Growth and Direction

In the beginning the goal was simple; I wanted a challenge that would make me a better teacher. But I knew from the start that new fires would be ignited and the next steps on my path illuminated through my master’s work at Michigan State University (MSU). Looking back on the past twenty-seven months, a lot has obviously happened; and I get to move forward from here knowing I am better and more prepared for the future than when I started the program.

I completed the Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program as well as the graduate certificate in Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) during one of the most interesting times in not only the history of education, but in the history of humankind. However, get this, I was also the Head Football Coach of a highly successful program over this same period. I entered my program in May 2019 and was named to the head job in July of the same year. While writing papers, attending Zoom meetings, and reading large volumes of literature I also taught a full course load and attended to all my residential life responsibilities. Tack on to the list of things I have accomplished in the past two years a state runner up and a state championship finish in football.

But back to that initial goal – I believe that objective was certainly met. I have a better understanding of pedagogy, technology integration, action research in the classroom, and a whole lot more because of my master’s program. The digital student portfolio I created, the improved rubric I made for design thinking projects, and the learning management system (LMS) I cobbled together from Microsoft products are just a few examples of the increased innovation and creativity in my work that has resulted from completing the MAED coursework. I now find myself taking elements from my graduate program and reengineering the classroom experience for my students.

Like many teachers across the globe, I had just limped through the spring semester of “emergency remote learning” and was entering a summer of confusion and uncertainty regarding education in a pandemic. Interestingly, I had slotted CEP 813: Electronic Assessment, CEP 820: Teaching Students Online, and TE 831: Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology for the summer semester of 2020 when planning my program the year before. This amazing coincidence allowed me to study education online (as well as online education) while many in the world were educating and being educated online for the first time.

Each course in its own way greatly impacted my teaching; however, what was truly transformational looking back on the experience was the fact I was completely immersed in the world of online learning and learning technologies. Concepts like SAMR, TPACK, and UDL connected across the courses and this experience provided me with the language to properly advocate for technology in the classroom.

It dawned on me while completing assignments in these three courses that I could easily build an entire portfolio for every one of my students. A platform that could improve the efficiency and expediency of material distribution and collection; allow for rapid individual feedback and dialogue between student and instructor; and one that many different learning technologies integrate with was just sitting on my desktop ready to be used in the pursuit of maximized educational outcomes.

The teaching and learning experience with this notebook is beyond what can be achieved with paper materials. Papers become lost, there is lag time in collecting and passing back, and sometimes there just is not enough paper for everyone to have a copy. The digital student notebook avoids many of those problems and provides affordances beyond what a traditional notebook can offer.

Beyond the seamlessness of material transfer when using a digital notebook there are additional modes and methods of interaction that paper cannot provide. Students can write directly on a touch screen device, or type, take a picture of the board, share documents with other each other, record video as well as experience plenty of other methods of interaction using OneNote. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) proposes learners engage with, represent, and express information in appropriate and varied ways. The digital student portfolio is an excellent environment for reaching the affective, recognition, and strategic networks of the brain by giving students something they have authority over, that can be used to organize their thoughts and work, while also offering multiple forms of communication and engagement.

The online student portfolio I created using MS OneNote leverages the program’s ability to send individual documents to entire classes and groups. This means every student can have a digital copy which can be annotated by both the student and teacher; in other words the transmission of individualized feedback and revision can occur far more rapidly in this digital notebook compared to its paper counterpart.

Students can also collaborate by working on shared documents in assigned groups. A multitude of learning technologies such as videos, interactive simulations, and online formative assessments can easily be integrated into the online learning modules.

This idea all came about because in the electronic assessment course there was a lot of discussion on formative assessments; and I really like those, and I saw OneNote as a way of expediting the process of feedback and revision. In the teaching with technology class I was making videos, screencast lessons, and other things that could easily be integrated into OneNote. Then in the teaching students online course I needed a way of making learning modules and I really did not want to do it in the LMS my school used at the time. Thus creating something that really did impact the teaching and learning experience in my classroom this past year came as a result of all these things coalescing during the summer of 2020.

