Synthesis Essay: Reflecting on the Personal and Professional Impact of My Graduate Program
As I reflect on the three years of my graduate program, it is gratifying to think about my personal and professional growth. When I started the program in August 2015, I knew I wanted to grow in my capacity as a classroom teacher and improve my ability to meet the needs of all of my students. I chose to study Literacy Education both because of my interest in that area and because I knew that I did not have sufficient knowledge to respond effectively when my high school students struggled to read and write proficiently. What I have gained from the program is more than basic literacy knowledge and a simple set of skills to address students’ literacy challenges; I have cultivated a deeper appreciation for the role that literacy plays in educational settings and how teachers play an integral role in preparing students for success well beyond their years in the classroom. While each course that I have taken has challenged me to grow as an educator, three courses in particular have had a significant impact on my thinking and professional practice.
"I have cultivated a deeper appreciation for the role that literacy plays in educational settings and how teachers play an integral role in preparing students for success well beyond their years in the classroom."
CEP 816: Technology, Teaching, & Learning Across the Curriculum
In the first semester of my master’s program, I took “CEP 816: Technology, Teaching, & Learning Across the Curriculum.” What I loved most about this course was the way it integrated both traditional and new media literacies. Previously, I had spent some time thinking about the impact of technology on teaching and learning, but I had never really considered how different types of texts require different literacy skills. This course challenged me to think about literacy in a more holistic manner, particularly by looking at how the Internet and other new media literacies are changing the way students read and write. While these new technologies have myriad positive uses in the classroom, they also require different skills than those needed for reading traditional texts. Too often educators assume that students know how to read these newer texts because they have become so integral to how we communicate. However, CEP 816 encouraged me to see how these newer texts present additional challenges for students who are not taught how to use them in an academic setting. Sending a tweet or posting a Snapchat video are very different uses of new media than knowing how to properly search the Internet to find a reliable source for a research essay. These insights have been incredibly useful to me as I work to support students through our school’s 1:1 iPad program. Our students are constantly being exposed to texts that do not fit a traditional format, and I have been able to meet the literacy needs of my students much better because this course taught me how to balance traditional texts with Internet resources, YouTube videos, and other electronic sources. As a result of this course, I have started using digital instructional tools such as Explain Everything, Ed Puzzle, Kahoot, and Quizlet to engage my students’ new media literacy skills in an academic context. One of the enduring rewards of this course was a final project I put together for a unit on the Holocaust in our Church History class. I created a website using a variety of traditional and new media texts in order to make our unit more engaging and to maximize the myriad academic and visual resources available through various museums and websites dedicated to Holocaust education. By creating my own website utilizing these resources, I was able to expose my students to written and oral testimonies from Holocaust survivors in order to add a much more personal side to our study of history and to build their capacity for empathy. This would not have been possible had I not learned to see literacy beyond the limits of a traditional framework.
EAD 850: Issues & Strategies in Multicultural Education
In addition to incorporating more diverse texts into my curriculum, this program also empowered me to create a more inclusive classroom. I took “EAD 850: Issues & Strategies in Multicultural Education” in the spring of 2017, and this course particularly highlighted the role of media representations of race, ethnicity, gender, and other social identities in perpetuating stereotypes, prejudices, and biases. EAD 850 focused primarily on the responsibility of education to lift up groups that have been historically, systemically, and socially marginalized. This course provided a very important space for me to consider the impact that my teaching has on my students and to acknowledge my own power and privilege in the classroom. Everything teachers do in the classroom communicates a specific message about the world that has a lasting impact on how students view themselves and their role in society. As it relates to literacy, understanding power, privilege, and systems of oppression is immensely important, particularly for those students who are underrepresented in media, literature, and historical narratives. In this course, one project in particular pushed me to think differently about the role of both written and visual texts in my classroom. This project, a thematic analysis of 12 Years a Slave, asked us to identify two themes of multicultural education represented in the movie. I chose to analyze the role of socialization as a means of promoting inequality and the institutional nature of racism and other forms of oppression. This project provided an opportunity for me to reflect on the institutional nature of education and the incredible power it has to socialize students to accept certain norms that may or may not improve equity for all students. As a classroom teacher, I have incredible power to choose how I deliver content to my students. I get to decide which historical narratives I include and which narratives I ignore as well as which written and visual texts I bring into the classroom. In analyzing the messages in 12 Years a Slave, I was able to think more critically about the role of film in my classroom, and I have begun to teach students how to critically analyze media representations of race, class, socioeconomic status, gender, and other identities in the various films we use in class. As a result of this course, I also began to select a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, including visual texts, that represent multiple historical perspectives, and I no longer rely solely on the textbook as our main source of information. I want my students to hear the voices of women and minorities in history and to challenge historical scholarship when it ignores voices outside the majority. This has become a central feature of my classroom. Finally, at the time that I was taking this course, I was also moderating a multicultural club at my school which was founded by students who felt that there needed to be a better vehicle for students of color and other minority groups to build a more inclusive school community. This course played an integral role in my ability to lead students in this group and help create an environment that didn’t just celebrate diversity but also increased access to students from all backgrounds.
