OVERVIEW OF GRADUATE STUDIES
Here you will see an overview of the course that I have taken towards the top. Additionally you will see highlights of some of the projects that I have completed as part of my Masters Degree work as you scroll down.
ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPT
Below you will see my annotated transcript of courses taken through my Masters of Arts in Education Degree, MEAD program in reverse chronological order. The professors of the courses are listed, though there are a multitude of teaching assistants who were vital in the process as well.
ED 870 CAPSTONE IN EDUCATION SEMINAR
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Dr. Koehler
Fall 2017
In my final course I developed a digital portfolio of my work to showcase who I am as an educator and Masters Degree holder. This course helped me to not only bring all of my information together but to also synthesize who I have become over the course of my path to being an educator. The course focused on developing a robust online portfolio, as well as giving and receiving weekly video feedback to other class members in a format that helped me think about my own work more deeply.
TE 861A TEACHING SCIENCE UNDERSTANDING
Dr. Sharma
Summer 2017
In this course my focus was on how to improve scientific content literacy. There was a lot of focus on how to better teach science by reading and discussion literature to that end. These readings and discussions helped me to think about utilizing more discourse in science and utilizing keystone phenomenon as a way to anchor content to real world applications. There was also a big focus on how to navigate within the new NGSS, or Next Generation Science Standards. To this end I learned how to better navigate the standards and utilize more cross cutting concepts and engineering practices in class.
TE 831Â TEACHING SCHOOL SUBJECT MATTER WITH TECHNOLOGY
Dr. Hartman
Summer 2017
While I would like to consider myself as a rather technologically literate person this is a course that really helped to stretch me to utilize technology at a deeper level in the classroom. I worked on finding different technology tools to use in my classes and to research them as well as how to re-purpose lessons that I have already used to utilize technology not just to use it for the sake of using it but to have it help deepen student learning in a meaningful way. This was a particularly important course for me as we are currently in the process of integrating one to one technology within our building. In part because of this course I have become a person that other teachers seek out to help figure out ways to better utilize technology in their own classrooms.
KIN 856 PHYSICAL BASES OF COACHING
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Dr. Moreno
Summer 2017
This was a course that I took as a way to hybridize my two big contacts with students, teaching and coaching. At first glance this was a course that was ideal for people looking to become better coaches and to better develop athletes both in and out of season. At a deeper level this was a course that challenged me to look at the human body differently as a system of physical subsystems that can be described in terms of simple machines and chemical reactions giving me a multitude of tools to better teach science, and even math, content. Weekly materials linked with assignments on topics like motion analysis helped to give me the base knowledge to be able to develop an in depth off season training plan and to be able to write more sport specific training plans thanks to a greater knowledge of the human body as a complex system of machines.
CEP 883 PSYCHOLOGY OF CLASSROOM DISCIPLINE
Dr. Lien
Summer 2017
As I found myself struggling to better adapt myself to a new building with new challenges, from a classroom management standpoint, I decided to take this course on the deeper psychology of classroom discipline. Readings from current research and books like, CHAMPS by Randy Sprick helped to give me tools and insight on how to better manage my classroom. It also helped open my eyes on where to find other resources, some of which have found their way onto my Christmas list. Bi-weekly discussions with group members about content from the course as well as our own classroom experiences as part of learning communities to help us further our abilities in terms of classroom management.
ED 800 CONCEPTS EDUCATIONAL INQUIRY
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Spring 2017
Dr. Weiland
In this course that served as a sort of introduction to my degree program we focused on different forms of educational inquiry. By reading course materials, books and viewing various different forms of hypermedia, like links and videos, I was able to examine how to help students learn through inquiry while also learning how to introduce inquiry into my own growth as an educator. Topics in the course ranged from Dewey, to ethnographic studies, to self-reflection of my journey as a teacher. I think what most stuck with me from the course was reading "The Girl with the Brown Crayon" and examining how educators can continue to grow throughout their career, even in the last year of it.
TE 861C ACTION RESEARCH IN K-12 SCIENCE AND MATH CLASSROOMS
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Spring 2017
Dr. Sharma
This course was one that specific to my content areas of science and mathematics in title, but in practice went well beyond that narrow focus. In this course the focus was on Action Research, or a systematic, but slightly informal method of researching your practices in your own classroom. Early on in the course the focus was on understanding the overall process of action research, which closely mirror the scientific method. As the course progressed I wrote up a detailed action research proposal on classroom discipline as an observational study. You can see more about this in my showcase, in the self reflection section in the action research plan. I also did extensive reading on various aspects of classroom discipline research, and have begun to implement some of this into my classroom.
TE 804Â REFLECTION AND INQUIRY IN TEACHING PRACTICE II
Spring 2014
Dr. Parker
Dr. Stroupe
The focus on this course was similar to the focus that I had in earlier classes with Dr.s Parker and Stroupe. We looked at the pedagogy behind science teaching and learning and furthered our knowledge with deep discussions and writings. Additionally we used that knowledge to construct deep unit and lesson plans. Additionally there was a deeper focus on the usage of tools in science education, like ambitious big ideas that are focused on phenomenon and class big idea boards. There was also a big focus on preparing for the transition from working under a mentor teacher to having our own classroom.
TE 803Â PROFESSIONAL ROLES AND TEACHING PRACTICE II
Spring 2014
Dr. Syahril
The focus of this course was almost exclusively devoid of content specific to our subjects. We did project like case studies of students in order to look at our teaching purely through the lens of how to be an effective teacher as a communicator, reflective individual and through relationships. It directly coincided with working being done in my internships placement to tie theory to practice. The goal of this course was to develop the framework for all teachers, regardless of subject area to better be able to reach students and develop a deeper understanding of their needs from a bit of a psychological perspective.
