Tying It All Together
by Cory Puskala
Big Changes and New Experiences
With a wedding insight and a new place to call home in Ohio, all I was waiting on was a teaching job for everything to fall into place. I remember feeling overcome with joy when I received the phone call asking if I would accept the position as a first grade teacher at Taylor Mill. I spent the summer preparing literacy centers and re-reading The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong. I felt prepared and ready to begin the new school year with my class of 19 students. However, the day before school began the class rosters changed and I now had multiple students with cognitive and behavioral IEPs. I also knew that I would not have a full time assistant. I have never been trained in special education, and began to question what I would do and how would I meet their needs. The challenge was frightening, but that first year experience with special education was truly eye opening. During that year, I realized that I wanted to and needed to learn more about special education in order to continue servicing all my students. I also felt that I needed to incorporate more technology into a school that had little to begin with. Thus began my journey to complete my M.A. in Education, specializing in special education and technology through Michigan State University’s online MAED program.
How Will I Help All Diverse Learners?
In the classroom, accommodations and modifications are fundamental and effective strategies, but these words seemed almost foreign to me as I began that first year in first grade with little undergrad training in special education. I remember asking myself how I would differentiate learning in the classroom. I know what differentiation means and I am able to differentiate literacy centers and reading groups, but what about math, science and social studies. Luckily, as I began my second year of teaching first grade I also began the MAED program. I had hope that all of my students would experience a year of learning that met all their ability levels in all subject areas.
The first special education course I took was CEP 842: Content-Area Instruction for Students with Mild Disabilities. Professor Cindy Okolo’s course taught how to design and implement instructional strategies appropriate for individual learning needs. I immediately thought, where was this course last year when I was trying to decipher between accommodations and modifications on IEPs? The course introduced Universal Design for Learning, which is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all students equal opportunities to learn. The National Center on Universal Design for Learning website, www.udlcenter.org, describes UDL as, “a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone. It is not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.” The UDL website helped me to come up with self-monitoring strategies for students with developmental delays, and I used these strategies throughout the teaching year. During this course I also learned how to effectively collaborate, co-plan, and co-teach with special education teachers. I planned a first grade science unit about Matter for a project. I implemented the co-teaching strategies of alternative teaching, one teach/one observe, station teaching and parallel teaching with our first grade special education teacher. Learning to collaborate with another teacher in order to teach, monitor, and evaluate student progress was invaluable and is a practice that I find myself using daily now. This course also required us to plan a professional development session that would be a teaching tool for our classmates. My group taught problem solving strategies for use in the classroom and gave others insight into why problem solving is difficult for learning disabled students. This project helped to develop my role as a leader as I managed our small group of classmates during the planning and organization of our three-day professional development plan.
CEP 801A: Consultation and Collaboration was a course that had a profound impact on my understanding of the special education process. During those first two years as a first grade teacher I was handed my students’ IEPs at the start of the year. I was then asked to provide insight on student progress and attend yearly IEP meetings. I felt as if I was doing what I was told, but without a deep understanding of the intervention and placement process. The goal of CEP 801A was to teach how to effectively communicate, make decisions, and problem solve in order to benefit students with disabilities. I was required to take on the role of a behavioral and instructional consult in order to understand the process of consultation and collaboration. The first project was a problem-solving teacher interview. I conducted an hour long, recorded interview with a co-worker regarding a student in her classroom with behavioral issues. This project taught me how to gain information about a problem using teacher insight and how to identify strengths and weaknesses of a student in their environment. I then used the teacher interview to help generate a Functional Behavioral Assessment Plan. I observed and recorded student’s behavior, collected baseline data and analyzed the environment in which the behavior took place in order to create the plan. I also took into consideration health and medical factors and previous intervention plans in order to create a hypothesis and replacement behavior plan. My eyes had been opened to the in-depth consultation process that takes places when identifying and assisting students with behavioral issues.
All of the special education courses I took, including CEP 843: Autism Spectrum Disorders- Characteristics and Educational Implications, offered insight into the process of special education identification and strategies that can be used with all learners. The knowledge I have gained from these courses has greatly assisted my goal of creating and maintaining positive and productive learning environments and experiences for all students.
