This transcript provides an insight to my process in the Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program (specialization in literacy education) offered by Michigan State University (MSU) by looking at the courses I have taken to complete the program. Below is the key to explain the course codes:
CEP: Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education
ED: EducationÂ
TE: Teacher Education
Instructor: Colin Gallagher
This course challenged the idea of what it means to be creative and how we as educators can inspire our students to think creatively too. Each week, we explored a chapter of Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People by Robert S. Root-Berstein and Michele M. Root-Berstein. Here, we learned that recognizing patterns, abstracting, playing, and modeling can help us become creative. Then, we were challenged to creatively demonstrate our new understanding of creativity using different methods and tools. Through this process, I learned to take risks, step out of my comfort zone to create new, unique artifacts including song lyrics, music, and posters, and create resources to help challenge my students to be more creative.
Instructor: Patricia Edwards
This course focused on how to appreciate the language diversity that English Language Learners (ELLs) bring into the classroom as well as how to teach literacy to ELLs. Throughout this course, we collaborated heavily with each other as we discussed how teachers can be more inclusive with our instruction, approaches to academic literacy and content instruction, and perceptions of English Language Learners throughout the United States educational history. We were also challenged to consider our language heritage and put out learning into practice. Through this process, I developed more empathy towards ELLs and began identifying ways on how I as an international school teacher can respect my students' language heritage as well as support them in developing their English literacy.
Instructors: Steven Weiland and Nathan Clason
This course explored educational inquiry through different domains, such as the history of education, teacher research, and educational and curriculum-based theories. Each week, we explored a variety of materials, such as online museum, books, and videos and synthesized our learning with a writing assignment. As this was a self-paced course, we were able to explore each idea at our own pace and to explore certain ideas longer if needed. In the final paper, where I explored what technology means to me as a teacher, I was challenged to utilize what I had learned regarding the evolution of education and apply it to the idea of technology in my specific context.
Instructor: Dr. Raven L. Jones
This course explored various aspects of literacy instructions and literacy assessments, such as different aspects of diversity in our English Language Learners (cultural, linguistic, motivation, neuropsychological), instructional arrangements of literacy instruction, and components of effective literacy instruction. To demonstrate our learning, we completed a literacy learner analysis project, where we worked with an ELL and put into practice what we were learning. One of my biggest takeaway through this process was how important it is to consider the diversity of our English Language Learner and how powerful literacy instruction can be if we cater to the learner's unique needs.
Instructor: Laura Apol
​This course challenged my idea of what literature was as we "read" different film adaptations of children's literature, ranging from the classic tale of The Little Mermaid to the magical novels of The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter. In reading and comparing the book and the film, we learned that films are the author's unique interpretation of the texts as well as a representation of the cultural and social era and pondered upon the idea of fidelity - how true can or should the movie adaptation be to the original story? This course prompted me to grow in my analysis of film adaptions as well as learn to appreciate film adaptations as the method of showing the director's viewpoints or cultural norms at the time of the film's production.
Instructor: Sandra Crespo
This course challenged my entire viewpoint of how to teach math and prompted me to pursue further understanding in teaching mathematics. Prior to this course, math, to me, was a very stoic subject where I teach, students imitate and apply, and I assess. However, each week, we explored how students have different perceptions (and sometimes fear) with math and how we can utilize different strategies such as collaborative group work and thinking tasks to make math more equitable. This course allowed us to explore our own areas of interest in this subject through book club and research project, where I explored how group work can be adapted into my school's math curriculum.
Instructor: Brittany Jones
In this course, we explored different aspects of the word "equity" in education. For example, we explored the aspect of equity and values in standardized testing, different types of inequality, and equity in technology. After exploring through various readings, we synthesized our learning through discussion posts where we were able to read and engage with other educators' thinking. For our final project, we conducted a research project on an area of equity that we were personally interested in, which was the idea of digital divide in Hong Kong, for me. This course prompted me to look at my school setting in Hong Kong and consider the idea of equity in my specific context.
Instructors: Ron Houtman and Kyle Shack
This course explored the idea of how learning occurs by exploring various educational theories that have grown and developed throughout history, such as behaviorism, schema theory, and cognitivism. Each week, we delved into different theories and worked on developing our own theory of learning. This course truly forced me to look at my idea of learning, address the misconceptions I had of how learning happens, and appreciate how multifaceted learning is.
Instructors: Edie Erickson
This course, similarly to CEP 818, challenged me to consider what creativity is and how to be creative with the advanced technological AI tools we have today in the classroom. Each week, we were challenged to ethically utilize an AI tool of our choice, which, for me, was an AI art tool called NightCafe. We learned, through experience, that failure is a learning opportunity and to consider the frustrations and failures students may face when using technology. This course encouraged me to consider ways on incorporating technology more frequently in my classroom, which is one of my few future goals.
Instructors: Dr. Matthew Koehler and Megan Harris
As the journey of my program comes to a close, we finish with the final capstone course. In this course, we focused on reflecting our journey through this program and consider how to showcase our process and our learning by creating an ongoing online portfolio. This is not a linear course as we are consistently encouraged to reflect on feedback given, go back, and revise, which is an idea that is encouraged in many courses in this program. To the audience, this online portfolio shows who I am as a student and an educator. To me, this demonstrates the long, arduous journey of growing as an educator as well as guides me to reflect where I want to continue going and growing as a teacher.