Goal Reflection: Changing the Question
When I began my Master of Arts in Education (MAED) at Michigan State University, I entered with very little prior study in the field of education. I had been working as an educator in a nonprofit college access program for the past four years, and had learned all of what I knew about supporting others’ learning through trainings offered by my employer, experience, and trial and error. As a result, one of my simplest goals for my time in the MAED program was to become oriented in the academic world of education, understand influential theories and concepts, and to learn about important current issues and conversations. In short, I sought an academic foundation for my work.
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I also began my program with the goal of gleaning practical strategies and methods that I could use in my work supporting linguistically diverse students’ literacy development in one-on-one and small-group settings. I was seeking best practices and effective tools that I could apply immediately to become a better educator. Every day in my work with students I was confronted with questions and problems, and I was looking for tried-and-true answers and solutions.
Over the course of the MAED program, several forces have caused me to redefine my goals for my studies. First, my role as an educator changed: I took on a leadership and supervisory role, and I no longer spend most of my time working one-on-one with students. In my new role, I am responsible for thinking strategically, setting priorities for program improvement at my site, and facilitating big-picture problem-solving with my site team. This has prompted me to think less about specific strategies or tools and more about approaches, frameworks, and ways of thinking. Second, as I progressed through my coursework, I began to realize that the things from my graduate classes that made the biggest difference in my work were not new strategies—they were new habits of mind. I was most transformed as an educator when my courses taught me to notice new things, question my assumptions, and adjust my worldview, my planning processes, and my meaning-making processes. In every course, I found the most value in the ways I changed as a thinker rather than the practical tips I collected.
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Accordingly, as I reach the end of my MAED program, I still believe learning about new strategies and best practices is important, but my primary goal is no longer to find the “things I can use”. My driving question is no longer What should I do?, it is What questions should I be asking? or What should I be considering? My goal now is to use my studies to become an increasingly reflective educator whose ever-evolving ways of thinking and problem-solving are based on research and a commitment to equity.
Reflection at Boulder Lake, Wisconsin, the site of Schuler Leadership Camp