Kelley Nobles
Teacher. Motivator. Lifelong Learner.
The Shaping of a Lifetime Learner
I began my work in Michigan State University’s Master of Arts in Education program several years ago, as I was completing my yearlong teaching internship. Those first few courses helped to mold what became my teaching practice. Through the work I completed in TE 801, 802, 803 and 804, I saw myself grow as an educator, strengthening my planning and reflecting skills, as well as my ability to reach even the toughest of children. I can honestly say that I fell in love with teaching that year. I learned that my patience, curiosity, compassion, and dedication together provide me with what I need to be a successful educator.
The knowledge and skills that I gained in these initial courses was enough to get my journey as an educator started. I used what I had learned to touch the lives of many diverse students during the first three years that I taught in the Chicago Public School system. It wasn’t long before I felt comfortable and confident in myself as a teacher, which to some may have been enough to remain satisfied for many years to come. However, it was at that that moment that I began feeling comfortable that I also became hungry for more learning. By that time, I had realized that impacting the children in my own classroom (although wonderful and very rewarding) was not enough. I decided that I wanted my voice and my actions to impact the school on a bigger level. I chose to concentrate my graduate studies on school leadership. The courses in this program not only allowed me to develop my skills as a school and teacher leader, but also provided me with a new perspective on my role at the school. No longer can I view my classroom in isolation, and instead, choose to look at the school as an organization that can be impacted on the whole.
After choosing the P-12 School Leadership concentration, my work began with Nancy Colflesh’s course titled EAD 824: Leading Teacher Learning. This was my first look into what it takes to plan a learning experience for a group of educators. By this time in my career, I had been to many different types of professional development, on both a school and district level. I knew that planning an educational experience for adults required a lot of work, but was amazed at what I learned actually went into developing a learning experience plan. Professor Colflesh began the course by introducing several types of discussion protocols. As I learned about each way to organize a group’s discussion, I reflected on the conversations and work that I had done within groups at my school. I realized that although each professional development opportunity I had participated in was meaningful, they were all lacking an organization or protocol of some sort to make the discussions effective and efficient. I became excited with the thought of being able to use what I now knew about discussion protocols to help restructure the way that professional learning communities were at my workplace.
Additionally, my work in the beginning of the course opened my eyes to the significance of building relational trust and accessing student voices. First, I learned that in order for any group to be successful, there must be a firm foundation of relational trust. Members of a group must feel that they can trust the group’s leader, as well as each other. Taking time throughout the initial group meetings to get to know one another is essential to building this trust. Also, setting up shared and clear group norms and expectations contribute to the building of trust as well. Once relational trust is built, group leaders must work hard to maintain it. If this trust is broken at any time throughout the many stages of collaboration, it is the leader’s responsibility to rebuild it. Next, I learned that in order to be successful, school leaders must value the school’s most important stakeholder- the student. Many times, groups of teachers and administrators at a school work together to create plans that are intended to positively impact the lives of their students without assessing the wants and needs of the students firsthand. If we want to make changes in the school that will allow our students to be successful, we must first ask them how they feel about the school community. The best way to make appropriate changes is to hear from the students themselves what they feel needs to be changed.
From there, Professor Colflesh asked us to think about the current needs of our schools in order to develop a year-long plan for teacher learning. Taking the two aspects of the course that most stood out to me into consideration (explained above), I chose to create a plan that would improve the functionality of the professional learning communities at my school. I realized that it would be essential to hear from both teachers and students to determine what exactly would need to be included in my plan. The School Climate Survey that was conducted at the school revealed that teachers wanted to feel more represented in school wide decision-making, and time had to be set aside for social emotional learning. With these needs established, I created a plan that would assemble a dedicated Instructional Leadership Team with a teacher representative from each grade level within the school. Once the team had built relational trust and developed expectations and roles, the first major task would be to work together to create a plan for social emotional learning in grades K-8. Not only did Professor Colflesh allow us to go through every step of the planning process to develop our Year-long Plan for Teacher Learning, she also guided us in creating a budget. This was my first attempt at allocating funds for a much-needed project, and as a result, I feel that I am fully capable of recognizing a school wide need, planning for it, and creating a budget that will allow the plan to be successful.