A Growing World of Technology
There is no avoiding technology. It is everywhere, and will continue to be a part of our daily lives. The struggle to keep students engaged and interested in learning will always be a challenge, but finding appropriate and meaningful ways to incorporate technology into the classroom is a powerful solution. Unfortunately, I felt I was losing a battle with technology, as it continued to flourish and I was being left behind. I knew that I needed to catch up and keep up with the growing world of technology. Therefore, I decided to pick elective courses that would reopen my eyes to the uses of technology in the classroom.
I would have never imagined designing an online course for first grade students to use, but that is exactly what CEP 820: Teaching K-12 Students Online provided. This course taught ways to help students learn and participate using technology. The center of the class was focused around designing a course that could be used in teaching practices. I studied different course site options, looking at instructional designs, course structure, organization, learner support, and learner interactions and collaboration, in order to pick a site that would best fit the needs of all diverse first grade learners. Blackboard stood out as an excellent course site that would allow me to build a hybrid course to teach addition and subtraction along side classroom instruction. At the time, I was 34 weeks pregnant and eager to design a tool that a long term substitute teacher could use with my students. There were many pits and peaks during the creation of the site. I remember feeling frustrated with how the course looked but thrilled when I learned how to create flowing content folders that would guide students through the math learning materials. CEP 820 also taught me how to take advantage of online help resources, as it was now my job to explore and manipulate the Blackboard CourseSites. I left CEP 820 proud of the online math course I created and eager to implement this new form of technology into daily learning.
The summer after my daughter was born, I had a newborn sleeping extended periods throughout the day and it seemed like the perfect time to continue my technology quest. I enrolled in TE 831: Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology. The goal of this course was to understand and explore methods for teaching school subject matter using different forms of technology. To begin we had a lesson about TPACK, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, which explains that in order to bring technology into the classroom, teachers need to have an understanding of technology, pedagogy, and content. The course had us use a wiki to post assignments and collaborate with other course members. A particular assignment that I enjoyed was exploring and using the websites that created digital stories. I particularly enjoyed working with Go!Animate to design a cartoon for educational purposes. With a new school year approaching I thought it would be useful to create a cartoon that taught first grade students the rules to follow in the classroom. My husband stepped in to be the voice of a rowdy first grade student as I designed a script and he executed it using the tools of Go!Animate. In the process I discovered that this could be a tool students could learn to use in the classroom, which is what I did later on in the school year. As a class we designed a cartoon that taught others what we learned about mammals after our zoo field trip. I felt the students had a very unique and engaging experience with technology using Go!Animate. TE 831 gave insight into how to incorporate technology in a meaningful way in order to enhance student learning of subject matter.
I wrote a reflective paper at the end of TE 831 titled Re-Purposing Technology. I discussed the tools I learned to use and how I felt they could impact student learning. In the paper I stated, “In a time when technology is so readily available at your fingertips it has become part of the educators job to evolve and incorporate it appropriately and effectively in the classroom.” I believe this statement is a summary of all that I have learned and the beliefs I hold about the power of using technology in the classroom.
The Process of Reflection
As I wrap up this final MAED capstone course I have enjoyed the opportunity to reflect upon all that I have learned and how far I have come. The process of making the online portfolio has been interesting and rewarding as I can now showcase my work and journey with others. Through this reflection process I have been able to discover some new goals that I look forward to pursing independently. Finding new and insightful practices, learning and implementing response to intervention strategies, and exploring new and innovative technologies in daily teaching are goals I am eager to take on.
It is hard to believe how far I have come since I began to teach first grade. I believe that as the learning needs and abilities of our students continue to change and become more diverse, so too will the ways in which we are able to teach them, as technology continues to grow. Through the MAED program I have become a more confident and effective teacher, interested and enthused to learn more and to be continually working to provide meaningful and positive learning experiences for all of my students. I am eager to continue this journey.
