The road through graduate school was a long and rough road and it is kind of strange to think that I am almost at the end of that road.  My time in the Master of Arts in Education (MAED) and the former Master of Arts in Literacy Instruction (MA-LIT) spanned across seven years and a whole lot of life.  I completed my teaching internship in the spring of 2009 and began taking graduate classes in the fall of 2009.  By spring 2010, I was well on my way to completing my degree within a semester or two with my internship credits, then my daughter was born.  I stopped taking classes so that I could focus on being a single parent and working full-time.  Fast forward five years and I am a full-time teacher and I decided to return to school to continue working towards my graduate degree.  Due to the amount of time between courses, I found myself starting over completely.  Now I find myself 5 semesters after making this decision and I am done, what just happened?

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            As I stated above, I completed my MAED program in 5 semesters.  That was 2 classes per semester all while being a parent and working full time as a teacher and part-time as a retail clerk.  The past year and a half, I have grown personally and professionally and learned a great deal in my field of study and also about myself.  My time management skills have become finely tuned and I have put a lot of effort into living the mantra “Work smarter, not harder.”  Completing classes while working as a teacher gave me an edge over when I initially began working towards a graduate degree before securing a permanent teaching position.  My courses fit with what I was doing with my students and I was able to complete assignments using things I would have already been doing with my students.  I learned about new evidence based practices and interventions and my students benefited through increased achievement and improved classroom behaviors.

 

Program Overview

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            My MAED program consisted of ten classes.  A course centered on educational inquiry, 3 courses in the concentration area of literacy education, 1 core issues course, 3 courses in the concentration of special education, 1 elective course, and 1 capstone/synthesis course.  The concentration areas were two areas of my choice.  I decided to concentrate on literacy education because the teaching of literacy skills is central to special education, which is my field of work.  I did not focus on language arts or literacy in my undergraduate program so I decided to focus on this is my graduate program in order to better prepare myself for instructing my current and future students.  My second area of focus was special education.  This was not intended initially when I enrolled in the program, but special education is my passion, so inevitably I chose that for my second area of concentration.  Of the classes I took, I found them all beneficial in some way, but there were a few classes that stand out in my mind more than others because they related directly to my everyday interactions.

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Student Behavior

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            One of the most impactful courses that I took in my program was a course titled “CEP832: Educating Students with Challenging Behavior.”  Challenging behavior is a major issue in my current teaching placement and finding successful interventions is something that I am constantly in search of.  In this course, I completed a semester long project with a target student to modify a persistent challenging behavior.  For the particular student I chose, the behavior was distractibility for a students who exhibited severe attention deficit symptoms and was not medicated or receiving any type of treatment for symptoms.  The content of the course, along with the readings and resources provided allowed me to design a behavioral intervention for this student that was more successful than any other intervention that had been attempted previously.  In this course, we read the book Teaching Problem Students (Brophy, 1996).  This text compiled research regarding students with problematic behaviors and different aspects of students who exhibit problematic behaviors.  Not only were the behaviors explained in depth, but also the text provided cognitive, social, and academics effects of the behavior and strategies to use with students exhibiting such behaviors as well as anecdotal information from both highly rated and not highly rated teachers.  It was a beneficial text that was loaded with usable information and touch on more than just behavior by integrating cognitive and academic information with the behavioral features.  The behavior modification project was completed in sections and then presented at the end of the course, so consistent feedback was provided throughout implementation of my intervention, which allowed me to be more reflective and adjust my practices based on the feedback I received.  Many times when we are dealing with problematic behaviors, a quick fix is desired.  Behavior is not something that can be changed overnight.  Solutions take time.  The length of the project and the formative feedback throughout solidified this process for me, which will help me to complete behavior modifications following the same process in the future.

