Weaving It All Together

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I knew I wanted to be a teacher mid-way through my sophomore year of high school; I had a great history teacher, I had fun in class, and I found myself midway through a book on the battle of Thermopylae realizing that I wanted nothing more than to help people come to the same realization: learning was great and social studies was awesome. My time at Michigan State University (MSU) was great and I still tell anyone that will listen that student teaching on Chicago's South side was the best thing that ever happened to me professionally, a more intense and rewarding experience, I cannot imagine. After that, jobs didn't fall as I would have liked, but I had MAET (Masters of Arts in Educational Technology) as my North Star as I jumped from unfulfilling to unfulfilling position, always pushing me towards bettering myself as a teacher and a learner. As I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, I have not had the prototypical MAET experience, instead I have taken a far bumpier path, and I think I am better for it. I have grown and changed as a person, a learner, and an educator since I took my first course in 2013. Times and expectations have changed within education and without, but same questions remain: What belongs in the classroom? Will my ideas work? How do I enact those ideas?

 

"MAET is not my identity as a teacher", as I thought over (and wrote and re-wrote) this essay, I had a hard time pinpointing what exactly the things I got out of MAET were. As I sat and stewed, frustrated, over my inability to articulate what exactly this program had done for me, I figured it out. Sorta. It wasn’t what the program had done for me, it’s what it had done to me. MAET had subtly infiltrated my entire teaching practice; instead of giving me one or two singular events I could point to and say "that's it, THAT, is the entire program in microcosm", it had changed the way I approached planning, implementing, and communicating lessons. 

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At the end of the school year, I ask my graduating seniors what the big thing they got out of each unit (The Executive Branch, The Constitution, etc.) and I’m usually a bit bummed by the simplicity of their answers and the obviousness of their recency bias, but when I ask them what they got out of the year as a whole, I feel better. They talk about the importance of holding politicians accountable, about verifying sources, about their rights as citizens, and I am reminded that that is what matters, not the 16th Amendment(income tax, you’re welcome). It’s the big picture that matters, the whole blanket, not the strands that go into it. Those strands matter at the outset and in the moment, but overall, the question is “will this do its job and keep me warm?”. The answer to the question of “will MAET keep me warm?” is a resounding yes. MAET has taken root in my planning and my practice, its ideas suffuse how I teach and act without ever making themselves overtly known, so rather than rehash my annotated transcript or my showcase I’m going to do my best to identify some of the most prominent threads of my MAET blanket and show the role they play in a larger sense.

 

What Belongs in a Classroom?

Student teaching saw me in a school where my students literally never touched a computer (except the one kid who tried to steal a desktop from the library, but that’s a story for another time) whereas the next school I was at was piloting iPads for every student, and the ones after that have all had 1-to-1 laptops as a matter of course. MAET and specifically CEP 812- Applying Educational Technology to Issues of Practice- made me really think about what that ever-increasing ubiquity of technology meant. How did technology actually fit into the modern classroom? Students now have the sum of human knowledge (and Fortnight) at their fingertips, raising the question as to how educators can best take advantage of it without ceding our role to the internet. It seems trite to say “the internet isn’t going anywhere”, but it really isn’t and failing to adapt to that fact does nothing more than make life harder for teachers and alienate the students who are digital natives. 812 taught me a pair of distinct ideas that resound across my practice: digital literacy is key and student involvement in adapting technology is key. I have said for years that I don’t like SnapChat. I don’t get it, but 812 and my own experience have shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that disliking a tool is no reason to remain proudly ignorant of it- the same goes for my government class. A willingness to try out new things in order to better my own practice is invaluable, but just as invaluable to me is developing a familiarity with new content and being able to articulate why I do or do not like them or see them as valuable.

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 812 showed me that opening myself to new approaches, no matter how irrelevant to my own                                        style or content area, still holds value by enabling me to help others. Those                                    others need not be peers, either; student input is often just as valuable, if                                      not more than that of a district technology officer. Students, while                                                    occasionally fickle, are more often an invaluable bellwether to the changing                                    face of technology. Teachers may not love cellphones in class, but by                                            understanding what the students use them for (this year I watched a                                              student finish an assignment for my class during an assembly, on her                                            phone) is key to streamlining class. Learners nowadays are always online, denying them all access to the tools with which they are familiar is short sighted and a recipe for disaster. This is not to say that MAET told me to use Technology as a crutch, far from it; MAET taught me that technology is a tool to be employed at the appropriate time. To paraphrase Cookie Monster "phones are a sometimes tool", but they are undoubtedly a tool. It was 812 and MAET that showed me to embrace exploration and change, and I am all the better for it.

 

But Will It Work There?