References:
National Center On Universial Design for Learning. (2012). Retrieved from
http://www.udlcenter.org/
With a wedding insight and a new place to call home in Ohio, all I was waiting on was a teaching job for everything to fall into place. I remember feeling overcome with joy when I received the phone call asking if I would accept the position as a first grade teacher at Taylor Mill. I spent the summer preparing literacy centers and re-reading The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong. I felt prepared and ready to begin the new school year with my class of 19 students. However, the day before school began the class rosters changed and I now had multiple students with cognitive and behavioral IEPs. I also knew that I would not have a full time assistant. I have never been trained in special education, and began to question what I would do and how would I meet their needs. The challenge was frightening, but that first year experience with special education was truly eye opening. During that year, I realized that I wanted to and needed to learn more about special education in order to continue servicing all my students. I also felt that I needed to incorporate more technology into a school that had little to begin with. Thus began my journey to complete my M.A. in Education, specializing in special education and technology through Michigan State University’s online MAED program.
How Will I Help All Diverse Learners?
In the classroom, accommodations and modifications are fundamental and effective strategies, but these words seemed almost foreign to me as I began that first year in first grade with little undergrad training in special education. I remember asking myself how I would differentiate learning in the classroom. I know what differentiation means and I am able to differentiate literacy centers and reading groups, but what about math, science and social studies. Luckily, as I began my second year of teaching first grade I also began the MAED program. I had hope that all of my students would experience a year of learning that met all their ability levels in all subject areas.
The first special education course I took was CEP 842: Content-Area Instruction for Students with Mild Disabilities. Professor Cindy Okolo’s course taught how to design and implement instructional strategies appropriate for individual learning needs. I immediately thought, where was this course last year when I was trying to decipher between accommodations and modifications on IEPs? The course introduced Universal Design for Learning, which is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all students equal opportunities to learn. The National Center on Universal Design for Learning website, www.udlcenter.org, describes UDL as, “a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone. It is not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.” The UDL website helped me to come up with self-monitoring strategies for students with developmental delays, and I used these strategies throughout the teaching year. During this course I also learned how to effectively collaborate, co-plan, and co-teach with special education teachers. I planned a first grade science unit about Matter for a project. I implemented the co-teaching strategies of alternative teaching, one teach/one observe, station teaching and parallel teaching with our first grade special education teacher. Learning to collaborate with another teacher in order to teach, monitor, and evaluate student progress was invaluable and is a practice that I find myself using daily now. This course also required us to plan a professional development session that would be a teaching tool for our classmates. My group taught problem solving strategies for use in the classroom and gave others insight into why problem solving is difficult for learning disabled students. This project helped to develop my role as a leader as I managed our small group of classmates during the planning and organization of our three-day professional development plan.
CEP 801A: Consultation and Collaboration was a course that had a profound impact on my understanding of the special education process. During those first two years as a first grade teacher I was handed my students’ IEPs at the start of the year. I was then asked to provide insight on student progress and attend yearly IEP meetings. I felt as if I was doing what I was told, but without a deep understanding of the intervention and placement process. The goal of CEP 801A was to teach how to effectively communicate, make decisions, and problem solve in order to benefit students with disabilities. I was required to take on the role of a behavioral and instructional consult in order to understand the process of consultation and collaboration. The first project was a problem-solving teacher interview. I conducted an hour long, recorded interview with a co-worker regarding a student in her classroom with behavioral issues. This project taught me how to gain information about a problem using teacher insight and how to identify strengths and weaknesses of a student in their environment. I then used the teacher interview to help generate a Functional Behavioral Assessment Plan. I observed and recorded student’s behavior, collected baseline data and analyzed the environment in which the behavior took place in order to create the plan. I also took into consideration health and medical factors and previous intervention plans in order to create a hypothesis and replacement behavior plan. My eyes had been opened to the in-depth consultation process that takes places when identifying and assisting students with behavioral issues.
All of the special education courses I took, including CEP 843: Autism Spectrum Disorders- Characteristics and Educational Implications, offered insight into the process of special education identification and strategies that can be used with all learners. The knowledge I have gained from these courses has greatly assisted my goal of creating and maintaining positive and productive learning environments and experiences for all students.
