As I near the end of my degree program at Michigan State University, I am thinking about just how I will continue learning. The program has brought me new knowledge and insights and has made me really think about leadership and what is best in our schools. Below you can see the introduction to my future goals. Here I share my full thoughts on being a lifelong learner and how I plan to continue to grow professionally, particularly in the areas of leadership, development, and second language acquisition.
For a document view, please click here.
Enrollment in a Master’s of Education program has been my principal way of staying abreast of educational developments. The program has pushed me to read, ponder, and write. I have chosen coursework that has helped me in my professional life and I believe that I have learned a great amount about education- past, present, and future- through this program. But as the program comes to an end, I am faced with the question as to how to keep learning. I do consider myself a lifelong learner so how do I keep it up? In all honesty, the program has forced me to roll up my sleeves on days when I was absolutely exhausted and pushed me to complete the degree, all the while raising a family and running a school! In my most immediate future, I imagine that I will seek out new knowledge in the areas of leadership, second language acquisition, and development. While these areas do not immediately seem connected, each is important to me and represents an aspect of me as an educator. Leadership is an area that I feel that I do well in but I am always looking for tactical ways to address problems or to introduce improvements. Second language acquisition is important to me as a Spanish teacher. And I have found myself so intrigued by cognitive development throughout my studies that I want to learn more and apply my knowledge in the classroom.
Since having enrolled in the Master’s of Education program at Michigan State University, I have become aware of many different resources that I hadn’t come across previously. I see myself learning principally through reading and these resources will be critical for my continued informal education. The first book in my list and on my desk is Radical Candor. In addition, I receive the Marshall Memo which does some of the search-work for me and neatly delivers current articles to my inbox. In addition, there were some authors who I found to have a powerful message and I will continue to seek out their new works. Two authors that immediately come to mind are David Pink and Atul Gawande. Moreover, Harvard Business Review has some wonderful articles on leadership and I plan to subscribe soon so as to begin to access them. Through these readings, I can see myself continue to grow as an academic leader in my school. It has long been an idea that I can bring new information to the faculty and to improve their learning environment as well.
In terms of development, I have found myself drawn to adolescent development in terms of cognition and how those principles can be implemented in the classroom. This is an area that I feel I could really impact my current school. We have collaborative days approximately once a month when each department meets to collaborate and I believe that there could be some good discussions in those meetings around brain development and what learner differences we see throughout the range of grade levels that we serve. What we expect from a twelve year old should not be what we expect from an eighteen year old but yet I don’t believe there are many faculty that can articulate those differences here. Personally, I believe that I have only begun to learn about this topic and this would be a topic that I would be most likely to seek out in webinars, brain-based learning conferences, and online courses. In fact, I will soon enroll in the EdX course, "The Science of Learning" created by Teachers College at Columbia University and will seek out other MOOCs as well.
Lastly, since I began an administrative role almost a decade ago, I set aside second language acquisition as a focus of my work and I regret doing that. I teach a foreign language and am part of a department that debates second language acquisition theory. I would like to get back to the best practices of a modern language classroom and find the best ways to support my students. I have recently renewed my membership with two professional organizations that will help me reach this goal; AATSP (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese) and ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language). Both are leading organizations in the field and I am excited by the prospects of continuing to feed the passion that got me into teaching in the first place.
To conclude, I would also like to include a personal goal. I have three young children (ages ten, six, and three) and I work a very demanding job. Like many mothers out there, I’ve often put myself on hold as I take care of others’ needs. This is an easy and familiar pattern to fall into but I plan to change this to some extent. I have some personal fitness goals that I am putting into place and I want to bring back an old hobby- photography. When my degree program concludes, I am certain to find some extra time on my hands and I plan to fill some of that free time with photography projects.