The education world is continuously booming with more research. Therefore, my goals for the classroom require constant attention to these changes. As a lifelong learner, I chose to pursue my Master of Arts in Education (MAED) with a focus on Literacy Education at Michigan State University, where I could learn how to be intentional about everything I do in the classroom.

​

Upon entering the MAED program, I had the following learning goals:

​

• To better my professional ability to be able to meet my student’s diverse needs, particularly in literacy education.

• To immediately and directly apply what I learned for the benefit of my current students.

• To reflect on my own learning experiences, and share my professional development with my teaching community.

• To gain competency with online learning and technology that I could incorporate into my own classroom.

 

 

 

 

 

Although I was happy with my ability to strive for these goals, teachers are never completely done learning today’s best practices. There will always be more that we can do.Thankfully, I was really inspired by a few of my classes to dive even deeper into the literacy component. One of my most influential classes related to literacy was my reading assessment class. Here, I learned that data is the key to being able to provide highly effective differentiated instruction. We had the chance to study a focal student, and assess their reading so that we could talk about how to best meet this student’s needs. I plan on becoming more familiar with each of these assessments so that I can implement them into my own literacy instruction, and I can meet my students' needs.

​

I was also very inspired by a class that I took on managing difficult behaviors. As I entered the professional world, I found myself thrown into some difficult situations which I had to problem solve through. I know that without solid classroom and behavior management, you can’t get anything else done. Therefore, one new goal that I have is to keep using these new resources I discovered in my class to create a well-managed classroom that will be a foundation to effective teaching.

​

​

​

​

Overall, I still have the same goals that I started with, but I keep raising the bar for myself and my students. I desire to meet every student’s diverse needs, especially in literacy. However, what I have found now is that my goals are more specific and concentrated on utilizing assessments and classroom management to guide my instruction. I do have many more tools to add to my toolbox of best teaching practices, and I feel confident that I will be able to use them and share them with the rest of my teaching community.

​

"Celebrate what you accomplish, but raise the bar each time you succeed."- Mia Hamm