Synthesis

Finding My Voice

The Silent Struggle

Throughout my lifetime I have always been someone who is incredibly reflective and critical of myself and my work in all aspects of my life. Throughout my entire undergraduate experience, I struggled to speak up and share my ideas, thoughts and experiences when it came to course work, placement successes and learning moments and projects. I worked incredibly hard throughout all four years and grew tremendously in the education field and received very positive feedback along the way. However, no matter the extent of approval and praise that I received my confidence levels stayed very low and I always felt myself thinking and feeling as though I could do better or my work was not up to the high expectations that I held for myself. My journey continued into my internship year with Michigan State University at Sheridan Road STEM in a fifth grade classroom with a highly respected teacher as my mentor. I walked into the classroom and building the first few months as an almost silent observer, unless I was working with students. Every time I was asked a question or found myself in front of the class, I immediately felt my levels of anxiety increase dramatically, as my heart would race, my hands would sweat and tremble, my voice shake and all I could hear in my head were my thoughts as I spoke aloud questioning and reflecting on each and every word, wondering if I could have phrased what I said in a better way or if I was reaching students when it came to their learning in even the slightest way. My mentor teacher was someone who was incredibly supportive and believed in me more than I believed in myself. She saw something in me and my potential to be an elementary educator and would often mention that it was clear this was my passion and where I was meant to be. I valued her opinions and feedback so greatly but continued to find myself worrying if I was doing enough or if I was disappointing her and the students in my classroom.

During my internship, the graduate courses I was taking were incredibly helpful in guiding me on how to plan and implement full units in all subject areas, which was something I had never done before. My understanding of how to piece lessons together to develop and lead to an end project or full comprehension for students around the topic grew tremendously and I picked up on how to adapt and rework lessons in the moment as I noticed something not working or students questions and interests taking a specific turn. While many parts of teaching came very naturally to me, especially my ability to connect with students and expand my thinking by taking part in self-reflection at a constant rate, even in the moment of teaching, I still struggled to feel confidence in myself and all of the progress I was making. It was as if all I could see were the downfalls, setbacks or the most miniscule errors in everything I was doing, despite my success.

The summer following my internship year I was hired back to Sheridan Road STEM as a 6th grade teacher. Being in my first year, I again struggled to feel confidence in myself. The view I had of myself was depelted even more throughout my first year as I was working on a grade level team with another staff member who had been in the district for a long time, but was new to our building and spoke down to me as if I was incompetent in this field of work. Regardless of the excellent evaluations I was provided with by my building principal and the amazing things I was witnessing and seeing take place in my own classroom, I was so negatively effected by the demeaning and shaming comments I was receiving from my co-worker that I could not allow myself to feel even the slightest bit content with my accomplishments and how well my first year of teaching had truly been going. I again held my tongue and kept these struggles to myself and pushed myself even harder in my work, until I finally reached a breaking point and found solace in my mentor teacher from my internship year. She helped me to work through this difficult year and it resulted in my decision to move back to the fifth grade team I had interned on the following year as an official member with my own class and the change of building for the coworker who had really destroyed any of the progress I had made towards viewing myself as an educator. I started thriving for the next two years teaching the fifth grade with a collaborative and supportive team but despite all the positive change, my confidence was still almost non-existent, that is until the summer of 2020 when I started my masters program at Michigan State University.

Talking Through Technology

The summer of 2020 was a very uncertain time with not much known about how the upcoming school year would unfold. However, during this time continuing online education was appearing to be the direction that my district would be heading. Which is what led me to selecting courses in my masters program that would let me explore teaching with technology. One of the very first classes I chose to take was CEP 820, Teaching Students online. This course was one that would lead me to more growth than just in my teacher education. Throughout this course I created a Google Classroom where I learned the in's and out's of the online management system. I also had the opportunities to then adapt lessons I had used in the past and figure out how to implement them in an online format as well as make them engaging for students. This was a task that I had not done previously and was a completely new system and experience for myself. I picked up on these skills and concepts quickly as I spent much of my childhood having access to daily technology and it is something that I have always had a knack for.

When my school district officially decided that we were going to stay virtual for the start of the 2020-2021 school year I felt as though I had a head start and good sense of the direction I needed to go for my students. This led to others on my staff who had very little technology experience to quickly notice that I had a lot of background knowledge in the area of Google Suites and they started gravitating towards me asking for guidance. I was very nervous and hesitant at first to share what I knew as I did not want to lead anyone astray or not have an answer to their questions. However, when I was faced with a technology question that I did not have an exact answer to, I made it an immediate goal to quickly problem solve the issue and find an answer. Before long, I found myself helping others on my staff with ease and became our go to technology person. I started to really enjoy sharing my ideas and new online discoveries. Slowly but surely I started being able to speak up at staff meetings when topics about how to implement new technologies could be incorporated or when troubleshooting online issues needed to take place. Reflecting back I can now clearly see the personal growth that I made from my experiences in CEP 820 that would not have been possible without pursuing the master's program at Michigan State University. While my confidence had grown slightly, it was still very much based around and focused in on the area of incorporating technology into my teaching practices to help educate my students to the best of my ability. While I still had a lot of growth to make, this was a huge turning point for me.