I have held titles, they are fine, but alone they are a horrible way to lead. EAD 867: Case Studies in Educational Leadership was a powerful course to take in my final semester at MSU. Besides being one of the two most challenging courses I took in terms of the level of research (and adherence to APA), it provided a level of clarity to my views on leadership. As I move on to my next steps, I have a better understanding of my strengths as well as blind spots; and a firmer belief in the power of people coming together for a common goal.

Objectively, there are times I have proven to be a successful leader. The Chemistry PLT I headed up worked on identifying effective practices and through that work our students consistently earned high marks relative to other schools in the district. The football team I coached won the first state title in the program’s history

However, what became evident to me through the readings, online discussions, and research papers was the ability to reach objectives should be nothing more than a given for anyone wanting to claim the title of effective leader. The truly great leaders have a knack for the human element and can empower a diverse set of viewpoints and people towards a common goal. The descriptions of great leaders I read about in the literature and discussed in the online forums typically included the capacity to not only get the job done but also compassion for the people involved. Wise leaders can use differences as force multipliers; can adapt to an ever changing landscape by being open and receptive; and can share a unified vision and work with others towards meeting that objective.

EAD 867 was a great experience. I developed a philosophy on educational leadership through the lenses of personal experience and the lessons of this course as my final paper. What I came up with was a sharper view on diversity – in terms of people and thought - and the positive impacts of engaging many different voices. In addition to the power of people effectively working together, my philosophy also included the necessity of working through adaptive change and being comfortable being uncomfortable as you lead into the unknown.

Just getting results at the cost of being too fixated on the past, or even the present for that matter, and thinking there is only one way to get the job done is no way to lead either.

I have often said that teaching makes me a better football coach and vice versa. Therefore one of the reasons I chose the MSU program was the flexibility it provided in taking some courses outside of the regular education curriculum - like kinesiology. So even though most of my graduate coursework was in the areas of science and mathematics education as well as online teaching and learning, I was able to take KIN 868: Skill Development in Athletes in the spring of 2020.

Before locking in the Online Teaching and Learning graduate certificate course pathway I considered the Sport Coaching and Leadership track. In the end I am glad I chose OTL; coaching is something I have begun to move away from as I begin to focus more on STEM education and educational leadership opportunities and this program really helped me understand my future goals. I have enjoyed coaching, and most importantly, will enjoy coaching well into the future. However, my passions lay elsewhere at this juncture in life; and I am excited to continue my journey in education with a much smaller emphasis on athletics.

Nonetheless, this course is where I began to really piece together the teaching-coaching connection. The KIN 868 course had me consider action-perception couplings, dynamic systems theory, non-linear pedagogy, and constraints-led approaches (CLA) through the lens of human motor skill development. The amazing thing is many pedagogical elements teachers like me use in their classes mirror these motor skill principles.

Discovery learning and inquiry-based methods are equally applicable in both the physics classroom and on the football field. The CLA to back pedal and break instruction I created in this course was based on elements of non-linear pedagogy and dynamic systems theory. The human body, which of course includes the brain, is a highly complex and dynamic system. Human movement is informed by the senses and dictated by the constraints of the individual as well as the task. In my back pedal method, I work athletes through ways of taking the environmental cues and other affordances and achieving effective patterns of motion resolution.

In much the same way, students can be geared towards higher levels of performance through scaffolding and task manipulations in the classroom. Guided and open inquiry, project based learning (PBL) experiences and other lessons utilize stimuli and task constraint manipulation by varying the amount of intervention the teacher provides relative to the performance of each individual. Methods such as PBL aim to bridge connections between concepts and broaden students' transferable understandings. Just like the goal of motor skill development is to develop a more refined and fluent manner of motion over a greater range.