Sarah Lipphardt
My Identity as an Educator
When I began in the Masters of Arts in Education (MAED) program at Michigan State University, I thought that I wanted to gain understanding of the methods of teaching science and mathematics in order to be a better teacher, and to eventually help other math and science teachers in my school to be better teachers. Of course, those two things were accomplished, but throughout the course of this two year program, my eyes were opened to several other aspects of being an educator that I had not delved into until this point. Overall, there were three parts of my identity as an educator that have been influenced throughout this process. These include my identities as a science and mathematics educator, as a leader, and as a literacy advocate.
The first part of my identity which has not changed, but has been drastically influenced throughout my work in the MAED is my identity as a science and mathematics educator. I have always prided myself as someone who is willing to try new things in the classroom in order to see how they go, and then re-evaluate them and try changing them to be as effective as possible. Throughout the course of this program, I was asked to do just that. There were countless courses that required me to try a new teaching strategy or lesson planning technique, and study the effects of it on my students’ learning and understanding.
The course that influenced me the most with regards to science education was TE 855, Teaching School Mathematics, with Michael Weiss. In this course, we read and discussed countless articles on different topics related to mathematics education including looking at the different standards throughout our country, understanding where student misconceptions come from, and how to appropriately chose a topic for a mathematics research study. We then spent the remainder of the semester creating a research project, running the research project, and analyzing the results.
One of the most influential things that we did was to look at student misconceptions regarding mathematical topics and where these misconceptions originated from. We looked at yahoo posts where students, teachers, or the general population can go and post a question about anything from the weather, to a question about a television show, to questions that they are struggling with on their homework. Other individuals can then go on and respond to these posts with the answer.
When it came to analyzing mathematical questions that were posted, most people replied only with the answer, and no explanation as to how to find the answer. This post with only the answer was often flagged by Yahoo as the “best answer”. When researching this issue, it became evident that students are often so focused on getting the best answer that they do not focus on how to get the correct answer. This idea that students have so many misconceptions because they often can get the answer but have no understanding of how to get the answer or what it means became the starting point for my research project for the remainder of the semester.
Throughout my research project, I focused on the impact that requiring students to justify their answers to mathematical problems had on their understanding of the content. I studied my calculus class as they were learning about the meaning behind derivatives. I had students justify their work by requiring that after each problem, they explained how they got their answer and how they knew if it made sense or not. I found that requiring students to justify their answers had a positive effect on their understanding and that test scores seemed to rise as a result.
In addition to studying how justification affected student understanding, I also studied how requiring students to do error analysis impacted student learning. Each day during this unit, I would take student responses that were incorrect, type them up, and give them to my class at the beginning of the next day. Students would then write a paragraph response either defending the answer or explaining why it was incorrect. When students took their test, it was found that scores increased and student responses were more often correct.
This part of obtaining my MAED was by far the most impactful. Not only have I continued to require my Calculus students to justify their answers and continued to give them error analysis problems, but I have also added this into my curriculum in physics. I have seen my students' ability to correctly identify where they went wrong in a problem grow, and thus they have done better on their tests. Although correlation does not always mean causation, I think that in this case, requiring students to justify their answers and use error analysis on an almost daily basis has had a positive influence on student learning and understanding.
The second aspect of my identity as an educator that has been greatly influenced throughout my time in the MAED program was as a leader. Although I was only able to take one course labeled as a leadership course by the program, I have been able to apply the things that I have learned in all of my courses in order to become a better leader in my school.
In December of this year, I was asked to be the Science and Mathematics Literacy Specialist at my school. I was asked to observe and give feedback to science and math teachers in my school with regards to different literacy strategies that these teachers were working on. Next fall, I will be moving into a slightly different position as the Math and Science Instructional Leader. I will again be observing teachers in order to give them feedback on how to be a better science and/or math teacher.
The course, EAD 867, Case Studies in Educational Leadership, with Dr. Marilyn Amey was extremely influential on me as I took on leadership roles in my school. Throughout this course, we read multiple case studies where the leaders of a school made questionable decisions for the school. We were required to use the course readings in order to analyze the facts of the case studies and make recommendations for next steps that are supported by evidence.
The most influential part of this course was at the end of the semester when we were required to do a research project where we studied a facet of our school that we found most important. My group decided to study parental involvement in a child’s education. Teaching at a low income school, this is something that is extremely important to me and my school. We each were able to attend an event at our school and comment on the impact of parental involvement. We then researched different articles about the importance of parental involvement and analyzed the events based on research.
My school is constantly trying to find ways to involve parents in our school and increase parent involvement in what is happening in our school. Using the skills that I learned in this course, I have been able to take a step back and analyze our school based on evidence found in different readings. At our last parent-teacher conference, I had 100% of the parents assigned to me meet with me for my conferences, compared to 50% in the previous year. When I took as step back and looked at why some of my parents didn’t show up for conferences, I found that some of my parents do not drive, one does not speak English, and some have small children at home that make it difficult to come up to the school. Because of these facts, I realized that I need to change how I do conferences. For two of my parents, I took another teacher and drove to their house to have their conference. For one, I had our Spanish teacher call to schedule the conference and sit in during it to translate. And for the three with little kids, I learned that all three pick up their student from school every day. I went out to the parents’ car during the pickup time and met with the parent so that the little kids could stay in the car while I spoke to the parent. Once I understood the situation for each of my students, I was able to do my job more effectively and meet with all of my parents. It was not, however, until I took this course that I realized the importance of parental involvement in our school in any way possible.
The last part of my identity that has grown and changed throughout my time in the MAED program is my identity as a literacy advocate. As a Science and Mathematics Literacy Specialist, I took on the responsibilities of finding research to back the importance of teaching literacy in all courses, not just English in order to teach others in my building this importance. I then was given the task of figuring out what it means to be literate in Science and Math. We began the semester by collecting data regarding where students were at by using a pre-test. We then identified the lowest area in science reading which was reading comprehension. The last few months have been used to try different strategies and study the effects of these different strategies on student comprehension.
The course that really helped me identify my love for literacy and helping students to become scientifically literate was TE 846: Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners with Amanda Smith. In this course, we read countless books on different literacy strategies, how to help students grow in their literacy abilities, and what literacy means. We then took the course readings and used them in order to analyze one particular students and see if their literacy ability changed throughout the study.
In order to attempt to get the student to grow, I created a literacy plan specifically for the student. We worked together after school once a week in order to develop her comprehension of the material. After 2 months of working one-on-one, she grew two grade levels on her Informal Reading Inventory (IRI) test. This was the point where I realized that I was interested in literacy and its importance in subjects other than English.
I began researching best practices in science literacy and strategies to help develop comprehension of difficult science readings. I was able to present these strategies to the other science teachers at my school and they also found these strategies help, especially when it came to practicing for state tests such as the ACT. We have continued to develop these strategies and apply them to whole class settings throughout this past semester and have seen students grow as a result. Without this course, I would not have had the opportunity to teach other teachers about different reading strategies and help our students to grow in their abilities to read difficult scientific texts.
Overall, the MAED program has opened my eyes to the different parts of education that I love. Not only do I love being a teacher, but I love teaching other teachers how to be better, being a leader in my school, and encouraging others to using literacy in their non-English classes. Without this program, I do not think that I would be in the current leadership position in my school and would definitely not have as many different ideas and thoughts on how to become a better teacher each and every day for my students.