I embarked on my mission to obtain a Master’s in Education with excitement and passion. It had been a while since I was in class as a student. I began my Masters work as a fifth year teacher and I was feeling pretty confident about my abilities, perhaps even cocky. I said to myself that education could not have changed that much since I took my last TE class five years ago. Man, was I wrong. While many of the bedrock principles are the same, the students have changed. As such, my teaching needs to change. I was told by one of my colleagues that education is the one thing that we will pay for, but never get. This has stuck with me. I did not want to waste my time, or money, in getting this Masters. I set forth to learn everything I could, try as hard as possible, and set an example for my students on how to be an exceptional student.
I entered the MAED program with three primary goals. My first goal was to become a better teacher for students with disabilities. My second goal was to become a better coach. Lastly, I wanted to build a toolbox of technology resources to implement and share with my students. As I leave this program, I can say that I have achieved these goals and am in the process of setting new professional goals. Along the way, all of my courses have helped me achieve these goals, but there is a couple in particular that really stand out. My first summer in the program was exciting, I had just bought a house with my wife and we found out the she was pregnant. The icing on the cake that summer was KIN 856 with Dr. Scott Reiwald.
KIN 856: The Physical Bases of Coaching provided me with invaluable information toward becoming a better coach and a better teacher. I have always been a believer that some of the best teachers are also coaches. They know how to motive, inspire, lead, and promote responsibility and dedication. This class helped me learn how to do these things by making me into an expert in the physical aspects of my sport. Throughout the course, I learned about the skeletal and muscular system, nutrition and supplements, injury prevention, strength and conditions, and sport medicine. One thing this course taught me is that coaching is not as simple as it looks on TV. On TV we see the easy part of the job, the game. What we do not see is the preparation, the time spent in the gym, in the weight room, on the phone with parents and doctors, and in the training room.
Coaching requires a dedicated teacher. Coaching requires a teacher to put the success of the players before the success of themselves. In order to do this, the coach needs to be well versed in the physical aspects of the sport. KIN 856 provided me with that information. I have already begun to implement workout routines and nutritional recovery plans that I designed in this course. I look forward to the winter when I am placed in charge of off-season workouts. My success in this aspect of my professional life will carry over to the classroom as well. I am learning how to become a better leader through experience on the baseball field and in turn I will become a better leader in the classroom.
One of the assignments in the course required me to build a network of professionals that can assist with my athletes. I contacted people from various professions like a massage therapist, general practitioner, and a Biomechanist. Assignments like this one and others that integrated coaching with sports fitness technology helps me become an expert and gain the skills and knowledge necessary to be a successful coach. I also became an expert leader in the eyes of my players. The three projects in the course I have already utilized in my coaching. One project utilized technology to create frame by frame images of athlete performance. I have taken this program in implemented with every one of my athletes to improve at least one aspect of their game. For the other two projects I created a strength and conditioning routine to prevent injuries and I also developed a nutritional guide for post workout/practice meals. The assignments from this course, along with the course text, provided me with immediate results that improved my coaching and instructing.
In order to become a better teacher for students with disabilities, I chose a concentration in Special Education. Upon entering the MAED program I had no clue what UDL stood for or what it entailed, but through my coursework I am jumping on the bandwagon of Universal Design for Learning. I first learned about it in CEP 840 during my first summer, but it has really come to mean more to me through my studies in CEP 841 with Dr. Tony Mariage. In CEP 841: Classroom Management in Inclusive Classrooms, the idea of UDL means more because the management practices that we can apply to students with disabilities can also be applied to students without disabilities. There are no downsides to teaching all students this way. If we can scaffold our instruction to meet the needs of students with disabilities, why is it not possible to do the same for students without disabilities? CEP 841 has taught me how to be a coach in the classroom. From studying about different types of leaders and how to obtain authority in the classroom, I have realized that coaching and teaching are the same thing, they just have two different playing fields. From 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. I coach my students in social studies and then until 6:00 p.m. I coach my ballplayers using a lot of the same management strategies I used in the classroom.
