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My Journey
By: Eric Jenks



 

          I can not believe it has been 8 years since I completed my full-year internship through the Michigan State College of Education.  It feels like it was only a week ago I was sitting in an upstairs room in Bessey Hall participating in my last “in class” class of my college career.  Thus far my teaching career has taken me on a roller coaster ride, from the highest of highs, FINALLY being hired in as a full time teacher at my old middle school after subbing for two years to the lowest of lows, subbing at Pearson Middle School which was  just awful, and of course being laid not once or twice but three different times. The last of which was the worst as I was laid off for a full school year and I did most of my subbing in the same school where only a year before I was a full time employee.   It was during that year when I was laid off that I made the decision to go back and finish my Masters.  I had a couple of friends who were taking classes in the MSU MAED Program so I decided that would be the route that I took as well.​
           Only I was in for anther surprise once I was accepted to the program and filled out my first Program Plan, the nine credits I earned during my Internship year would run out soon and would no longer count.  Needless to say I was not exactly happy with this new development. Matter of fact, I am still not happy about this to this day.  Anyway, I was able to complete three classes during that first year and during my second year in the program I was hired back from the layoff list and have been balancing my teaching career, coaching football in the fall, baseball in the spring and my MSU Masters courses ever since.  I would describe my experience as a difficult but rewarding journey. 

Starting My Career

      During the fall of 2009, I took my first two classes online through Michigan State.  Both courses that I took were a great start for my online education.  I was unsure whether or not the online education was the best way of learning for me.  I had taken two or three online courses in undergrad, and did well, but did not love the courses or the format of the courses.  Thankfully, I signed up for courses that had excellent instructors and eased my mind quickly about online education.​
          As apart of the Michigan State University Online Master’s in Education, all students are required to take an introductory course, ED 800: Concepts in Educational Inquiry.  I enrolled in the course in the Fall of 2009.  When I got the syllabus for this course from Professor Steven Weiland, I began to panic.  I realized that it was a self-paced course and I had the entire semester to complete 8 units.  I worried because I wanted deadlines!  As I began to work through the course material, I began to become less panicked and more intrigued with the content.  The course focused on inquiry (as the title suggests).  Various forms of inquiry were presented through various figures.  Although I learned a great amount of information from each inquiry type, one educator and her inquiry changed the way I looked at myself as an educator.  While reading Vivian Paley’s book, The Girl with the Brown Crayon, and studying other material written by Paley, I was introduced to new forms of teacher inquiry.  I have always understood the importance of teacher inquiry of their own classroom, but the forms of inquiry used by Paley were different.  Paley would audio tape her classroom each day and then go back through each night and try to learn from what she heard.  This allowed Paley to re-live and reconsider each day that she taught learning about herself as an educator as well as the class in front of her.  She told about success she had with this process and I wondered if I could have the same.​
       Following this class, I was determined to use inquiry as a professional resource.  Although I do not audio tape my class, I now keep a journal each day about what happens during class, questions that come up, decisions that are made, and even what my feelings are about each class.  This has allowed me to reflect, learn and review each class more than ever before.  It has enabled me to make myself a better educator and to help my students better engage in my classroom.  I have seen a difference in my own mood toward the classes I teach and as a teacher.  Usually by this time in the year (a few weeks before Thanksgiving Break) I am counting each moment down toward the break because I am mentally drained.  Using this professional inquiry method, facing each day through reviewing and reflecting, I believe has helped my mental outlook.  Instead of allowing events that occurred in class to remain in my head bouncing around, I am forcing myself to make decisions and make connections immediately.

The Class from...........
      

      It was during the summer of 2010 when I took TE 831, the previous spring semester, I faced the most challenging class yet in my short teaching career. It was one of those classes that make you seriously debate quitting teaching altogether.  The students as individuals were delightful young adults, but together, as a whole, they were a classroom management nightmare. Beyond the behavioral issues, in a class of 32, I had a girl whose brother was shot a killed during the semester, 7 IEP students and a hand-full of 2nd year “freshmen” students mixed in with several high achieving individuals. Every day it was a struggle to get anything accomplished.  By mid-semester, I had all but given up. I tried every technique I had learned in college education classes and nothing was working. For the remainder of the semester it was all about surviving and not letting anyone get hurt in my classroom. Thankfully, TE 831, shed new light on useful new ways to present information for me and introduced me to many new techniques that saved my career.

