Reflective Essay

Taking a Look Back

When looking back at my original goals statement for the master's program here at Michigan State I talked a lot about focusing on my development as a future teacher and placing a huge focus on developing my skills to be the best future teacher possible. I think my main goal and focus was to learn as many skills as possible in order to create the most successful classroom possible in regard to the students' learning and development skills. I think I have made progress on those goals because the master's programs focus on allowing us to learn more about student needs and what things students need individually and how we can most positively impact as many students as possible. I think I have learned most importantly that it is important to get to know students for who they are and what their interests are in order to create an environment where they feel like they are learning about things that they are interested in. That has helped me so much in learning about how to create a really safe and inviting classroom. 

The only things that have really changed about my goals is that I feel like things are more in depth in the sense of I have a better understanding of all of the layers that go into learning about teaching and developing students as much as possible. Also, to begin with, my focus in the master's program was sports, leadership and coaching which meant a lot of my goals originally had to do with developing students athletically and learning how to be a leader within sport, whereas now my focus is children's literacy and reading which has changed some of my original goals from more sport focused to now more in the classroom and literacy focused.  Overall, I feel as though I have learned so much about the development of students and how to build relationships in order to create content and assignments that are interesting and reasonable.

When thinking about my goal process and the advancements toward my goals I think a lot about the working with students aspects of the masters program and how it has helped me to gain real world experience and also have more understanding of what to do in response to the students specific needs. There have been many projects throughout the program that have helped me to better understand the process of working with students but also working on individualized teaching based on each student's specific needs. I think oftentimes it is thought that there is some master technique that we can use for an entire class but it is important to remember that each student is very different in their learning styles and it becomes very important to make adjustments to allow for the students to have the most success, and gain the most from the lessons and assignments. I think this program has taught me a lot about these things and overall the running of a classroom and creating a safe and welcoming learning environment.