This course was one of the first I took as a part of my Master of the Arts in Education (MAED) program. Throughout the course, we explored the idea of educational inquiry while discussing the history of education. We learned about the philosophy of John Dewey and reflected on the inquiry and educational practices of various teachers and researchers and different cultures throughout the world. The main thing I learned in this course is the importance of being self-reflective and analytical of ones own work. Self-reflection can be a very informative form of inquiry into educational practices.
Within this course, we focused on differences in language and cultural background and how this affects children when they learn literacy skills. This course taught me about the importance of knowing the background of a student in order to appropriately differentiate instruction for them. As a part of this course, we had to delve deeply into the background of a student to develop a case-study/profile of them as a literacy learner. This taught me the importance of looking farther than school records and taking the students’ home life and family life into account when deciding what is appropriate for them educationally.
CEP841-Classroom Management in Inclusive Classrooms
Summer 2015
T. Mariage
C. Chamberlain
F.Vitale
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CEP840- Policies Practices and Perspectives in Special Education
Summer 2016
C. Englert
H. Schmitt
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The focus of this course was how to effectively manage an inclusive classroom and make the learning environment beneficial for all students. Within this course, we completed an independent study of a special topic of interest related to inclusive classrooms. My project centered on the co-morbidity of attention deficit disorders (ADHD) with other mental disorders and the implications within general education classrooms. My biggest take away from this course were strategies and time management techniques for managing a classroom. We also explored different types of authority and which are most influential within the classroom.
Throughout this course, we explored a variety of different awards given to works of children’s literature and the criteria used to determine the award winners. I learned the importance of being critical when looking at a work that has been given an award or one that is generally considered a classic. One of our assignments was to view a Caldecott winning book and reflect on the meaning within the illustrations. After reflecting we then listened to the acceptance speech from the illustrator and then view the illustrations again. This again taught me the importance of looking at things critically but also taught me that my perception of something can be drastically different from the intended meaning. This is influential in the classroom because we cannot always predict how our students will interpret the texts we given them.
This course was one of the most difficult courses that I took during my Master’s program. Educational technology was not something in which I had much formal experience. I learned about the concept of T-PACK, which stands for Teaching Pedagogical Content Knowledge. This was not a concept I was familiar with, but that was I remember is it fusing together what you know about pedagogy, technology, and content in order to provide instruction. One of the biggest things I took away from this course was the idea of repurposing technologies to make them educational technologies. While this is still not my strongest area, it is one in which I feel more confident in since completing this course.
I took this course as a part of my Master’s program within the special education focus of my program because the content was of great interest to me. While this was an introductory course on the aspects of Autism Spectrum Disorder, I learned a lot more than I originally anticipated. We spent a lot of time reviewing research on interventions for students with ASD. I learned a lot about critically reviewing research and searching for studies relevant to the areas of difficulty a student is exhibiting and also about certain non-conventional or alternate interventions for children with ASD, such as control of diet. The interventions I read about through the research and the alternate interventions were the biggest take-away I had from this course.
This course, another that I took as part of the special education portion of my Master’s program, was one I took specifically with some of my students in mind. This course offered information regarding many different interventions related to student behavior. The interventions presented were those that can be used for mild to moderate behavior and some for severe behaviors by dealing with the cause of the behavior as well as the behavior itself. I completed a project in this course that helped me to find an effective intervention for a student with ADHD and severely off-task behavior.
Writing is something that I like to do, but am not as comfortable teaching. This course provided me with a variety of sample lessons on strategies to use when teaching writing. Working as a special education teacher, strategies and mnemonics are very beneficial to instructing students with learning difficulties. A teaching project I did within this course did not yield the results I was hoping for, which reminded me that we will not always be successful in our endeavors with students.
One of the final courses I took in my program was about policies and perspectives in special education. This course taught me a lot about assistive technologies. I have worked with ATs in my school, but I am seeing that there was a lot I did not know. While I did not know that many of the things I do within the classroom are assistive technologies, I am glad to see that I have been using so many various assistive technologies. This course also helped me to become more collaborative in my work with colleagues.
This is the final course of my online Master of Arts in Education program. Through this course, I am currently building my online portfolio and learning the things I need to present myself effectively through an online format. I have also revisited my goals from the beginning of my program and looked at my future learning goals. This course has allowed me to go back and see where I have been as a learner and where I hope to go in the future.
Annotated Transcript
This page contains descriptions of all courses taken as a prt of my Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program. The courses are organized chronologically by the semester in which they were taken, starting with the first course in my program. Clicking on the course number will provide the course description from Michigan State University.
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