CEP 841 has made me rethink a lot of things about my teaching. From the arrangement of the physical room to the wasted downtime in my lessons, I have not been the most effective teacher for my students with disabilities. This class made me realize that most of the problems I was having in my classroom were not the students faults, there were mine. If I move some furniture around, I can create more private space and allow the students to feel more secure in room. This will lead to academic improvement because let’s face it, students that do not feel safe are not going to be as concerned with the academic aspects of school. They are concerned with survival. So much of what happens in the classroom is a result of something we do as teachers. This class has provided me with the knowledge and skills to prevent a lot of management and behavioral issues not just for students with disabilities, but also without.
One of the texts for this course, Teaching Self-Control Through Management and Discipline by Tom V. Savage, highlighted a lot of areas that I can improve upon in my own classroom. This text also provided examples and thoughtful self-reflection questions to assess my teaching. Savage’s book will be an invaluable resource as I enter the classroom in the fall. CEP 841 also introduced me to Rick Lavoie. His ideas and theories regarding students with and without disabilities made me look closely at my teaching and made me realize that I not only cause a lot of management issues in the classroom, but I can also solve them relatively easily. By implementing his strategies and looking at my teaching through his framework, I will improve my leadership and decrease the amount of behavioral issues in the classroom.
The last goal that I wanted to accomplish through this program was to build a toolbox, and fill it, with technology applications and software to take to my students. I grew when the internet and cell phones were invented, so technology is a significant part of my teaching. I thought that I knew a lot because I was young, but man was I wrong. There was so much out there that I did not even think of. While I was pretty much up to date on my social networking, my knowledge of educational technology was sparse. Two courses, CEP 820: Teaching K-12 Students Online with Michelle Schira Hagerman and CEP 850: Technology and Literacy with Maryl Randel, have equipped me with enough tools that I am confident and well-prepared for the twenty-first century learner.
CEP 820 gave me an insight in to teaching completely online. While K-12 education is not the most ideal place to teach solely online, there were aspects of teaching online that I have already implemented in my classrooms. The extensive use of Google Apps has made my life so much easier. The organization that Google offers allows me to accept, grade, and return assignments without ever having to read a printed document. This class not only taught me how to logistically teach a class online, but also how to use technology with the students. Having students upload documents in Google and share them with classmates, provided an easy way to peer review essays.
While CEP 820 taught me how to effectively teach online, CEP 850 taught me how to use technology to improve student literacy. I place a high value on literacy. Reading, writing, and communicating are such an integral part of a democratic society, that it must be a focus in the classroom. For the twenty-first century learner, literacy has a different definition than it did fifty years ago. Back then, the internet did not exist, so there was no newyorktimes.com or espn.com to get updated on news from around the world instantly. There are some people that do not support the use of technology in the classroom, especially social networking sites. But let’s face it, as teachers we need to adapt to our students just as much as they need to adapt to us. How can I teach about the significance of Twitter and Facebook in the revolutions of the Middle East, but then condone their use. As a social studies teacher, I find it hard to teach a student how social networking was used to create a democracy in Egypt, but then deny them that right in the country that proved democracy works. So I raise the question we raised in CEP 850, why are social networking sites banned in schools? We can use these sites to demonstrate how they can be used to educate, like we did using Twitter in CEP 850. Several texts from CEP 850, like Facebook in the Classroom. Seriously by Kate Walsh, provided valuable and effective formats for using social media in the classroom to promote learning and enhance student achievement. What is so wrong with having students discuss an article with each other using Facebook? The goal is learning, so teachers should be able to use whatever it takes to promote and encourage learning, especially using technology and the internet.
As I reach the end of my journey, I have accomplished what I set out to. I am a better teacher for my students with disabilities, I am a better coach, and I have a large toolbox of technology resources to take to my students. While this educational journey has come to an end, I am not done learning yet. What we know about disabilities, how best to teach students that have them, and how we perceive the students will change. As that change occurs I will be at the forefront of the information. Acting as a leader in my school to ensure that change happens and is met with little resentment. Technology will also evolve and improve the ways in which we are able to teach all students. I will be a leader and proponent of implementing new technology in the classroom, whatever that technology may be. As I reflect upon what I have learned in this program, the most valuable thing that I learned is that I am a great teacher, not because of my students’ test scores or student surveys, but because I continue to learn with my students, modeling for them how to never stop learning. After earning my Master of Arts degree in Education, I know that I am better than I once was.