What I have done:
So much of what teaching is depends on not only the level of mastery a teacher brings to her students, but also a freshness of creativity and knowledge of her students' needs. Throughout my career thus far, I have worked to pursue these qualities. Strangely, I have found my students to be the best teachers, but I also owe gratitude to my teachers at Michigan State University who have pushed me to look further and longer at the network (and diversity) of components that is teaching. What follows below is a composite of some of the projects that I have taken on to that end.
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MSU Graduate Internship 2011
Self Directed Professional DevelopmentWhen I first began to teach, I realized that I could teach until I was blue in the face, but if I didn't diagnose what my students needed, nothing would be gained. Likewise, if I didn't diagnose what I needed as a teacher, I would quickly lack the tools needed to address my students' needs. In response to this realization, I created a chart that organized the self-directed research and subsequent resources that I would need to gain knowledge and insight into what I accrued. Click the buttons below to read about what I focused on, and how it altered my teaching.
More than anything, I think the endeavor spurred in me a thirst for continuing my education, which prompted my return to MSU five years later. |
Literacy InquiryI didn't get too far in my search to understand my students needs before I realized that there were a variety of factors that I had little power over-- at least in the beginning of the year. Literacy is a multi-faceted thing, and without insight into the complexity of such an attribute, developing a student's literacy can be more than a little challenging. AND what works for developing one student's literacy will have a completely different effect on another student. With this in mind, I set out to examine the levels of literacy in the seventh grade classroom in which I was placed for my internship. I realized that I had an obligation to understand these factors in order to execute a strategy best suited to each of my students-- so that I could affect their future literacy. Below, you can read what I discovered about that particular school, as well as see a snapshot into the complexities I encountered in even one class.
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Summer with MSU in Galway, 2014
Maker FaireThrough my work with kids and with MSU, I've also worked really hard to make my teaching efficient and interactive. I found myself using technology to achieve this, and as I watch the field of teaching morph to underscore the Common Core (with an emphasis on online publication) it was this that prompted me to look into how to teach with technology well. This started my interest in MAET (Master's in Educational Technology). Linked below, you'll find an example of the kind of project that represents this quest to make English interesting and interactive. I constructed a Grammar lesson using a technology called "Little Bits", which essentially uses magnetized pieces to create circuits. The Bits can make noise, light up, or even propel a fan. I used these as symbols for sentence parts to make Grammar understandable AND fun. Then I published it on the site you'll find linked here.
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Year One BlogIn addition to the writings that you'll see posted on this site, I have another blog that I began during my stay in Galway, Ireland during the summer of 2014. I frequently write for my kids-- creating an assessment description, giving feedback, or even crafting artificial student models-- but rarely do I write for my own reflection. It was so refreshing to compose a little of myself for an audience and to also declare a little of what I've learned and think about the pedagogy I practice. If you click the button below, you'll be able to see what I mean. You'll find a collection of musings about what I've read, what I've experienced, the daily work we did in class, and even some of the iterations of the projects I worked on while studying with MSU in Galway. Reflecting-- not to mention practicing what I teach as a teacher of writing-- is so important.
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Special Interest GroupAnother major project that we completed during Year One of MAET was our "SIG" (Special Interest Group) project. We were charged to, as the name implies, take a particular interest in a topic and to become as close to experts as we could. My group, which included Chonsey Pogue and Kristen Fenzau, were most interested in Gamification, or Game-Based Leaning. We researched the topic via a variety of sources, created a wiki to house our information and invite others into our search, and summarized our findings with a poster, which we presented during a poster gallery session that was open to the public in Galway, Ireland.
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Summer with MSU in East Lansing, 2015
Understanding UnderstandingDuring CEP 822, a course examining teacher approaches to research, we were asked to focus specifically on how people come to understand a concept. We discovered that in order to do this we must first set out to understand peoples' misconceptions-- which are so commonly and insidiously developed. As teachers we must find out our students' misconceptions and work to capitalize on their prior knowledge before beginning new material. As an example of this, we studied Caffeine, interviewing a random subject pool to figure out what they understood, or misunderstood about its effects. We composed our findings in a website and summary video at the link you'll find below.
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3X3X3 (x2)As an approach to educational psychology, CEP 800 also asked us to read Daniel Willingham's book, Why Don't Students Like School?, a book that looks into the influence of long-term and working memory on knowledge building. We were asked to read a chosen chapter and compose a "3x3x3" video, where we isolated three main ideas, and three implications for teachers based on those main ideas, and compose our findings in a three minute video. We chose to do this for Chapter 5, and chapter that calls into question the use of "drilling" as a practice to commit essential lessons into long-term memory, and Chapter 7, which calls into question a long-term assumption that teachers commonly espouse: that there are such things as different learners (visual learners, kinesthetic learners, and auditory learners). Watch via the links below to see what we uncovered from these two controversial chapters.
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Dream ItThe Dream It assignment was also a component of CEP 800, a course where we examined the role of psychology in how we learn. This assignment was a grant-writing assignment that asked us to think, predict, and reflect on the role of a desired tool in our classrooms. It synthesized and applied our learning to a real life need that we are dealing with now. It also reinforced the idea that "tech for tech's sake" has no place in a teacher's classroom, nor a school's budget. Here I've written a proposal asking for a class-set of iPads in order to work around the constraints of our significant achievement gap in our district.
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WebinarThe Webinar project was assigned in conjunction with CEP 815, a class examining the role of teachers in leading professional development for teacher peers, as well as self-directed professional development. We were tasked to seek out a topic we were passionate about and invite three experts on our topic to speak to it. We hosted a webinar in order to gain insight and collaboration, recorded our conversation and housed it at the link you see below for future viewers. Our topic inquired into the implications of Digital Citizenship- staying safe, and representing oneself well.
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Final ReflectionThis final reflection paper is an essay borne of CEP 815, posted to give summative evidence of all I have learned during the summer of 2015. It is an extensive argumentative reflection that synthesizes primarily the ideas we learned in this course (CEP 815, a course about social and ethical implications in teaching along with a teacher's responsibility in leadership) but also the ideas we've taken away from Year 2 in the MAET program.
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ParticipationIn addition to the projects you see listed here, we were also tasked with daily ungraded work that showed formative evidence of our learning. They were quick and informal in nature, but of course still valuable. Click the button below to check out these Participation based assignments located on a separate page.
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Photos used under Creative Commons from _Matt_T_, Sharon & Nikki McCutcheon, Alexandra E Rust, Acradenia, Joshua Tree National Park, Peter Mooney