Synthesis Essay

   
                       My Educational Journey as a Teacher of Learning
                                                            By Leisa Wall

Whenever one is asked to reflect on the learning they have done, it can be either a daunting task or something that is really useful and helpful.  At first, I remember thinking I cannot possibly remember everything that I have done in the past two and a half years but as I sat and really thought about it, many things have come to mind.  My masters journey started almost five years ago when I completed my student teaching through Michigan State University.  I have had some amazing experiences in this program that has enabled me to become a better educator and learner.  I have been able to collaborate with other teachers who have taught in schools that are very different from mine, which has offered a different perspective into teaching the same aged children.  I have been fortunate to also share ideas on both how to help students and what can enhance their learning or my classroom environment.
   
Throughout my masters program, I have been privileged to take numerous courses that have taught me how to be a better teacher.  However, there are three courses that stand out in my mind as being exceptional in the way that they have helped to mold and shape me into the teacher that I am today.   Those courses are TE 842 Advance Methods of Elementary School Reading, CEP 841 Classroom Management in Inclusive Classrooms, and CEP 883 Psychology of Classroom Discipline.  The focus of my masters is special education but luckily, I had great experiences with not only required courses but with elective courses as well.  Throughout each of these courses, I have had experiences and moments that have forced me to rethink my teaching and adjust to new and astonishing ideas.
   
One course that I chose to take as an elective was TE 842 Advanced Methods of Elementary School Reading.  While this was not part of my required courses, I initially took it because, at the time, I was teaching first grade and I felt that my undergraduate courses only gave me one tenth of the information that I needed to successfully teach reading.  I was paired up in the course with two other teachers that taught the same grade as me but we all taught at schools that were in different states that had different clientele.  I worked closely with these two as we were housemates and we required to share our experiences and complete assignments together.  At first, I was discouraged about working so closely with two others since this was an online course.  Up until that point, online to me, meant that we would complete the requirements for the course under the direction of the instructor and have to post to a discussion board.  This course required that we have live chats at least two times a week.  I quickly found these online chats to be useful and helpful in sharing ideas and thoughts about teaching reading.  We were always given a topic to discuss but my classmates and myself were always discussing other reading ideas in addition to our assigned topics.  This was the first time during my masters that the online technology brought me so close to others in my class and it was a great experience.  It helped me to realize that learning can take place anywhere; it does not have to be in the classroom.  This realization has helped me to have a more meaningful experience taking online courses.  I have been able to share ideas as well as learn new things all because I have a computer and Internet access.
    
One thing that I quickly realized as I started teaching reading over two years ago is that no two students are the same and what might work for one student might not work for the other.  This course took that approach and really built on to this idea.  One idea that this class focused on was the elements of reading, comprehension specifically.  I was asked to write a focus project on the teaching of comprehension to my first grade students.  I needed to teach three consecutive lessons and then reflect on the learning that was done in my classroom.  I chose to focus my lessons on retelling, which is an extremely important for a first grade reader to do.  This class taught us how to teach reading to the whole group, in small groups and individually.  While this idea was not new to me, it helped me to realize, through developing my lessons on retelling, that when a few of my students needed to learn a particular skill, it can be beneficial to teach this skill to the entire class.  That way, all students have access to this skill and they can always use and benefit from the extra practice. 
   
This course also focused on Readers Workshop and how to enhance it in our own classrooms.  While I was already using the workshop format to teach reading, it helped me to see that guided reading should be taught at a different time of the day, separate from Readers Workshop.  I was always trying to cram too much in between conferring and guided reading during my workshop time.  I kept finding myself running out of time and not giving the one on one attention some of my struggling readers desperately needed and required. This bit of information served as an “ah ha” moment for me.  We looked at various articles during this course and some case studies on the benefits of conferring one on one with students during reading instruction.  I felt that this idea helped me to realize that both conferring and guided reading is equally important and time to should be devoted to both but at separate times of the day.  This course and specifically, this “ah ha” moment helped me to realize that, as a teacher, it is about the quality of the instruction, not the quantity.  Therefore, I moved my guided reading time to a different portion of my day and I found that I was able to not only confer with more students each day during Readers Workshop but the quality of my guided reading lessons were also improving because I had more time to devote to them.
   
