The Starting Knot
When I finished my undergraduate program and internship year of teaching at Michigan State University (MSU) in 2013, I certainly did not think I would be re-enrolling to finish my master’s degree just over a year later. All of my friends and family members in teaching told me that my first few years of teaching full-time would be some of the most stressful years of my life. I was told that I would struggle just to keep my head above water, and that I would have a hard time simply finding time to take care of myself, let alone to also go back to school. While I was pressed for time, especially with a 55 mile commute from home to work, I found the balance I needed by taking the time to collaborate with others and continue to view myself as both an educator and a learner. After that first year, I found myself missing being a student and longing to collaborate with more teachers outside of my school. I knew that my long commute and hectic schedule would make it difficult to complete a traditional, in-person program. When I discovered that the Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program at MSU was fully online, I knew that continuing my education at the university in which I had left off was right choice for me. In my first year teaching, I had also found myself working in a school with 1:1 computing, so I thought that I could glean a lot about how to be a digital learner from an online program. Through my choice of courses, I was able to research three of the things I felt I needed to “braid” together to become the type of educator I wanted to be: technology use in the classroom, the nature of science and what it means to be a scientist, and differentiation for all students.
Technology
While my master’s program did not specifically specialize in technology, it is nearly impossible to consider education today without thinking about how changes in technology have affected the way that I learn and teach. Home computers became widespread early in my childhood and I remember having lots of technology-based learning games growing up. I had a computer class at least once a week starting in 3rd grade, where I learned to type and use Microsoft Office. Despite this upbringing, I still do not consider myself to be a digital native in the same way that my students are. Most of them cannot remember a time before cell phones and have had their own since they were ten years old (and in some cases even younger)! My students are used to having knowledge readily available at their fingertips. They are used to instant gratification. Over time, their attention spans (and mine) have been dramatically shortened. In my first few years of teaching, I struggled with how to balance that fact and still help my students to become critical thinkers. The classroom--and society--is in a constant state of flux.
Students built molecules, then searched online to see if they existed.
In my final paper for EAD 860, Concept of a Learning Society, I reflected on how these changes have influenced the way I teach and learn. Often times, drastic societal changes in technology are met with scepticism. For example, when the printing press finally made it possible to distribute texts to the masses, many worried that it would have an irreversible negative impact on memory span because people would no longer have to memorize things that would be readily available in books. Many harbor similar concerns about the easy access to things like Google on smart phones. If students are used to instant gratification, how can we teach them to be critical thinkers? How can we teach them to struggle? What is the incentive to learn things that can be found in a short internet search. At the same time, we cannot simply ignore or avoid technology in the modern classroom. In ED 800, Concepts of Educational Inquiry, I reflected on how most careers today require the regular use of technology and multitasking, but students are not as good at multitasking as they think. Studies have shown that while students may be able to juggle multiple tasks at once, all of them will be done slower and at a lower quality. At the same time, most students cannot focus on one activity for a significant length of time. Many worry that catering to these short attention spans through the use of technology is creating the “dumbest generation,” however technology has also made a multitude of knowledge sources more readily available to our students than ever before. And after all, is it really so bad to make learning easier?
In TE 831, Teaching Subject Matter with Technology, we read about how many teachers feel pressured to incorporate as much technology as often as possible into their lessons--“tech for the sake of tech.” In this case, more is not always better. To help prevent from feeling overwhelmed, we focused on one lesson sequence and how we could incorporate one new piece of technology, taking the time to research and think carefully about how it could be used to enhance student learning. I opted to remix the way that I teach the atom by incorporating an online simulation. Giving students an atom for which they could change and manipulate the parts in real-time helped them to better understand the properties of various atoms and their subatomic particles. Trying to help students visualize this without the use of technology is extremely time consuming, but with the simulation it only took two class periods!