A Growing World of Technology
There is no avoiding technology. It is everywhere, and will continue to be a part of our daily lives. The struggle to keep students engaged and interested in learning will always be a challenge, but finding appropriate and meaningful ways to incorporate technology into the classroom is a powerful solution. Unfortunately, I felt I was losing a battle with technology, as it continued to flourish and I was being left behind. I knew that I needed to catch up and keep up with the growing world of technology. Therefore, I decided to pick elective courses that would reopen my eyes to the uses of technology in the classroom.
I would have never imagined designing an online course for first grade students to use, but that is exactly what CEP 820: Teaching K-12 Students Online provided. This course taught ways to help students learn and participate using technology. The center of the class was focused around designing a course that could be used in teaching practices. I studied different course site options, looking at instructional designs, course structure, organization, learner support, and learner interactions and collaboration, in order to pick a site that would best fit the needs of all diverse first grade learners. Blackboard stood out as an excellent course site that would allow me to build a hybrid course to teach addition and subtraction along side classroom instruction. At the time, I was 34 weeks pregnant and eager to design a tool that a long term substitute teacher could use with my students. There were many pits and peaks during the creation of the site. I remember feeling frustrated with how the course looked but thrilled when I learned how to create flowing content folders that would guide students through the math learning materials. CEP 820 also taught me how to take advantage of online help resources, as it was now my job to explore and manipulate the Blackboard CourseSites. I left CEP 820 proud of the online math course I created and eager to implement this new form of technology into daily learning.
The summer after my daughter was born, I had a newborn sleeping extended periods throughout the day and it seemed like the perfect time to continue my technology quest. I enrolled in TE 831: Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology. The goal of this course was to understand and explore methods for teaching school subject matter using different forms of technology. To begin we had a lesson about TPACK, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, which explains that in order to bring technology into the classroom, teachers need to have an understanding of technology, pedagogy, and content. The course had us use a wiki to post assignments and collaborate with other course members. A particular assignment that I enjoyed was exploring and using the websites that created digital stories. I particularly enjoyed working with Go!Animate to design a cartoon for educational purposes. With a new school year approaching I thought it would be useful to create a cartoon that taught first grade students the rules to follow in the classroom. My husband stepped in to be the voice of a rowdy first grade student as I designed a script and he executed it using the tools of Go!Animate. In the process I discovered that this could be a tool students could learn to use in the classroom, which is what I did later on in the school year. As a class we designed a cartoon that taught others what we learned about mammals after our zoo field trip. I felt the students had a very unique and engaging experience with technology using Go!Animate. TE 831 gave insight into how to incorporate technology in a meaningful way in order to enhance student learning of subject matter.
I wrote a reflective paper at the end of TE 831 titled Re-Purposing Technology. I discussed the tools I learned to use and how I felt they could impact student learning. In the paper I stated, “In a time when technology is so readily available at your fingertips it has become part of the educators job to evolve and incorporate it appropriately and effectively in the classroom.” I believe this statement is a summary of all that I have learned and the beliefs I hold about the power of using technology in the classroom.
The Process of Reflection
As I wrap up this final MAED capstone course I have enjoyed the opportunity to reflect upon all that I have learned and how far I have come. The process of making the online portfolio has been interesting and rewarding as I can now showcase my work and journey with others. Through this reflection process I have been able to discover some new goals that I look forward to pursing independently. Finding new and insightful practices, learning and implementing response to intervention strategies, and exploring new and innovative technologies in daily teaching are goals I am eager to take on.
It is hard to believe how far I have come since I began to teach first grade. I believe that as the learning needs and abilities of our students continue to change and become more diverse, so too will the ways in which we are able to teach them, as technology continues to grow. Through the MAED program I have become a more confident and effective teacher, interested and enthused to learn more and to be continually working to provide meaningful and positive learning experiences for all of my students. I am eager to continue this journey.
References:
National Center On Universial Design for Learning. (2012). Retrieved from
http://www.udlcenter.org/