The Same, Yet a Little Different
Program Goal Reflection Essay
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My initial goal(s) when entering the online Master of Arts in Education program (MAED) were to learn more about how to teach literacy skills and to help me progress in my teaching career. My undergraduate studies were in special education and social studies, so literacy instruction was not something in which I received much formal education, but is very important to the field of special education. Throughout my graduate program, this goal has stayed the same. I still have the ultimate goal of how can I better equip myself as an educator to help my students progress and become as successful as they can. The acquisition of information in how to teach literacy is a big part of how I can do this. At the beginning of my MAED program, my goal was to be able to help my students academically, but now my goal is to be able to help them academically and behaviorally. I began my program focusing on the teaching of literacy skills, but through the classes I have taken that have focused on behavior, I have reshaped this goal to include helping students to be successful behaviorally as well. The environment in which I teach comes with a lot of behavioral issues, so there are times when helping a student to succeed academically is not the main goal but helping them to behave appropriately is.
My goal of progressing in my career is also still similar, though I have changed a little from just wanting to be able to progress in my own career into becoming a teacher leader and providing guidance to those around me. I currently am focusing on how I can inform myself so that I can coach the other teachers within my building. As a special education teacher, I am often consulted for the best way to approach students who have difficulties both academically and behaviorally and at times I find that I am unable to provide much assistance because I have not yet dealt with certain situations. While I am still a fairly new teacher, my colleagues still come to me for help when they have an issue that they have not been able to solve independently. As with my first goal of helping students to be successful, this goal has also been reshaped based on the environment in which I am teaching and the classes in which I have been a part of. While I still want to be able to progress in my own career, which I have done with the (near) completion of my master’s degree, I have changed my goal to be more specific in that I want to become more of a leader within my building.
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