What do you want to be when you grow up? It is a question we are all asked from the time we are small. From a young age, my answer was simple. I wanted to be a teacher. I was lucky. I grew up to become what I always said I wanted to be. Once I reached that goal though, I realized that my passion really was with learning. I love being a student. At this point of my career, I have credits from nine different universities. I have spent a week at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs learning about physics and space science from the best teachers in the Air Force. I spent two weeks at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland becoming a NASA certified space educator and learning from the best scientists and engineers NASA has to offer. I love an academic challenge. In 2014, I decided to do something that I had been tossing around in my head for awhile. I enrolled in Michigan State’s online Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. The program has been the professional challenge I was seeking, but now that it is winding down, I need to determine where to go next in my scholarly voyages. My role in my building will be changing dramatically in the upcoming year and I am responsible for leading our Universal Design for Learning and MakerSpace initiatives. These roles and responsibilities will make my path easy to determine.
The biggest change for me will be transitioning from a teacher-librarian to a technology coach. I will still be responsible for teaching literacy and technology to the students, but I will also be far more heavily involved in coaching teachers in instructional technology use than I have been in the past. One big area of continued learning for me in this switch will be keeping up with the latest technology tools and trends. For me, the easiest way to do that is by keeping up with my Twitter feed. I follow a number of educational technology experts and teachers who are on the leading edge of technology implementation. I will also continue to attend conferences such as TIES - an annual educational technology conference held in Minneapolis, MN. More importantly, this transition will require me to learn how to become a good instructional coach. Initially, my district is planning on providing me with some training. After that I plan to use resources such as the Marian University Technology Coaching Academy and the Instructional Coaching Group to help me develop my skills further. Potentially down the line, I may even explore the possibility of getting an Instructional Coach certification added to my Wisconsin Teaching license by completing the Instructional Coach Certificate Program at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
A second area of continued learning will be Universal Design for Learning. My building is entering the third year of a three-year implementation grant, and I head up the committee coordinating the roll-out. This year, we will be doing a school-wide book study focusing on the book Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice by Anne Meyer and David Rose. I will also be spending time making use of the free webinars offered by CAST Professional Learning to increase my understanding of how to implement UDL naturally and efficiently. I am also looking forward to the opportunity to attend and learn from UDL experts at the Reaching High Expectations: Success for ALL - Technology Rich Solutions for Supporting Inclusive Practices 2016 conference in November.
My third area of focus for continued learning will be MakerSpaces. This year will be my first for organizing and implementing a MakerSpace to support teachers and students in my building. My goal is to start out by reading Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager to review the philosophy behind Maker Culture. I am also planning to visit Sector67 and The Bubbler, two public MakerSpaces in Madison, Wisconsin to observe and participate in the local Maker Culture prior to determining how to best bring that culture to my school.
Learning has always been the center of my professional life. It is how I grow as a person and an educator. I love the challenge and the way it forces me to do things outside of my comfort zone. As my program at Michigan State comes to a close, I will be taking a break from formal education, but the end of the program opens up time less formal learning opportunities that are so important to me being the educator I want to be.