Another key insight that I was exposed to was how to promote a reading environment in an upper elementary classroom.  While I only had first grade reading experience, I found out while I was taking the course that I would be moving up and teaching fifth grade in the fall.   It was nice that a portion of this class was dedicated to the upper elementary classroom because it gave me some nice ideas.  It discussed the benefits of using the workshop format in the upper grades as well as exposing students to various books across a variety of genres.  During this portion of the course, I had another “ah ha” moment and it occurred when we read a few articles that focused on how lower and upper elementary classrooms can do similar things in regards to reading even though we are teaching different aged children. One idea is that students need to be exposed and have access to an extensive classroom library.   Numerous articles that we read all referenced the idea that teachers need to take the time to create a classroom library where students will have access to great literature.  One key idea that we read about was when Blair discussed in his article on effective teaching of reading that effective reading teachers offer a variety of materials and texts for children to read (Blair, 433).  I knew right away that I needed to gather a lot of books over the summer before school started.  I learned that I also had to not only have a variety of genres for my students to pick from but I also had to have books at various reading levels so that all my students had a variety to pick from. In first grade, we did not focus on genres so this idea was a newer one for me but it proved to be a great thing to learn about.  I spent the summer gathering various books and I am happy to say that my students have a great library to select books from. 
   
Another course that I took that taught me a lot was CEP 841 Classroom Management in Inclusive Classrooms.  This was the first course that I took after I started my masters so I did not know what to expect but it turned out to be a very worthwhile experience.  One of the first things that we were asked to do in this course was complete a behavior management checklist and this proved to be extremely useful.  We were asked to evaluate our current behavior management system that was in place in our classrooms.  At the time, I had just completed my first year of teaching third grade, and reflecting back on the system that I had in place allowed me to find areas that I needed to work on.  The questions that I needed to focus more on were “I avoid “empty comments” (i.e. your book bag is in the aisle) unless I am purposefully trying to give hints to behavior, I CONSISTENTLY enforce rules by moving through the hierarchy of consequences. I never “nag” or lecture students who have misbehaved (b/c they stop listening after the 4th word)”  (CEP 841 Lecture Notes). For these statements, I marked needs improvement, and then from there, I developed a set of goals that would help me to overcome these obstacles and more effectively handle various situations in my classroom. After looking at this survey, I realized that there are so many things that go into setting up a behavior management system and I had some things that I needed to change.  One main goal that I developed included do not yell at students who continually repeat the same inappropriate behaviors.  We all have those students who seem to push our buttons and after a while, it can be hard not to yell at them to stop.  I decided it was important to take a deep breath and address the issue head on instead of yelling and not correcting the behavior in a calm way.   This is something that I have found to be very effective and I still use this strategy everyday that I teach. This survey also prompted me to address the consequence system that I was using.  I previously did not have a consequence system that was consistent for all of my students.  I learned that it is important to have one system that all students are expected to follow so I implemented the stop light… green, yellow, and red system into my classroom the following year and I found this to be very successful.  Just as this course had explained, by using the same system with all students, all of my students clearly knew the expectations of the classroom and they knew what behaviors were acceptable and what were unacceptable.

Another idea in the course that was addressed was how to focus on and handle behaviors that are undesirable but we are not sure why these behaviors are occurring.  I learned about Functional Behavior Assessments (FBA) in depth during this course.  A FBA is a process for determining how a student’s behavior is influenced and supported by conditions in the environment (McDougal, 2006, p. 3). For students that demonstrate difficult behaviors inside the classroom, a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) can be used to figure out which behaviors are being caused by which circumstances.  I had heard about FBA’s briefly the previous school year when I was asked to take part in one for one of my cognitively impaired students.  The experience that I had with them, unfortunately, was not very good because some of the team members did not follow through and do their part, so nothing was ever done with the data.  I gained experience in collecting the necessary data but I was not able to do anything with it.  This situation completely turned me off to FBA’s and I thought they were a waste of time.  The course, however, helped me to see how effective and necessary they can be for some students.  I was able to conduct a few on students in my classroom and look at the data to see why certain behaviors were occurring.  I found these to be one of my greatest assets in the classroom as I still use them today if a student is displaying a behavior that is difficult to understand.

