Growing up my life goal was to become a physical therapist and work with young athletes. Now, 15 years later, I am working as a nonprofit professional who will soon be graduating with a Master’s in Education. I have come to realize that sometimes the goals we set for our future do not always dictate the paths that we take. Our experiences lead us to new opportunities and point us in a new direction for professional growth. For the foreseeable future, I want to focus more on building up my growth areas. Once built up, those skills will provide me with opportunities to mature in my career and continue to take exciting new paths in the future. Specifically, I need to focus on facilitation skills in my classroom, handling my role as a middle manager and truly focusing on why I chose to enter into the educational field. Those three things will help me reign in my mission to help underrepresented populations have a voice in their education.
As someone who came into education with a social work background facilitating small groups was easy enough to handle, but when 25-30 kids were put in a group I struggled. Since I recognize that I may not have the strongest facilitator skills, especially when it comes to youth programming, I know this needs to be one of my goals for the future. Michigan State University Extension offers an extensive facilitation skills workshop that focuses on helping build facilitation skills with different types of audiences. This program has been something I have always wanted to pursue, but never had the funding to do so. Now that I have funding opportunities for professional development, I would like to focus on building up skills that I do not necessarily already have.
In my current role I am what some may call a middle manager. I supervise a small staff, but I also directly report to the Vice President of Student Services. As a middle manager, I find myself facing many frustrations. I feel constantly pulled to defend my staff, but at the same time defend the college. Since I don’t have a lot of experience working in the middle, I tend to come off as defensive. In order to resolve the issues that I face as a middle manager I have decided to pursue an opportunity brought forth by Southwest Michigan First. It does require an application process so I have already taken the first step towards this future goal and applied to be a part of the cohort. If I am chosen, I will engage in quarterly day long sessions on becoming a stronger middle manager. This training opportunity should allow me to build up a new skill set directly associated with the role of being in the middle. Thus, making me a stronger leader in education.
One of the main reasons that I decided to switch my major to education was because of the inequities in the educational system that I witnessed in Metro Detroit schools. To better prepare myself for policy and reform work I knew I needed to take a step back and become more educated on the historical roots of race and education. Throughout the course of my graduate work I have done just that. I have soaked up information and become educated on topics of injustice, especially where race and education intersected. After I finish my graduate degree I know the learning does not stop there. I want to continue to be inundated with research, workshops and articles that shed more light on the issues of today and the issues of the past. One of those steps includes attending the White Privilege Conference. I am making it a goal to attend the conference and learn about more opportunities I can give both myself and my students in the areas of “understanding, respecting and connecting”, which is the philosophy of the conference. Lifelong learning in this focus area needs to continue for me. One step towards that learning is becoming involved in new and innovative workshops focused around the idea of privilege.
My educational path has twisted and turned many times since my high school years. Every time I thought I knew what I wanted to do in life a new path emerged and I took it. These goals allow me to set a straight path to fighting the inequities in education, but if the opportunity presents itself I am not afraid to step out of my comfort zone and take a new path.