Professor Colflesh’s class provided me with the opportunity to develop a yearlong plan and budget, and although I was able to do so successfully, I found myself wondering if I had the leadership qualities necessary to guide other teachers during implementation. Luckily, I began working on William Arnold’s course titled EAD 801: Leadership and Organizational Development. This course went deeply into the characteristics of a leader, and analyzed different types of leaders and how others perceive them. The first few weeks of instruction showed me that in order to be successful, I must strive toward being a transformational leader. In other words, after taking this course, my goals as a leader are to attend to each group member’s needs, stimulate learning and growth, motivate others toward a common vision, and serve as a model of ethical behavior and trust. The course also looked at different types of challenges that occur within an organization. I learned that in my workplace, there are many technical problems. Although these issues are very important, they have known solutions that can be implemented by current practices. Adaptive challenges, I learned, require a change in what people think and believe, as well as in their habits. With this knowledge, identifying an adaptive challenge and planning for its solution became my priority.
One of the major assignments in the course was to do just that. I was able to take a lot of the thought process and research that I had done throughout my course in Leading Teacher Learning, and really narrow in on the aspects of the adaptive challenge. For years, teachers at the school have chosen behavior management systems to use in their individual classrooms. Within these systems, teachers establish a set of classroom expectations, and reinforce them how they see fit. Although many teachers have developed successful systems on their own, the school has been lacking a set of universal expectations that will guide students through their entire educational career at the school. Each year, students must learn and adapt to a new set of expectations, new rewards and consequences, and new vocabulary surrounding their behavior and emotions. The inconsistency from classroom to classroom and year to year has caused a decline in student behavior. With the help of this course, I was able to identify the lack of a universal behavior system as an adaptive challenge that required immediate attention. Through my work on this project, I developed a plan to meet the needs of the adaptive challenge. Professor Arnold also pushed us to look at an alternative interpretation of the challenge, which I have found to be extremely important. One aspect of school leadership that I have come to really enjoy is planning for a team. However, it was until this course and this particular project that I realized that a major step within the planning process is to look at the challenge from different perspectives. This allows a leader to anticipate different reactions to the plan, or complications that may arise. Doing so helps to ensure that when it comes time for implementation, the plan that has been created will have the most positive results possible.
In addition to courses that focused solely on leadership, some of the courses I took touched on other critical elements of being an educator. Steven Weiland’s course titled ED 800: Concepts of Educational Inquiry exposed me to the idea of inquiry-based learning as it pertains to the role of an educator. I was familiar with this concept in terms of how it affected a student’s learning, but had not considered how I engage in inquiry-based learning as a teacher. Throughout previous courses, I found that learning is most meaningful when it mimics the real world. Students are constantly curious, and allowing them to feed their curiosity and search for their own answers as they are learning provides long lasting educational experiences. I have been dedicated to this idea as a part of my practice for several years, but it was not until I took this course that I began to understand just how important it is to engage in inquiry-based learning myself. Throughout the course, we studied many significant people including John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Catherine Bateson. Vivian Paley’s work, however, really resonated with me. In one of her essays, Paley refers to her students as her colleagues. She explains how each day she learns something extraordinary about herself, her practice, or the world from one of her students. Although I had always considered myself to be someone who truly loves to learn and seizes any opportunity to do so, I had never really stopped to consider just how much I was learning from the students in my classroom every single day. The idea of my students being my colleagues is powerful, and has stuck with me as I continue to teach. My study of Paley went deeper into how to use each interaction with a student as an opportunity to learn and grow. Paley kept reflection journals and followed her journey of inquiry through writing. Her work helped me to realize that I am able to do the same as I teach my second grade students, noting my areas of curiosity, confusion and enlightenment. Further, taking time to reflect and journal around my leadership roles at school has also proven to be extremely beneficial. Each conversation with another staff member during a collaborative meeting is a chance to learn something new, and keeping a reflective journal helps me to continue to progress as both an educator and leader. Professor Weiland opened my eyes yet again to the idea of lifelong learning. I feel that as a result of his course, I am more reflective and appreciative of the daily interactions I have with my colleagues – both students and fellow teachers.
As my time in the Master of Arts in Education program at Michigan State University comes to a close, I am both proud and humbled by my accomplishments. Each one of the courses that I took added a layer of confidence in myself as an educator and school leader. The knowledge and skills that I have gained as a result of this program will allow me to reach goals that I didn’t even know I had before my work began. However, at the same time, the courses I took caused me to appreciate my role as a lifetime learner more than ever before, and I acknowledge that no matter how much I have learned over the past several semesters, each day is an opportunity to learn even more, experience something new, and grow even further.
