Program+Goals

=Program Goals =

Beginning of the Program The first goal of the program is my weakest currently. I’m good at envisioning change, but I do not have very much experience at actually guiding change. I make changes within my classroom, but that is far from organizational change. Part of my lack of experience comes from being so new to the profession. It is one thing to enter the scene with guns blazing it is another to actually have people follow you. If I am ever going to guide organizational change I am going to have to start by gaining people’s trust and respect, so that people will be willing to follow. The second goal deals with communicating effectively, engaging constituents, developing people and building community. Within my classroom I am the force that directs communication and community building, but in the school as a whole I am pushed by the forces that already existed. In the year and a half that I have been teaching at Berlin High School, I have been working on building relationships with my fellow teachers, students, and parents. Communication has never been a problem for me, but building relationships is a slow process that requires dedication. The third goal of the program is advocating and promoting equity for diverse populations and respect for individuals. Berlin like anywhere is full of prejudice and stereotypes. My students are not exposed to very many different groups of people, so they use the stereotypes they know as their way of relating to others. I have been working to explain why and how stereotypes are started. Just telling students that some of the things they say are inappropriate is not going to change the mindset. The little I do now helps, but I could do more. Goal four looks at integrating theory, data, research, and ethical standards into the context of one’s practice through continuous learning. Ever since college I have been learning more about teaching, but integrating what I learn is still a work in progress. Some of the most difficult things to integrate into teaching are abstract concepts. I have gotten ideas from colleagues and conference, but I have noticed that it takes time to tease out exactly where and how some of those ideas fit with the curriculum I am teaching.

End of the Program As I come to the end of my masters program, I am starting to realize the goals of the program are not goals to accomplish but goals to constantly work toward. Once a teacher says they have accomplished these goals and no longer need to work on the goals, that teacher has stop being a good teacher. I also have a greater appreciation for taking baby steps when trying working toward these goals. Grand ideas for changing education are wonderful, but they could drive a person mad trying to implement everything at once. Just beginning to organize a group for the young teachers at my school required a great deal of effort, support, and organization so a larger scale change would require proportionally more effort, support, and organization.

I have ideas for how education could change to better reach students, but when it comes to actually guiding change I am starting out on a much smaller level. I have begun to lead the way on making changes within my department and so far my department has been willing to follow. When I started, my department allowed everyone to do what they wanted in the course that they taught and there was not a lot of organization. I have been pushing my department toward common sequencing and creating a list of common topics being taught in each class. Common assessments are next step to helping to develop a more succinct curriculum. Change has been very easy within my department because the members of my department prefer to follow, but I have also learned that I still need to seek their input before jumping ahead with an idea.

Building community has also been very important to me. In the classroom a well built community will help improve the environment immensely and the same can be said for building community among my colleagues. With a pair of other young teachers I have been working to build a young teachers group at my school. Our group has meet outside of school a couple of times since its creation and it has begun to change the dynamic among the younger teachers. Before we started meeting as a group, we were separated from each other by departments. Being at the same point in our careers, we have common ideas and concerns and it is helpful to have the support of others who know what you are going through. I find it interesting that even though we have formed the group it has not caused us to form a clique with in the school environment. When we have school wide meetings, our group does not seek each other out to sit together and we do not group ourselves together when we work during inserivce. At the same time it is good to know that the support network is there.

First step to building respect for individuals is building a sense of community. People need to be able to trust each other in order to respect each other, so if there is not a sense of community people will not be able to trust each other. I can tell my students they need to respect their classmates, but unless they feel that sense of community they are not going to respect each other. I am in awe of teachers who can take a bad mix of students and turn them into a productive learning community because I know this is an area where I still need to work on my abilities to build community.

To continue to improve on my abilities as a teacher, I know I need to continue to be a life long learner. The day that I stop learning is the day I should stop being a teacher. I want my students to value learning, so if I do not value learning then I am being a hypocrite. Continuing to learn is how I will work to change my profession for the better and it is how I will become better at building a sense of community in my classroom. Curiosity is a more powerful driving force than any amount of fear or coercion. The masters program has helped me to develop the skills and collect the tools needed to continue learning on my own. It has also helped begin to shape my ability to collect and use data, implement research, and to apply theories to my teaching practices.

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