         As a part of a refection assignment, in this course, I wrote, “…this has been the most interesting, useful class I have ever taken in the education program at MSU (and I attended undergrad there too). The topics, resources and realistic suggestions for ways to integrate technology may have saved my career.” It was true and I knew it then. This course equipped me with several important concepts I still use today.
         Most importantly, I learned that it is essential to establish a classroom where students are the ones who are doing the work.  I learned that the typical classroom where teachers lecture and provide the students with everything they need to know does not actually foster educational growth and often times leads to behavioral issues.  What I learned was that with some classes you need to connect with them at a different level and provide them with a different class structure with different assignments.   With that class I found that once I became frustrated with that class, animosity grew.  I attributed every action and behavioral issue to the notion that they didn’t care about the class or me as a teacher and I decided that I didn’t care about them or their achievement either.  This course made me realized that most student want a teacher that is caring, fair, and will not just bore them to death with a lecture style classroom.  This was not me.  I was used to being in complete control of the class, I was not used to allowing the students flexibility and freedom. I was worried that if I did they would become unruly and that would look bad on me as a young teacher. I also to be honest didn’t know any other way to teach. That was how I was taught and the way I learned, no one ever told me that I was actually doing things the wrong way.   After taking TE 831 I decided that the next year I would try out some of the new technology assignments to see if it would make a difference and to just give it a shot to see how it worked.  I couldn’t have been more surprise with the results. I had another class that was similar to my awful one before. They loved the work, we no longer ran into behavior issues and I changed my teaching techniques.  I still use some lecture style but for the most part in my classroom it is the student who are the ones who are doing the work.  Below are a few of the group and individual technology based assigned that I have used in my class ever since taking TE 831.
   
      1. Power-point Presentations .
           - Students create and present their topic
           - groups or individual
      2. Claymation
          - Students display their topic in a series of photos that they take. They create the photos

            by making and using clay or play-dough figures.
      3. Digital Story
          -Students create and make their own movies using images and add their own narration.
      4. Social Media Project
         - Students create their own “Facebook” page or “twitter” account of their historical  

           figures.
      5.  Web Quest
          - Students create a study guide from the internet. They then exchange with other

            students and they have to find the information using the Web.

These are a few of the methods have helped me to grow as a teacher and create a much more technology environment in my classroom. I truly believe that if I had not been enrolled in this class following this critical time in my career, I would have left the field of education.

 

Coaching Too
     

        Sports have always played a huge role in my life.  As a child I would dream of one day playing in the Major Leagues.  My friends and I would play baseball for hours a day during the summer, in the fall we would switch to football,  basketball, roller-hockey we would play anything.  During high school I was a three sport varsity athlete and even hand a few scholarship offers to smaller schools to play baseball.  I chose instead to give it a shot and try to walk on to the MSU Baseball team.  Well it didn't happen for me.  While in college I started playing a new sport, Rugby.  For the past 11 years I have continued to play Rugby first in college then for a men's team getting as high as the Midwest Thunderbird’s an All-Star team that is comprised of men from all over the Midwest to play against All-Star teams from the West, South, East, etc. ​
       It was actually during my internship year that I started my coaching career. I have coached Baseball for a total of 8 years and Football for 6.  I am super competitive and while coaching is  nowhere year as fun as playing, I really do enjoy coaching for other reasons.  The relationships that you are able to form with your players are completely different then the relationships that teachers and students form. Watching players develop, gain confidence and change from boys to young men is a rewarding experience.  Over this past summer I needed a class to take and due to my coaching experiences I thought KIN 856, Principles of Coaching Basics, taught by George Harnick, would allow me to develop as a coach.  ​
         In KIN 856 we covered a wide variety of topics that dealt with the movement of the human body, proper mechanics, proper nutrition, recognizing the signs of bodies breaking down from over training or other factors, the positive effects and dangers of using supplements, and the use of technology to support your coaching.​
         One idea that really hit home was the idea of introducing video review, as tool.  It is something that I have been thinking about for my baseball team for a couple of years now.  We tape our football games as a way to show our players how and what they are doing wrong, so why not have a system in place to the hitters can see for themselves what the coaches are telling them they are seeing.  In the class we had to take photos or video of a player and break-down for that player what we saw. I thought this assignment was great. I loved it and it really did help my players to see exactly what I meant.    ​
         As a football coach in a district where many of our players are Muslim and thus participate in Ramadan, it is especially important that we instill not only to our player but to the parents as well, how important it is for them to be eating nutritious food when they are able to eat and drink. In KIN 856 we talked and studied extensively balanced diets, what types of foods to ingest before and after competitions and practices.   I was able to create and distribute meal plans to my players and their parents this year and I received a lot of positive feedback about this.  We also need to be able to recognize the physical signs of exhaustion and signs of dehydration in the practice setting. With our players fasting it is a necessity that we have that ability.  Again, I really felt like KIN 856 helped me gain the knowledge and know the warning signs.   ​

The Future

          This past semester I have learned even more about the benefits of online learning.  I realize that there is a wealth of opportunities out there for me to continue my education after this degree is complete.  Completing my Capstone Portfolio has been a valuable learning experience.  It is interesting to look back, review and reflect on the courses I completed and the experiences I had while taking them.  Although this chapter of my education is coming to a close, my education journey is not over.  I cannot imagine my life without learning.  My focus in the past has been to learn how to become a better teacher in the classroom.  To expand on this goal, but in a different way, in the future I plan to focus my attention on technology.  This online education program has opened my eyes to the possibilities that technology holds.  I believe that technology is an essential piece to the future of education and I want to be prepared.

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