Finally, the last course that had a significant impact on me as I progressed through my masters was CEP 883 Psychology of Classroom Discipline.  The part that was the most helpful to me was taking everything that we had learned about in the course and developing a management plan for our classroom.  Some might not have found this useful but I did because I developed the plan for my new fifth grade classroom.  It was also during this course I found out that I would be moving from first grade to fifth grade.   This assignment was excellent because it allowed me to take all of the wonderful things that I had learned and apply them to my own classroom.  I had to think about how I would arrange the physical space, what my daily schedule would be like and what I wanted my classroom procedures and rules to be.  This course allowed me to develop a carefully throughout plan that I could actually use. 

This course helped me to realize that I could effectively manage fifth graders and build an effective classroom community if I let them be a part of the process. One key theory that was presented in class really amazed me.  Research indicates that effective teachers take time early in the school year to develop classroom rules and procedures that help their classrooms run smoothly and minimize disruptions, and thus maximize students’ learning time (Jones & Jones, 255).  This was an “ah ha” moment for me as I was very nervous about moving grades because fifth graders are very different from first graders. When I taught first grade, I developed all of the rules and procedures without the help of my students. The idea of allowing my fifth graders to help me come up with the rules and consequences of the classroom would enable them to feel an ownership in their classroom, something that is very important.  The class meeting, as advocated by William Glasser, founder of control theory and reality therapy, can be an effective device for involving students and gaining their commitment to the rules they set (Partin, 22).  I decided to allow them to develop the rules for the classroom as well as the consequences for breaking any of the rules.  One idea that this course emphasized was that while it is important to allow students to develop the rules and consequences, we as teachers, could also include some of our own rules in the process.  When including our own rules, it is necessary to tell students about them at the beginning of their brainstorming session on the rules and tell them these are non negotiable.  I did this with my fifth graders at the beginning of the school year and it went great.  My students carefully took their time thinking of rules and consequences that would fit into our community.  Just like this class presented, it helped to develop my classroom community and get the school year started off on the right foot.  This is something that I will continue to do with my students at the beginning of each year. 

I have been fortunate enough to take numerous courses during my masters program that have helped me evolve into the teacher that I am today.  One main idea that I am taking away with me is that my teaching ideas and practices are always evolving and changing. This big idea has helped me to see that I need to continue to keep learning so that my students can be successful in my classroom.  The courses that I have highlighted here stand out to me the most as having the most significant impact on my learning.  I was able to use technology in ways that I did not know where possible, “meet” other teachers who shared their experiences with me as well as add to and modify some of my teaching practices and styles.  As I close this chapter of my education I am very proud of what I have accomplished and I look forward to seeing what the future holds in regards to my own education.


Works Cited:

• Blair, T.R., Rupley, W.H., & Nichols, W.D. (2007). The Effective Teacher of Reading: Considering the “What” and “How” of instruction.  The Reading Teacher, 60, 432-483
• Jones, V. & Jones, L. (2004). Comprehensive Classroom Management: Creating Communities of Support and Solving Problems. Boston, MA. Pearson
• Mirage, Troy. CEP 841 Lecture Notes. Michigan State University, 2009.
  

• McDougal, James, Sandra Chafouleas and Betsy Waterman. Functional Behavioral Assessment and Intervention in Schools: A Practitioner’s Guide- Grades 1-8. Illinois: Research Press, 2006.
• Partin, R. (2005). Classroom Teaher’s Survival Guide: Practical Strategies, Management Techniques, and Reproducibles and Experienced Teachers. San Francisco, CA. Jossey-Bass.