TE 802 REFLECTION AND INQUIRY IN TEACHING PRACTICE I
Fall 2013
Dr. Parker
Dr. Stroupe
This was my third course with Dr. Parker about science education. The previous two were during my undergraduate experience with TE 407 and TE 408. This course was a continuation of exploring pedagogy like cognitive dissonance, model coach fade and the like. As we moved from only being in a classroom a couple of times a week to being in a school all day everyday with a mentor teacher the instructors of this course helped to serve as a bridge between our academic background and the practical background we would need as classroom teachers. It served as a continuation into the pedagogical understanding that I had in science education. This course helped to guide us from the change of being a sort of passive observer and assistant in the classroom to an instructor who would deal with the daily ins and outs of a classroom.
SHOWCASE OF WORK
Throughout my work in my Masters of Art in Education I have done a variety of work. While it is difficult to break them apart I believe the groupings below fit best:
Curriculum Work
Technology Utilization
Self Reflection on Practice and Philosophy
I was challenged to expand my content knowledge and its presentation for learners. Some of this was developing my basic pedagogical knowledge, while others stretched me to think about science in new and different ways. As I continued on I pushed myself to incorporate technology in new ways to further the learning of students in very purposeful ways. Finally I had the opportunity to examine my own practices as a teacher very deliberately. This ranged from doing so on a philosophical level, to how I see individual students, to how I convey structure and order in a classroom. Ultimately, there are a number of different ways to best group the work that I did and what is shown here is only a small sampling. Within in each project you can see the complete work by selecting the button that accompanies the description.
CURRICULUM WORK
FOOTBALL WEIGHTLIFTING PLAN
I developed a lifting program for my football players for the off season. This was a way for me to combine my experiences as a science teacher and my coaching background by looking deeply at the science of athlete development through the lens of my physics background to understand athletes better in terms of Newton's Laws and as a system of simple machines. I plan on using ideas from the class to bring sports into my physics classes, to help students see the same types of relationships that I learned myself.
ANNOTATED UNIT PLAN
I developed a complete unit plan for the development of the structure of the atom. Additionally I annotated this unit plan in order to be meta-cognitive about the work that I did. This metacognition allowed me to more fully understand why I should include certain aspects to my unit plan. This deeper understanding of student learning and the resources that were available have helped me to examine what resources my building has in different ways that have helped me be a more creative teacher when there are missing pieces of equipment so that lack of materials does not have to mean lack of learning. Actually incorporating this unit with students really helped students to develop a deeper understanding of the structure of the atom.
TECHNOLOGY UTILIZATION
TECH TOOLS
I researched and tested different technology tools that could be potentially used in my classroom. Shown below are three different technology tools that I looked at. These tools include course reminders to student and parent cellphones, the ability to see student answers in real time and a mind mapping site. Of the three I have most extensively utilized Remind in my own classroom. However, researching these tech tools has also pushed me to find more on my own and have led me to utilize things webcams in my classroom and digital learning platforms like Google Classroom.
TECH BASED LESSON REDESIGN
I took a lesson that I have done in the past and to redesign it to utilize technology. I have done this specifically for physics based the resource Phet from the University of Colorado Boulder. In the past I have utilized some physical tools, like Van de Graff generators, and drawings to help students understand electrostatic relationships. While I still utilize these some methods I have found that many students struggle with imagining exactly how these relationships play out. This redesign of a lesson on electric fields gives students the ability to self explore with safe and slightly guided way to discover these relationships themselves. I have also begun using more Phet simulations as a result of the positive response I have seen with students, particularly in chemistry where students struggle to visualize what is going on at the subatomic level.
SELF REFLECTION ON PRACTICE AND PHILOSOPHY
CASE STUDY OF STUDENTS
While I was doing my internship year I preformed a case study of a small number of students. I focused on two particular students who had particularly low homework turn in rates over the course of over 9 weeks. Over the course of this time I tried to gauge a deeper understanding of why they had low turn in rates and what effects my interventions had on those homework rates. While my focus was on homework this helped me to develop in my ability to examine my students in a more meaningful way, and helped me to better analyze how my actions impact students.
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT PLAN
When I moved schools my previous classroom management techniques did not work in the same way that they had in my previous district or my internship year. From work in the psychology of classroom discipline I developed a classroom management plan based on a combination of psychology readings and Dr. Randy Sprick's book CHAMPS:Â A Proactive and Positive Approach to Behavior Management. Parts of this plan have been implemented in my classroom this school year and have been discussed for being implemented at a larger level throughout the whole building.
ACTION RESEARCH PLAN
Action research is act of researching ones own classroom in a rigorous and thoughtfully way to bring about change to you classroom, while objectively setting guidelines to evaluate the efficacy of the solutions put into place. The focus of this self directed research plan was to identify something I could do in my classroom that I could test for to help me develop as a teacher. My plan was to help me figure out the most prevalent negative and positive behaviors within my classes as an observational study. The results of this study will help me to more objectively identify the biggest issues within my classroom to develop a better plan on how to address those issues, again using the action research method.
MY JOURNEY INTO EDUCATION INQUIRY
I digested a multitude of readings, digital hypermedia, videos and podcasts on different facets of educational inquiry. Over six units I reflected about different pieces of educational inquiry, how they were related to me and how they made me think about education. Looking at these in a holistic manner we can see how my understanding of education and myself as an educator have been shaped. Moving from John Dewey to ethnographic studies I view my role in different ways that I may never have otherwise thought about. How can I incorporate the things that work from Dewey's laboratory schools, and simultaneously get some of the benefits of other schools of thought as well. These are deep questions that I now ponder well beyond the a simple paper, though I hope that some of my basic thoughts can be seen.