Nature of Science
In addition to finding ways to help my students utilize technology in useful ways, another thread in the braid of my MAED program involved exploring ways to help my students think and work “like scientists.” I wanted my students to be comfortable with critical thinking and inquiry and to view these things as necessary parts of the scientific method. In TE 861B--Inquiry, Nature of Science, and Science Teaching--I interviewed students about what they thought it meant to be a scientist, how they felt our class work connected to that, and about the ways in which they think and approach problems in science. Most students mentioned that in order to be a scientist, one has to conduct experiments and draw conclusions from those. They basically parrotted back the standard scientific method as it has been presented for years. Many were uncomfortable with the possibility of scientific theories changing as new knowledge is uncovered. Some felt that in these cases, theories were just guesses at best. They were also uncomfortable with there being multiple possible conclusions that could be drawn from one data source.
Differentiation
The final major thread in the braid of my MAED program was differentiation. In TE 802 and 804, Reflection & Inquiry into Teaching Practices I and II, I got my first experiences as a lead classroom teacher. In the course, we shared our triumphs and struggles in reaching all students and helping them to develop inquiry skills. In TE 803, Professional Roles & Teaching Practices II, I conducted a case study focused on one struggling student.
While I had spent much of my undergraduate teacher preparation and my first few years of teaching discovering ways to differentiate for struggling students, I found myself feeling like I was not adequately reaching students who exceeded my learning targets. In TE 861C, Action Research in K-12 Science and Mathematics Classrooms, I was tasked with posing an inquiry question that I could potentially research about my practice. While there was ample research on how to help struggling students, I did not find much on how to differentiate “up” for accelerated students in a heterogeneous classroom. Therefore, I posed the question, “How will the addition of enrichment projects and activities affect overall engagement of Gifted (and otherwise accelerated) students within a mixed abilities, rural, high school chemistry classroom?” Through research, I developed and proposed a plan to enact in my classroom next year involving enrichment projects and activities for students who are ahead of the rest of the class, as well as a reward program to incentivize completing these activities. Through this course, I not only learned how to compose a formal research paper so that I could publish my findings if I so choose, but also how to think critically about my teaching practice. This directly related to work I had started in my other inquiry-focused courses, including ED 800, and TE 802 and 804 from my internship year.
These results inspired me to try to incorporate more engineering practices into my chemistry classes. Only in actually experiencing the struggle themselves could my students understand what science and discovery are really like. I had students build thermometers, and when trying to decide which materials to use, there simply was not one right answer. Students had to consider cost, accuracy, and availability of materials and had to make and justify tradeoffs. For TE 861B, I also designed a lesson sequence in which students tested properties of various solids and then tried to match them with one of four models for different types of bonding. Students were uncomfortable with the struggle. They did not like that they could not easily figure out the “right” answers and I would not tell them. In fact, because they had limited data, there were multiple conclusions that could have been acceptably drawn from what they had. I believe that exposing students to situations like these in which struggling and multiple representations are celebrated best mimics the work of actual scientists.
Students modified recipes to create different types and textures of soap
The Next Thread?
Completing all of this work has allowed me to directly improve my classroom practices and to implement changes that I believe have truly made a difference in how my students view learning. It is so easy to lose focus on the most important goals for our students and instead to focus on preparing them for the next test or for a specific college classroom setting. The true and primary goal of teaching should be to prepare students to be global citizens and to tackle life head-on. The work I completed in the MAED program has helped to remind me of this and to redirect my focus to helping my students grow in life, rather than just in test scores. The way my courses were structured also showed me that college courses in and of themselves are changing as well. When many think of preparing students for college, they think of a large lecture hall, boring and tedious notes, and a grade comprised almost solely of test scores. My experience at MSU was very different from this. Instead of a high-stakes all-or-nothing approach, my instructors placed a high value on learning and on my individual progression. I was able to revise and resubmit work and collaborate and get feedback from peers throughout the process. This is something I have already taken into my classroom as a teacher.
While technology, the nature of science, and differentiating for all students will always be areas of growth for me, in no way is my braid of teaching strategies complete. While I firmly believe that these three strands will continue to be foundational to making the braid strong, I know that I will need to incorporate more threads as time goes on. My journey through the MAED program has inspired me to continue my education, not because I have to for licensure, but because I want to. I do not know what the next thread will be yet--perhaps taking on more leadership roles in my school and in education as a whole, or maybe shifting my focus to increasing students' literacy skills in math and science. I know that my journey as an educator will require me to be a lifelong learner, and I would not have it any other way. After all, the best way to continue to see the world from my students’ perspective is to continue to be a student myself.