Haley Burns

            My time in graduate school has been relatively brief. I started my journey toward my master’s degree in January of 2018. For five consecutive semesters, I scheduled two classes and will now return to teach second grade in the fall with a new degree under my belt. Despite the fact that I spent only a year and a half in the MAED program at Michigan State University, I see huge differences in the type of teacher I am and the decisions I make in the classroom. Specifically, I have noticed increased differences in my creativity while planning, my understanding and use of inquiry, and my sensitivity to curriculum and equality in the classroom.

 

Creativity

 

            I have never considered myself a very creative person. I would call myself a “crafty” person, meaning I spend a lot of time sewing, knitting, cross-stitching, and circuiting. However, I tend to find ideas online and recreate them, rarely do I come up with my own creative idea. Because of this, I have never believed that I have any real creativity that can be utilized in my classroom. However, after taking the course CEP 818 Creativity in Teaching, I realized that I was incorrect. Everyone is creative, just in different ways!

 

            This course helped me to realize the creativity that has been with me my whole life and also allowed me to let loose and explore new areas of creativity I had been too rigid to try before. I have always described myself as a logical, left-brained person, but because of this class I realized that the left-brain and right-brain are not mutually exclusive. This class taught us about the different aspects of creativity and then had us utilize these aspects while creating lessons for our students. These major aspects are perceiving, patterning, embodied thinking, abstracting, modeling, and play.

 

            Before this course, I would try to create engaging lessons for my students, but I often felt they were not extremely exciting. After taking this course I realized how simple it truly is to be creative and I am now creating lessons that use the six aspects of creativity to help engage my students.

 

Inquiry

 

            Another extremely transformative course I took at Michigan State University was ED 800: Concepts in Educational Inquiry. This class focused on different educators and their personal educational inquiry styles. The class was offered in an interesting format that was unique to any other Michigan State University courses I have completed; this class was designed to be completed completely on your own. Education is a field where collaboration is strongly encouraged. My district even has mandatory collaboration time with the other second grade teachers. Although collaboration is an incredibly important skill to have, especially in a demand-heavy field such as teaching, ED 800 argued that there is also merit in working alone. The ability to work alone helps one hone in on their capacity to reflect on their work.

 

            The mere setup of this class has changed my behavior as a teacher. Not that I no longer collaborate or work alongside my team. I would be pulling my hair out if I was doing all of this work alone! Instead, I now take time to sit alone in addition to collaboration time to reflect on what is working in my own classroom and what can be improved. I have also begun writing down my thoughts during these reflective times, a trick I learned from Vivian Paley while studying her in this course. Paley recorded her conversations with her students and listened to them after the school day was complete, so she could reflect. She would then write down all of her thoughts. Although I have not been recording myself, I have been writing reflections. My teaching partner, after hearing of the work of Vivian Paley, has been recording himself and he finds it very insightful. I am hoping to push myself more next year and begin recording my lessons.  

 

            This class also encouraged me to take a different look at the term “educated”. As teachers, we are quick to make an image of education in our minds. To us, that image is that of our students holding diplomas in their hands as they walk across the stage at their chosen university. As a child of an amazing tradesman I have always been aware that this is not the only path to success, however, in the hustle and bustle of our college-crazed culture, I think I forgot that somewhere. I think even my parents might have forgotten that somewhere, as my father refused to pass on his welding knowledge to any of his seven children, as his father had done before him, and his father before that. Something in the air has changed and college appears to be the only “correct” path anymore. In ED 800, we got to choose from seven historical figures and analyze and write about their education. I chose an idol of mine, our legendary 16th president, Mr. Abraham Lincoln. It may come as a surprise to the average American, but not to one familiar with history, that Abraham Lincoln received very little formal education, and he definitely did not attend college. He went to primary school intermittently, but constantly retained a love for reading and learning. He collected books and read throughout his lifetime, teaching himself the skills and knowledge necessary to become the man who held our country together through our darkest times.

 

            I write about Abraham Lincoln to illustrate that this course reminded me that there are many different ways to be educated. My job is not to give all students the same education, but instead to educate all students in a way that makes sense and is helpful to them. Most importantly, it reminded me that although I want to my students to learn the knowledge I am teaching them, what I most want them to take away from me is a love of learning that will continue through their lives and will intrinsically motivate them to keep learning in whatever area they are interested in.