The main focus of my masters program has been literacy education, which I selected because this is a high interest area of mine as well as an area I have always wanted to learn and grow more in my understanding. I always had the surface level knowledge but wanted to dive deeper to be able to pinpoint where students who were struggling when it came to reading and writing or dual language learners were running into trouble and what interventions I could put in place to get them to start moving towards their full potential. Not only did I want to learn how to better educate my students in these areas, but I have always been interested in finding new and different ways to help get my students to truly enjoy both reading and writing.

I have seen many students come into my classroom feeling as though they are bad writers, which has stunted and often times completely stolen away from them the pure enjoyment that can come from writing and how therapeutic it can be. These feelings and thoughts I got from my students were ones that I could easily relate to and identify with, due to years of never feeling up to par with my writing amongst my peers. I had also lost the joy for writing after years of having to follow a perfectly structured rubric or outline and having to focus so much time and energy on having the perfect word choice or making sure to thoroughly cover a topic that held very little interest for me. Grammar and spelling expectations are another huge concern for students as they are writing as these are the elements that educators often time push almost to strongly upon students when it comes to writing the perfect five paragraph essay. This has always caused extreme anxiety for me when it comes to writing, so I can only imagine the implications it has on students today with standards being pushed harder. Personally feeling so much resentment towards writing myself, I have always struggled with how I can reverse this feeling for students.

I was finally able to address this issue when I enrolled in TE 848, Writing Assessment and Instruction. The first day I accessed the online course I immediately felt an overwhelming sense of panic as I read over the syllabus and almost instantly discovered the largest part of my grade would be based around a writing project where I was to compose two writing pieces of different genres. My insecurities of writing went through the roof and I remember thinking that this is what my own students must feel when they hear we are going to start a writing unit. However, as the process got started we were able to have complete freedom in choosing the genres in which we wanted to write with no constraints on the content in any form. My first choice was to write a personal narrative as this is the first writing unit that I always take on with my students. This is something I feel really helps me get to know my students and I am a strong believer that everyone has a story to tell and I always want my students to know that their experiences and their voice are important and be heard and told in many different ways. I chose to write a very personal story about the passing of my cousin and as I started writing the words flowed naturally onto the page. This was a traumatic experience for me that I had been bottling up and holding inside for years. When I finally completed the piece I felt such a sense of relief and never realized how important it was to address what happened and through the form of writing I was not only able to get my feelings out and confront and work through much of the pain that I had been feeling inside but I was also able to make it such a powerful sentiment to my cousin and her memory. Dr. Janine Certo was incredible as she helped review and look over my story and her responses were so well crafted and thoughtful, I realized that there was no pressure or expectation other than to tell my story.

I gained so much insight from Dr. Certo and that fall when I proceeded to start my personal narrative unit with my students I embraced all that Dr. Certo had done for me and implemented and relayed it into my teaching with my students in the same manner. My confidence in my writing instruction had boosted to a new level that I had never felt before and was even confident enough to share my own personal narrative that I wrote for TE 848 with my students. I shared my struggles with the writing process but also all of my successes and triumphs and that raw emotion and vulnerability led my students to do the same as I watched them bring their own experiences both positive or difficult out in their writing and was able to see even the shyest of students proud to have their story heard.

The Power of Written Words

A Ratifying Reflection

Throughout the process of my fourth year teaching while obtaining my master's degree and taking on the whole new experience of screen to screen learning all at the same time, it has been very easy to fall back in my old ways of doubting myself. I have grown tremendously in specific areas such as teaching with technology as well as reworking lessons and implementing them to help my students find and remember the pure joy of learning. I have grown to find myself holding and presenting myself so much differently since starting the masters program. I have found my voice and have figured out who I am as an educator and who I want to continue to be as I grow over many more years to come. However, there is still so much I have to learn and the expectations and high standards I hold myself to have in no way changed, the have truthfully increased throughout this experience. While my new found confidence has been wonderful, it is also still very new and something I am still learning to become comfortable with. There are many years of self-doubt that I am continuing to work through and because of that, I can still find myself losing my way and starting to question everything I know and am doing.

Thankfully one of my last courses in my master's program was ED 870, the Capstone course of the program. Throughout this course we have created and designed this online portfolio that showcases much of our work throughout our time in the master's program. As we have been given the time and opportunity to look back at our work over the program there have been many areas of growth that I was shocked by and had not realized the leaps and bounds I have come since my time as an intern up to this point in my fourth year of teaching on my own. I have learned so much from my experiences in the classroom and from other staff members, but I feel I owe so much of the confidence building from the master's program at Michigan State.

While one of the main goals of this online portfolio is to be used to showcase my work for possible future employers, families and students, it is now something that I now have at the click of a button when I start falling toward self-doubt and my confidence in my abilities lacking. This is a resource I can use and continue to add to as my growth as an educator continues and I can remind myself that I have reason to feel confident in what I do based on all the growth and new knowledge that I have gained. This portfolio has helped me look at self-reflection of myself and my teaching in a positive way and not only have I been able to find confidence but my voice in the world of education as well.