is a mindset that promotes repurposing and creating ideas by collaborating with others. Since the beginning of time, people have been makers by transforming different materials into objects or tools that are considered to be the most useful. Being a maker has now evolved to where people will learn from others’ ideas and expand or build upon those ideas. Through this course, I have recognized how maker education helps reinforce personalized learning in the classroom by supporting the students’ desire to create something they are particularly interested in. When students are motivated and encouraged to learn, they are more likely to discover and create ideas which are meaningful for them. 

When I first started this course, I was a bit intimidated as I realized I was going to be pushed out of my comfort zone. The first week of this course was particularly difficult because I like to follow a set rubric for each assignment. However, I noticed that in this course that was not the expectation. I was expected to explore, make mistakes, and create projects that were fitting and unique to me. These traits encouraged me to instill this mindset in my students as well. 

One way in which I explored incorporating the maker culture into my classroom was by using a Makey Makey kit. The Makey Makey kit is a circuit board that allows you to connect and repurpose everyday objects to accomplish different tasks. For example, in my classroom, I had my students connect coins to create a circuit and used Scratch to add coins on a virtual cash register. We also used bananas and cardboard squares wrapped in tin foil to create a circuit which operated a timer. I quickly found that this was an engaging way for the students to use unconventional items to time themselves and their peers on their math facts. After each activity, we discussed the science behind why certain items created a completed circuit while others did not. 

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This course also required that I design my ideal classroom on SketchUp. I read multiple articles on classroom design and reflected on what strategies would be most beneficial to my students and my specific teaching styles. Using this program allowed me to easily reconfigure my own classroom to reach the needs of each of my students. After exploring this program and redesigning my classroom multiple times, I arrived at the most optimal design. Since then, I have restructured my own classroom to reflect this design. 

After concluding this course, my thinking of how to go about teaching in my classroom has been significantly altered. Second graders are very creative and imaginative and I constantly find ways to encourage my students to work together and become makers. Instead of seeing my students just play during free time, this course caused me to recognize their inquisitive nature, such as them contemplating how they can create cars and robots with Legos. I now make sure to utilize this trait in my students by fostering their passion to create without worrying about making mistakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another impactful course was CEP 822: Approaches to Educational Research. This course primarily focused on further developing my research skills and creating an action-based research plan. The course started off by challenging me to consider what my ideal classroom would look like if I was not limited by resources and a lack of technology. I considered the ideal classroom I designed in CEP 811. However, I took it a step further and considered including technology, such as computers and tablets for all of my students so that they could have instant messaging access to people in all different locations, including space. Additionally, this ideal classroom had an area dedicated to a makerspace including 3D printers, tools for building, different electronic components including lights, batteries, and wires, and other technology such as remote-control drones with cameras located all across the world. This assignment caused me to think outside of the box to consider a topic of interest in my classroom for purposes of my action-based research plan.  

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For my action-based research plan, I chose to focus on a problem that I personally face in my classroom. This problem was how to guide students in selecting independent reading books for their book bins. The two main focuses were having students pick books based on their reading level or their interests. After reading Action Research: Improving Schools and Empowering Educators, I learned more specific methods of conducting different types of research, how to organize data, and ways of analyzing my research to reflect on my findings. 

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I made sure to spend a sufficient amount of time on each step of my research plan in order to fully immerse myself in the problem. For example, I spent the first few weeks identifying the problem and determining how I would collect both quantitative and qualitative data. I randomly assigned my students into one of three distinct groups based on how each group was going to select their books. I then presented each group with a test and measured their initial fluency and comprehension test scores to determine their current reading level. After a couple weeks, I then re-tested the students and determined how much each student had improved with regard to fluency and comprehension.

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By analyzing the students’ pre-test and post-test scores, I was able to draw conclusions as to which group grew the most. This helped me identify the most effective way for providing students with their reading books. Since each group received the same pre-test and post-test, it was easy for me to compare data between groups and identify which intervention method provided the greatest results. 

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After reflecting on this course, I realize that there is no problem in my classroom I am not able to address by conducting research and analyzing the results. By taking an in-depth approach at each step of an action-based research plan, I am confident that I am able to ensure that I have fully addressed any problem and left no stone unturned. This course also allowed me to look at any problem from an objective and unbiased point of view and accept that I may have to modify my teaching style based on results from my research. I feel that it should be commonplace for all teachers to regularly modify their classrooms and curriculum, if necessary, as they learn about or research new methods in order to meet all of their students’ needs. 

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My teaching endorsement for my undergraduate degree is in science. Therefore, a large portion of the classes I took in undergrad were science-based. These focused primarily on chemistry, biology, physics, and the fundamental thought process of elementary science. I took social studies, writing, reading, and mathematics in order to gain my elementary education degree. However, I gained most of my primary reading and writing experience through professional development and teaching experience. Therefore, I was very excited to take TE 846: Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners as I knew going in that it was going to focus on specifically teaching reading and writing.  

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In this course, I focused on a different specific literacy skillset each week, such as spelling, vocabulary, or fluency. I read multiple articles, went through PowerPoints, and watched different videos in order to view different techniques through multiple perspectives. One book I read was Best Practices in Literacy Instruction, which addressed specific literacy practices and research to reinforce its effectiveness.

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While I encourage my students to be independent learners, it is also critical for them to learn to collaborate with others to share ideas. As a teacher, it is always great to collaborate with others in your field to gain insight from different backgrounds and learn what techniques might work best. What was so unique about this course was that I was constantly collaborating with others through discussion posts in order to share different ideas with my classmates living in different cities and states and having various experience levels. This also helped me gain knowledge through each of my classmate’s perspectives. Through these discussion posts, I was encouraged to ask questions and offer input where possible. This motivated me to explore different strategies in reading and writing that I could try out in my own classroom. 

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Throughout the entire semester, I built upon these literacy strategies and considered how I could formulate a case study to address one student in my classroom with specific needs. I chose to focus on one of my English Language Learner students that was struggling with both reading and writing. During the course of this case study, I was able to apply the newly learned skills from this course to address my student’s needs. For example, I heavily focused on different word studies with the student in order to break apart words to help his fluency, while at the same time addressing his vocabulary needs. Reflecting back on this class, I feel that I now have an abundant library of literacy strategies that I can use to help support all of my students, regardless of whether they are struggling or above grade level. 

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Looking back on the MAET program, I feel as though I have gotten everything out of this program that I had hoped for and more. As a result of taking this program, I am constantly recognizing how I can mold my students into being lifelong learners by thinking creatively, taking risks, asking questions, and learning new technologies along the way. In doing so, I constantly try to emphasize in my classroom that all of my students should strive to be makers and explore their passions both in and out of the classroom. I strongly believe that this is critical in their personal development. Without this program, I would not have continued to push myself or my students and I am excited to further develop these skills in the years to come.