Every MAET class offered different approaches and applications to teaching, the one that contributed the most ideas and then contextualized them was CEP 820- Teaching Students Online. 820 grew my concept of what was possible in an educational setting. I was given the opportunity to try my hand at CSS programming (it did not go very well) and I got to play with virtually every type of free-ware web development tool imaginable, allowing me to cultivate a particular style and familiarity with tools that I or my students could be using in the years to come. By adding more and more options as they progressed, 820 and MAET created ever more fertile ground in which I could work and then parlay what I had gotten out of them into the various learning communities of which I was a part in either real or digital space, thereby adding more skills- a valuable, self-perpetuating cycle. In being honest about what worked for me and what                                                             didn't, I grew as an assertive teacher- iterating on ideas that                                                           had worked (or sort of worked) in the past until the kinks                                                                 were worked out. By throwing the book (or internet, as it                                                                   were) at the class in 820, MAET inspired me to be choosy, to                                                           cultivate my learning style, to better my class and my                                                                       teaching abilities. It showed me that like people, every class                                                           and lesson can be different, and that's great- if you are                                                                     willing to take responsibility for developing and growing it to                                                           its full potential, and I have.

 

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820 also taught me an important lesson that still lingers in the back of my mind: not every good idea fits every classroom. I repeatedly worked with the concept of a “Flipped Classroom” and I, for the life of me, could not back it. I saw issues everywhere, whereas my peers saw immense value. And that was O.K.. Building the skill to not only explore down paths that I might not want to journey down, but doing so anyways, discussing them with  reasonable peers and professors, and then deciding that it was alright to head back the way I came and try another path was invaluable. That idea cross-pollinated over to my classroom teaching as well, the value of trusting yourself enough to acknowledge that something is not working and trying a different tool or approach is invaluable and I thank MAET and CEP 820 for instilling that confidence in me, all the while expanding my horizons.

 

Now How Do I Get It Done?

If MAET is a blanket, full of interwoven ideas and themes, then 815- Technology and Leadership is all about how to judiciously use and explain why this particular blanket. Differing from all the previous classes I had taken in the program, 815 focused far more on communication and leadership skills than everything that came before. Having a large repertoire of skills and tools paired with a confident vision of how to employ them in a classroom only gets you so far, though. 815 helped me develop the skills to proselytize everything else I have gotten out of MAET to administration and stakeholders as well as my fellow teachers. Whereas other program courses focused on developing classroom and technological skills, Technology and Leadership opened me up to a trickier, wider world I had not often had to confront. Emboldening me through research, discussion, and  even Twitter role play (seriously, it was really effective), I was able to foster a better sense of empathy for the other roles and concerns of the wider educational world and look at issues from their perspective. Viewing EdTech from a new lens led to me pondering different approaches to not only teaching, but also to how and when I should present them to others outside of my own department. 815’s concentration on communication and taking a leadership position to advocate for your kids, or class, or school with the whole spectrum of educational stakeholders helped me to develop a deeper understanding of the intricacies and nuances of my district as well as to re-contextualize previous events in my career that had frustrated me. In learning to connect in new ways, I found a path towards expanding my educational vision and thus the opportunities of learners in my larger community. I am not alone, I am part of a larger community whose decisions have years-long ripple effects; undoubtedly daunting, but also comforting, 815 drove home more than any other class the communal aspect of education that is so key to ensuring its long-term health and progress.

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This program has let me develop as a more complete teacher, pushing me to experiment and innovate, with the belief that I have learned enough in both a literal sense (just look around this site) and in the general, whole blanket sense that I will be able to either attain my goal or adapt my approach so that I can overcome or circumvent the problem. Here I have developed not only a toolbox and self-confidence to use it, but also the communication skills to share those tools, those ideas, those practices with those around me, be they a fellow teacher, an administrator, a community stakeholder, or some kid who just wants to find a way to share that thing they love.

My blanket nearly complete, I am compelled to think of Navajo Blankets- always possessed of an imperfection, sometimes purposely, sometimes not- much like a teacher, that blanket may never be flawless, but it will serve its purpose. Sometimes I know that some precept says I should do one thing, but MAET and personal experience have instilled in me the confidence to do something different, to try a new path, and if I err, so be it, I have still tried and still learned. It may not be perfect, but it is a true vision.

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Faculty Innovation Center, University of Texas. "Flipped Classroom." Flipped Classroom | Faculty Innovation Center | The University of Texas at Austin. 11 July 2019 https://facultyinnovate.utexas.edu/flipped-classroom.

 

International Society for Technology in Education. “Essential Conditions.” Empowered Leaders, ISTE, 11 July 2019, 1:17, id.iste.org/connected/standards/essential-conditions/empowered-leaders.

 

University of Michigan, “Less Than Perfect.” Less Than Perfect | Navajo Rug, Regents of the University of Michigan, 2017, exhibitions.kelsey.lsa.umich.edu/less-than-perfect/navajo.php.