A LOOK AT HOW MY GOALS FOR MY DEGREE CHANGED
FROM CONTENT TO CONDUCT
When I first started out applying to MSU for my Masters of Arts in Education there were a few reasons. One, I am a Spartan through and through, every one of my groomsman at my wedding was a Spartan or hopeful future Spartan, my wife is a Spartan multiple times now and our ceremony and reception were on campus. Second, I was already connected with the program from my internship year. Third, and most important, I wanted to become a better teacher of math and science, to help give my students the best chance at success in their lives. It was my goal upon starting this program to become a better teacher in math and science. I came in looking at ways to better present scientific and mathematical ideas. Science in particular there were, and are, a lot of changes happening with the Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS. There was going to be a bigger focuses on utilizing technology in a meaningful way and on students doing science as opposed to receiving it.
At the start of my work towards a Master of Arts in Education I wanted to present information better, keep up with changes to curriculum, better utilize technology in the classroom and get a deeper ability to teach mathematics.
What I found was that I was really going to be deepening the skills in these areas that I had already began to form during my undergraduate education at Michigan State. Additionally, I found teaching physics and much of mathematics frequently overlap in practice. While there has been some focus on that through my coursework I have found most of that from practical knowledge of teaching it for the first time this year.
​My goals have changed a little as I progressed is on improving my classroom management in a proactive manner. There are two reasons for this. The first is my courses that helped me to see how I could improve my classroom management ability by doing little things more proactively, and by deepening relationships I already form with students as a teacher and a coach. Proactive little things include altering my daily routine with students so work time is broken into smaller blocks and not giving students homework at the end of class. Now I give it towards the middle with a touch back in the last five minutes all together as a way to keep students engaged and have a synthesized view of the day. The second is that around the time I applied to the program I switched schools to one where I needed far more strategies that what I had previously needed in my teaching career. In hindsight these techniques would have improved my teaching anywhere, but make an even bigger difference in where I am now.
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I have progressed to still trying to improve student success, but my focus has become more on better proactive classroom management and relationships, as opposed to a content focused approach as I started. Improving how I operate in the classroom, and how students operate, makes learning content is easier for everyone and content becomes more meaningful because students are connected more fully to where they are learning.
LOOKING AHEAD
A BRIEF LOOK AT SOME OF MY GOALS FOR THE FUTURE
As I have progressed through my teaching career and my Graduate work I have found myself thinking more and more about a few main foci in my continuing education and my skills as a classroom teacher. One such thing that I am interested in learning more about and implementing more is the concept of a flipped classroom, particularly for my upper level students. A second thing that I am interested in learning more about and developing is a really robust online component to my classroom, like a Google Classroom. Finally, I really want to learn more about various classroom management techniques that are more specific to high school students. My hope with all three of these things is that I will set myself up for working in a continually changing and digital world, and be able to have more success in my current teaching position in a particularly rough school
Something that has been pervasive throughout my time as a teacher is the spread of technology access for students. I remember when I first was doing my student teaching just 5 years ago the idea of a flipped classroom was one that was difficult to think about the feasibility of in a fairly well off district as many students did not have the access that would really be required to run a flipped classroom effectively. As a result of this I really pushed this idea far back in my mind, particularly as I have since worked in two different schools with lower income students who would have struggled with access even more. However, even in a building with high levels of financial hardship I have noticed the widespread access that students have to technology and the internet. This actually recently lead me to conduct an informal poll in one of my classes as an exit ticket to determine how many students had access to the internet at home and every single student did. This got me thinking about if there would be ways that I could draw direct instruction pieces out of the classroom and instead assign students to access that on their own. In short I have just begun looking at the usage of a flipped classroom with my own students that I could test pilot with a particular group of students and roll out to a larger number in the future. I have begun looking at the blog, http://www.jonbergmann.com/blog/, about flipped classrooms not only for their benefits and drawbacks, but also for ideas on how to implement one. It is something that I will talk to my evaluating administrator about as a possible goal for the year as well.
A second goal that is actually very closely tied to the first one is developing a robust online piece to my classroom, such as a Google Classroom. For some of the same reason as my first goal I see technology becoming more inclusive for my students. Additionally, in the district that I am teaching in, our entire science textbook is now online through Discovery Education, and our students will soon be getting linked to one to one technology in the form of Chromebooks. To me this is a fantastic time to begin to bring in more robust digital links to my classroom, and to guide me in my beginning stages I will talk to a few of the other teachers in my building who have a rudimentary presence. Additionally, I will be leaning on the Google Classroom Forums online, as I have found such forums to be widely populated with highly knowledgeable individuals. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-education
A third and final goal is to find out about more classroom management techniques that I can use in my classroom. Moving from teaching in a pseudo-rural district to a school that was just taken off of the state of Michigan Priority School status I have noticed that many of the classroom management techniques that I learned before while teaching, and during my internship year, to be inadequate. There was a little bit of a focus of this that I got during my action research class, and more during my psychology of classroom discipline course, but I found that most stuff you find and most stuff that was used my those courses was intended for elementary through middle school, and things that I have tried often end up backfiring as students think that much of it is childish and patronizing in nature. Through one course a book by Randy Sprick, PhD caught my attention as basically being the book that was used for my course but intended for high school students, Discipline in the Secondary Classroom: A Positive Approach to Behavior Management. This is a book that I believe that I would like to read to get a better depth for more techniques in a high school classroom. I have actually book marked the Amazon page to order the book myself, https://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Secondary-Classroom-DVD-Management/dp/1118450876.
Overall, I know this is just a small piece for me, but I think it gives me a good branching point to self-direct for the long term.