TE 843: Secondary Reading Assessment & Instruction
Lastly, another course that had a profound impact on my thinking and practice was “TE 843: Secondary Reading Assessment & Instruction” which I completed in the summer of 2016. Perhaps more than any other literacy course in my master’s program, TE 843 provided me with resources and practical applications for my classroom that I continue to come back to as I work to improve my students’ literacy skills. In this course, I had the opportunity to look closely at best practices in literacy education and to think about how I teach and assess literacy skills through my content. As a history and theology teacher, reading and writing are critical skills that my students use every single day, and TE 843 taught me how to leverage best practices in order to achieve the optimal outcome for my students. I learned how to organize my content around inquiry in order to engage students better, particularly when using texts to support a particular historical argument. One project I completed in this course was rewriting my lesson on the Industrial Revolution, an important unit in my Church History class which introduces students to Catholic Social Teaching and asks them to examine how people of faith are called to respond to social issues. Per best literacy practices, I formulated the unit around essential questions that focused students’ attention on a particular problem or question in need of discussion and analysis. Then I utilized myriad types of text including images, videos, primary and secondary sources, and first-hand accounts of modern-day labor practices in order to build students’ knowledge and to engage them in authentic historical inquiry based around real-world problems. This course also exposed me to best literacy practices such as close reading, text discussions, utilizing a variety of text types, and providing students with choice among texts and options for what tasks they will complete. Now these are strategies I use every day in my classroom, and they have allowed me to teach literacy in a way that is more authentic and engaging for my students. Furthermore, this course was very project-based, and the lessons and unit plans I put together for the course are ones that I actually use in my classroom. TE 843 provided an authentic, practical experience that allowed me to become a better teacher right away.
Final Thoughts
While these are just three courses, they highlight some very important lessons that I have learned in my graduate program as a whole. The biggest tangible impact of this program is that it has changed the practical, daily ways that I teach my students, particularly when it comes to literacy and the use of technology. While I am still experimenting with the best ways to utilize technology with my students, I now use a much wider array of instructional resources to teach them. We use new media texts, images, videos, and websites as well as traditional texts in every unit. My entire curriculum is posted on Schoology, a digital platform that gives students access to class notes, links, handouts, and videos we use in class. I also use Schoology to promote learning beyond the classroom through student message boards and other digital discussion opportunities. Over the past three years, I have worked to create unit plans for all of my classes centered around essential questions that guide students to place themselves at the center of instruction. Rather than relying solely on my lectures to provide the content they need, my students frequently work with partners and small groups, and we have regular small group and whole class discussions based around videos and articles of current events related to our curriculum. Due to the literacy knowledge I have gained in this program, my students now read and write on a daily basis in both traditional and digital formats utilizing best literacy practices such as close reading, annotation, and discussion. I have also incorporated more project-based learning that requires students to create their own texts and videos through digital platforms like Explain Everything, Adobe Voice, and YouTube. These resources combine literacy and technology in ways that have helped my students build their visual literacy skills as well as improve their reading of traditional and new media texts. What I appreciate most about my master’s program is that I was able to remain in the classroom and apply what I was learning in ways that improved the learning experience for my students. In completing my program and continuing to teach at the same time, I have been able to try out new tools, like making my own website, that I never would have tried before while also getting feedback from classmates and course instructors on how to improve instruction. While I still have much to learn and many more ways to grow, this program has allowed me to become a more competent, passionate educator. I leave this program even more committed to literacy education and to helping other teachers at my school embrace the importance of literacy and technology, regardless of the content they teach.