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            Classroom management is one of the hottest and most talked about topics in education.  This topic was covered in many of the courses throughout my graduate program and one of the biggest things talked about for having an effectively managed classroom is making connections with and knowing your students.  One course in particular went more in depth with this concept and related it both to management and instruction.  The course was “TE846: Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners,” and in this course I learned the importance of looking at the child and their family when constructing a history from which to base instructional decisions.  I have always known the importance of looking at a child’s educational history when programming for that child, but in general did not look much past the child into their family.  I learned the importance of looking past the child and into their family through constructing a profile of a student, which allowed me to make more connections with the child and the family and also to see some patterns that helped designing an effective educational program for the child.  This class allowed me to explore family history to uncover important information that was affecting the student in the classroom.  For example, we often assume that parents are uninvolved if a student does not return homework to school but if the parent cannot read or if they work nights, they are unable to assist with homework.  Learning about the family in this instance, helped me to work with the general education teacher to accommodate the child and their home environment and revise our current educational plan to be more effective for the child. This was a benefical course for me because I was able to form personal connections with the child’s family through completion of the assignments, which strengthened the home-school connection and was also beneficial to the child.  The instruction and reading in this course forced me to dig deeper and form stronger connections with my students and their families.

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Special Education

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            Within my special education concentration, one of the courses I took was an introductory course on Autism Spectrum Disorders and educational implications of teaching students with autism.  The title of the course was “CEP843: ASD: Characteristics and Educational Implications,” and was a meaningful course for me for more than one reason.  The first reason being the multitude of knowledge gained relating to different aspects of ASD and interventions used with students.  I learned a great deal about reviewing research and choosing interventions for specific areas of need.  Alternative or non-conventional interventions were also explored within this course.  I had not previously learned about any non-conventional interventions for autism, but am intrigued to learn more about certain interventions.  One that I read about within the course was dietary intervention and the fact that individuals with autism tend to have certain food intolerances or sensitivities.  This intervention was interesting to me because one of my students who exhibits more moderate to severe ASD symptoms has many food allergies and has received food therapies.  What I learned through this course not only better equipped me for designing interventions for and instructing my students with ASD, but also piqued my interest in the topic and led me to look into degree programs in ASD.  The other reason that this course was meaningful for me was that the PHD student who was teaching the course was someone I completed my undergraduate program with.  Being the student of someone I had once been a classmate with was humbling for me and also motivating.  If she is able to teach graduate level courses, I can complete my graduate program and further if I wish. 

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Educational Technology

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            My elective course was one that centered on educational technology, something that I had little experience with.  While I was hoping to learn about specific technologies to use with my students within this course, which we briefly covered, this course taught me about a concept I had not heard of before.  This concept is T-PACK, which stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge.  T-PACK is the basis for using technology effectively in the classroom.  The concept is centered on the idea that in order to use technology effectively in the classroom, one must possess knowledge of the technology, content, and pedagogy in order to merge the three. Within this same course, “CEP810: Teaching for Understanding with Technology,” we explored the idea of repurposing technologies to make them educational technologies.  I learned that I have been using quite a few “educational” technologies in the form of other technologies that were repurposed to be educational, such as my cell phone, Microsoft Word, and Google.  The only thing needed to make a technology an education technology, is someone with knowledge of the technology and effective pedagogical practices.

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The End is Near

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            Summarizing the past 5 semesters accurately would be nearly impossible, but if I look closely at my work I can see the effects.  I have made changes to my daily practice based on the concepts presented to my within the MAED program.  I am now more willing to incorporate different technologies into my lessons, even ones that are not specifically “educational,” such as YouTube.  I have adjusted how I look at challenging behavior, becoming more procedural and looking at alternative interventions not previously considered.  From what I have learned in my courses I also now make the students more involved in their interventions because the more involved they are, the better the outcomes for the student.  The connections I make with my students and their families are deeper and student histories are more complete, making for more complete and comprehensive Individualized Education Plans (IEPs).  In teaching, as with any field based on research, things are ever changing.  My graduate studies caused me to adjust my daily teaching activities based on the most current educational research and evidence.  I have gained a considerable amount of knowledge related to the teaching of literacy skills and special education interventions and research over the past year and a half, as well as learning that I am able to push myself to complete anything that I want.  My time management and organizational skills were pushed and challenged, but in the end I believe I have learned to effectively manage work, school, and home.  Starting over is hard, but when one is determined and passionate about something, it makes them motivated to finish what was started seven years ago.  It seems as though I just made the decision to return to graduate school and I am now at the end of my program.  Wait...what just happened?