 

Curriculum

 

            The final course I took at Michigan State University that really changed my outlook on education was TE 818: Curriculum in its Social Context. This course required me to take an in-depth look at the curriculum being taught at my school and analyze its influence on our students. Before taking this course I never really thought too deeply about the curriculum. I did not necessarily agree with the curriculum that was given to me, but I also did not question how it was chosen and what messages it was sending to my students.

 

            In this class, we discussed the explicit curriculum, the curriculum the district hands you or the state mandates. Like all educators, this curriculum I was extremely familiar with. We also discussed, however, the implicit curriculum, the curriculum that is not necessarily being taught but students are still learning. In other words, what are students picking up on by noticing what we are NOT teaching? Do they notice how much we push reading over all other subjects? Do they realize how little time we spend on science and social studies? Has it occurred to them that the characters in the science workbook are almost always boys?

 

            Another way of thinking about the implicit curriculum is by analyzing the environment of our classrooms. Even the setup of a classroom or school can send subtle messages to students about who or what is important and who or what is not. For example, while reflecting on my own school during this lesson, it occurred to me that although the school has the capability of air conditioning, it is only used in certain areas of the school. The only areas allowed to be airconditioned is the main office, the principal’s office, and the computer labs. The teacher’s lounge used to be airconditioned, but that broke last fall and has still not been fixed. The fall and summer can be sweltering in our classrooms and there are often times where lessons are pointless. The students are so miserable and sweaty they cannot focus on me or anything, and truly I cannot blame them. When it gets like this I take my class into the hallway where it is a few degrees cooler and we can sit on the cold tile and read. Overall, they are wasted learning opportunities.

 

            The reason I write about this is that it is a good illustration of how my thinking has changed. Before, I was frustrated that there was no air, but I tried not to dwell on it. People lived for hundreds of years without air conditioning! However, after taking this course, I am more concerned about what this situation implicitly teaches our students. To me, it is telling them that administration and technology are more important than teachers, students, and learning. Perhaps this goes over their heads, but as they continue to get older I would imagine the idea will eventually come to the forefront of their minds.

 

            The biggest way my thinking has changed from my work in the MAED program is in the idea of equality in education. Before I took this course, I never really reflected on representation in the texts and resources I use and teach in my classroom. If I am completely honest, I work at a mostly Caucasian school and I am ashamed to say that I never truly thought about what school looked like from the perspective of my non-white students. This course opened my eyes. We read and discussed many articles that explained how curriculum appears to students of color, different genders, and sexual orientation.

 

            In particular, we discussed the concept of curriculum being a mirror to some students and a window to others. To illustrate my point, I would like to focus on the subjects of social studies and history. In the average American curriculum, the majority of historical figures students are taught about are white men. There are historical reasons to why this is so. The disenfranchisement of people of color and women made it difficult for anyone other than a white man to rise to historical excellence. We can all recognize now that that practice was not okay. The problem is, this old outdated practice is continually perpetuating itself in today’s culture through the curriculum. See, when we teach exclusively about these white men, we hold a mirror up to the white boys in our class. They can see themselves in the story and notice their reflection in these heroes we are glorifying. To the students of colors and white girls, we are offering a window that they may look through and witness the glory of white men. They cannot find their reflection anywhere and are subconsciously being taught who is the most valued in society.

 

            We cannot change the past, but we can change the future! I am not calling for schools to stop teaching about white men who shaped history. That would be a shame and completely frivolous! Instead, I am asking for the inclusion of great women and people of color who did great things as well! Yes, their stories are farther in between seeing as they were kept down by society, but they exist! It is time we spotlight them and hold a mirror up to everyone, not just white men. Everyone deserves that experience! When I plan my lessons now, I keep this in mind. I am currently researching multi-cultural picture books to integrate into my daily read-alouds. I want all of my students to see themselves within our curriculum. I am not in an equity committee in my districts and I am working alongside my superintendent to distribute this collection of books to teachers across the district.

 

Conclusion

           

          In conclusion, my work in the MAED program has helped me become a more open-minded, creative, reflective, and inclusive teacher. Before I went to Michigan State University, I was not against any of these ideas, I had just never reflected deeply enough on them. If you had asked me at the time if I was open-minded, creative, reflective, and inclusive I think I would have said yes! I truly thought I was. This program pushed my thinking and made me take an honest and sometimes uncomfortable inventory of my classroom practices. I realized there was no much more I could be doing! Although my program is coming to an end, I do not intend to let this cycle of self-reflection and growth end.

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