Paul Stephen M.ED. Dossier

Hello everyone, my name is Paul Manuel Raj Stephen. I was born to a family of four and I have one younger brother who will be going to 12^th grade this upcoming school year. I was born in Thanjavur, which is located south of Chennai, Madras and in 2003 I moved to Chennai, where my dad built a house and I started attending school in Villivakkam, Chennai. When I lived in India, I attended St Johns Matriculation Higher Secondary School from K-6^th grade.

My educational journey from the start has been a rough ride. From the start of kindergarten, my life was mostly dedicated to my studies. “Who can be at the top?”, was always the question that revolved around the classroom. Relating to that, school in India was like a competition to me because the top 5 students would always get honored with awards based on their rank. I was living in an education system that only wanted and accepted capable, gifted, and smart students. The policies and power structures that are set in place benefit students who can meet certain expectations because they can use their ability and knowledge to achieve their dreams. In the school that I attended, there was no choice for creative learning and thinking and I was always bound to learn from a specific syllabus that didn’t let us explore and learn through our own vision and ideas. Studies were so important to me because being at the top of the class was equated with success and having a bright future.

When I moved to America, life changed completely for me. I loved the American education system when I came here because the teachers I had always encouraged and supported me through all the struggles I had while growing up in this system. I attended and was able to finish my middle school and high school here in Washington state and I got my high school diploma in 2018. I didn’t realize or learn about many of the inequalities that exist within the Indian and American education systems until I came to college. This M. Ed program helped me view education from a critical or power lens that showed how students of color were being affected and in many ways I was able to connect the theories and educational practices of the American school system to my own experiences in the Indian school system. I’ve always been a person who supported and helped students when I was starting school here. I wanted everyone to succeed and to do good in school. My motivation to teach students comes from the fact that I can make a positive impact on their educational journey while offering them many of the opportunities that I did not have growing up.

When I decided to apply for this M. Ed program, I was doing so with the hope of furthering my knowledge of the inequalities that exist within society and in schools, so that I could better serve my students when I get the opportunity to teach. I have learned in two different education systems and, when I look back at my life, I can see the many ways in which inequality impacts students based on their race, gender, and class. As a teacher, I want to make sure that I honor and respect every student while also giving them many opportunities to learn and to be successful in what they do.

Throughout my M. Ed program, I learned a lot about myself as a learner, educator, and leader. The autoethnography assignment gave me the chance to reflect on my past life and my background to see how privilege played a huge role in my life in terms of the educational opportunities that I had as a student. Reflecting on my life helped me see the many ways in which other students were not given the same learning opportunities that I’ve had which may have been due to wealth, social status, etc. This program also taught me a great deal about research and the importance of that which can lead to solutions to fix systemic issues within schools. I also learned a lot about theory and the way it influences how education is viewed and taught to children in schools. I was able to demonstrate my learning and understanding of educational inquiry through the research that I did on a particular topic that I was fond of, and I was able to show that in my Critical Literature Review. I also had the opportunity to write and talk about educational policies and the ways it has impacted students of color historically and how it continues to impact them and the education they receive in my Critical policy Reflection paper. Ultimately, all these courses and the assignments that were provided not only gave us knowledge, but also prepared us to do social justice work in terms of identifying issues and problems within schools, education, and society and it gave us agency to promote equity in those spaces. We were able to demonstrate our learning and our act of agency through the Justice project that we had to complete. Through these various assignments, I gained a lot of knowledge on education from a critical lens, and I will continue to use this knowledge to advocate and serve students by providing many opportunities for them to be successful in school.

I invite you to take a look at my journey throughout this program with this online dossier.