Looking Ahead
While the future seems a bit unclear to me at the moment, I do know a few important goals that I have to help focus my plans moving forward. First and foremost, I am a lifelong learner. Because of this, my education will likely not end at the completion of my masters program. Whether it be a second masters degree, continued professional online learning, or another opportunity to help me to improve, I know that this is certainly not the end of my "educational road". My goal for the future is simple, yet broad. I hope to constantly become a stronger, better teacher and leader. There are many ways that I can work towards this goal, but I believe strengthening my literacy instruction, leadership skills, and ability to promote critical thinking in my classroom will help me to achieve this. This will allow me to grow, not only in the classroom, but as a teacher leader in my school and in the district.
In the last two years my school district has adopted the new Lucy Calkins Reading and Writing Workshop Units of Study. One area of passion for me is teaching literacy to young children. Because I am extremely interested in this, a dream of mine would be to eventually visit The Teachers College at Columbia University to learn about and see firsthand some best practices in literacy instruction. During the last two years of teaching based on their research, I have grown to love these units and can see the tremendous effect it has had on my 1st grade students. I would love to receive formal training from teachers from Teachers College to help strengthen my literacy teaching skills. I know that I have already grown just with my own learning through websites, webinars, and social media chats about this topic, but I would love to take that a step further.
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I have recently taken a leadership role as a technology chair for my building which has involved a lot of teacher training both at the building level and district-wide. I am learning how to shift from the idea of teaching children, to also helping lead adults. This is a newer practice for me in the last couple of years, but I feel I am improving with each experience. Through one of my leadership classes in my masters program, I have had some excellent articles that have helped me to learn about myself as a leader, the type of leader I want to be, and some great strategies to help lead others. I have also started to take on additional leadership responsibilities with the guidance of my principal, but I would like to take a few more classes and/or roles in the coming years to help me grow in this area. One goal I may have is to eventually take on student teachers that I can help mentor. None of these opportunities will be possible without furthering my understanding of how to be an effective leader.
I have done a lot of work and research in my time at Michigan State in the area of critical thinking, but my passion and interest in this truly stems from my training in Visible Thinking. I started reading the work of Ron Ritchhart and his colleagues from Harvard University who worked on Project Zero. Through studying these best practices, I have improved my own pedagogy and saw such improvement in the way my young students could articulate their thinking. The culture of my classroom transformed, but this work is not over. I have been asked to be a part of an opportunity to help pilot some new routines that will be used in a new book by Ron Ritchhart. I believe this opportunity will help me to grow my instructional practices in this area and continue to inspire me to further my learning in this area.
While the path to becoming a stronger and better teacher and continuing my learning journey is a bit unclear, I do feel that these three areas are stepping stones in the direction I need to go.