Lifelong Leading and Learning
Even as a three year old, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I always assumed the role of teacher when playing school with my friends and made sure to always assign math homework problems to them for extra fun. However, as the years passed, I grew even more comfortable assuming the role of the learner. As a shy student, the learner role was easy for me as I could quietly and eagerly absorb information. Once I got to college, I was forced into the role of an educator again in my education classes. As uncomfortable as it was, I eventually developed a voice with a few peers and with my students in my student teaching classroom. Now, five years later, I have a strong voice and strong relationships with my coworkers and students. I want to continue to challenge myself as a learner and an educator and discover new ways to strengthen my voice in my place of employment and the educational field. In the future, I want to learn to find a voice in a greater digital network, to find a voice as an educational technology leader within my school, and to find ways to help give my students a voice using concrete and digital mediums to help them occasionally step out of the roles of learners to be leaders.
During my time in the Master’s in Educational Technology (MAET) program, I have learned how to utilize blogs on platforms such as Wordpress to document ideas and explorations from professional and academic study as well as successes in my classroom. I have then found ways to share these musings on Twitter to virtually connect with a small professional network. I hope to learn how to expand my professional learning network beyond my coworkers and MAET peers to share and gather ideas related to mathematics and English teaching and technology integration. I could start by following other math and English educators and experts in the educational technology field on social media platforms and find informative blogs to follow and interact with. Moreover, I want to become part of virtual conversations hosted on social media platforms by following and using the #edchat, #miched, #engchat hashtags. Using these educators as examples, I can learn how to become an active member in a national, or even global, conversation about my educational interests.
I also hope to learn how to become an educational technology leader in my building and a lifelong educational technology learner. While my employers host professional development opportunities to explore digital databases like Scholastic and PBS or tools such as Kahoot and GoogleDocs, the development only focuses on how to use the tool instrumentally. I want to attend a MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) conference in the near future to learn how to integrate tools purposefully in the classroom and share these pedagogical strategies to help my coworkers better meet their students’ needs. Additionally, I want to read the online journals MACUL publishes each month to maintain my role as a learner in the field of educational technology even after my time in the MAET program is over.
As I attend conferences and engage in national conversations in my field to develop as a lifelong learner and leader, I want to inspire and help my students to assume the same roles. I have learned from conversations with my students the dramatic impact an educator can have on a student's ambitions, goals, perseverance, and retention of information. The Internet has a wealth of information to help educators better support their students. Some of these many resources are blogs written by educators in similar positions as myself. For example, Jackie Gerstein, Ed. D. maintains a blog that has posts giving inspiration for how to develop a student's voice in the classroom. By actively reading and engaging with blog posts, I can gain new perspectives regarding how to help support student comfort and pride in my classroom. Additionally, various blogs posted on websites such as Edutopia can provide additional insight into specific learning tools to achieve the theoretical propositions described in other blogs.
With a constant thirst for knowledge and the desire to be a lifelong learner, leader, and educational technology integrator, I will take the initiative to seek out information and engage with my professional learning community both at my place of employment and abroad. While I have grown accustomed to assuming the role of a learner throughout my time as a K-12, undergraduate, and graduate student, I want to force myself out of my comfort zone to learn and develop as a leader. Acting as a model, I will help my students gain a greater voice in the classroom and community through the use of digital tools. Every learner can become a leader, and every leader must know how to continually learn.
Future as a Learner Essay
