Growth and Change

MATC Synthesis Paper

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Haley Fraeyman
PID A51967929
December 10, 2021
Introduction

When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit in March of 2020, the world was put at a standstill.

Businesses were shut down, workers were sent home, and schools began the multiple year

journey of navigating learning in virtual, hybrid, socially-distanced settings. At that time, I was

just a few weeks from completing my undergraduate program at Oakland University. I was in the

midst of student teaching when all of the sudden we were sent home – first for just two weeks,

then for a couple more, and ultimately for the remainder of the school year. As I was navigating

this new virtual territory with my mentor teacher and colleagues, I came to the realization that

education was never going to be the same. The years of training that I had just received in my

undergraduate program had prepared me for a version of school that I wasn’t sure if I would see

again.

As the school year wrapped up, I began job searching. At the same time, I began looking

into graduate programs. I wanted to continue my education so that I could learn how to adapt to

this new version of school, and I wanted to do it in real time, not 3 or 4 years after the fact. I

knew I would be entering education at a challenging time, and I wanted to be as well-equipped as

I could. Ultimately I chose the MATC program because it seemed to be the most widely

applicable. Given that I hadn’t been in the classroom yet, I hadn’t had time to really develop a

strong draw to one specific curriculum area or one problem of practice. I simply wanted to learn

more about teaching practices as a whole. I chose to complete graduate certificates in two areas –

educational technology and educational psychology. Educational technology seemed like a no-

brainer, being that we were in the middle of completely digital schooling. This was an area that

my undergraduate program had not prepared me for, and I knew I needed more training here.

Educational psychology is an area that has always interested me, and that I think comes in handy
the most in the classroom. When you understand the way your students are thinking, you are able

to relate to them better and create a learning environment that works for them, thus making your

teaching more successful.

Educational Technology

In my first graduate course, CEP 810: Teaching for Understanding with Technology, I

learned to really think about how technology is used in the classroom. In a time when education

was mostly – and at times, fully – virtual, this was a huge advantage. The district that I currently

teach in is 1:1 with student devices. All students in Young 5’s through first grade have an iPad to

bring to and from school. Once students begin second grade, they shift to a Chromebook that

they use for the rest of their time in the district. As a teacher, this is both exciting and

overwhelming! There are so many different apps and websites out there, and it can be difficult to

decide which ones are worth using and which might not be. In this course, I was introduced to

different technology tools, like Flipgrid, that I was able to immediately bring to my classroom in

a purposeful way. I also learned how to use the TPACK framework to determine the relevance of

new technology tools that I come across. Outside of the classroom, I began to use technology to

connect with other educators through blogs and Twitter chats (Artifact 1). This is a practice that I

continued beyond this course and is now part of my regular routine. The experiences in this

course made me feel more equipped for the reality of school as I was beginning my career.

Two semesters later, in the summer of 2021, I was able to use the learning I did in CEP

810 to connect with new ideas in CEP 811: Adapting Innovative Technology to Education. I

used what I knew about the TPACK Framework and 21st Century Learning (Artifact 2) to design

a lesson plan for Kindergarten students that incorporated an innovative technology. At first, this

was a very challenging task because I felt stuck trying to incorporate new technology without
overwhelming such young learners. While I was not required to make the lesson for the grade

level that I teach, it seemed like the most natural fit. It also was good practice because this is the

typical challenge of teaching Kindergarten – trying to adapt concepts, frameworks, and ideas to

become age appropriate and meaningful. Working through this course helped me see the strong,

immediate connection between some of the theories I had been learning about, both in this

course and previous courses, and the actual teaching I am doing in the classroom.

In keeping with the technology theme, one of my favorite courses of the program was one

that I took in the second summer semester of 2021 – CEP 812: Applying Educational

Technology to Practice. This course explored “Wicked Problems” and took a deep look into

asking really big questions and finding answers to them. Throughout the semester, I had to think

about problems that impacted me professionally on a small scale, large scale, or somewhere in

between. This was not easy at first. I had just completed my first year of teaching, and I was

having trouble thinking of a problem that I wanted to solve. Most of the problems that I had

encountered during my first year, I attributed to my lack of experience. If the problem wasn’t

caused by that, it was probably related to COVID restrictions. I really had to dig deep to find a

problem that I felt strongly enough about to explore and that I thought I could make a difference

in. I finally landed on exploring the use of play in Kindergarten classrooms. I completed an

action research project, surveying Kindergarten teachers in my professional network, and

summarizing my findings in a webpage (Artifact 3). Looking back, I think research that I did in

CEP 812 really just scratched the surface of problems in education and ways to solve them. In

the current school year, I could see myself choosing to research mental health support and

systems in schools and create a plan to better support students. It is a common theme across

schools that student behaviors are much different this year than any other year. This could be
attributed to the pandemic, but may have other factors in play as well. With the background I

built in CEP 812, I feel equipped to research this topic and help begin to solve this problem.

Learning about Learning

Along with gaining a deeper understanding of and appreciation for technology in

education, this program allowed me to explore what learning and curriculum really means. TE

818 (Curriculum in Its Social Context), one of my very first classes in the program, allowed me

to step outside my traditional view of curriculum being the manual that teachers follow to deliver

content. As a brand new teacher, this was hard to wrap my head around. I had just spent the past

five years in undergrad learning about curriculum programs and how to teach effectively using

different curriculum tools. I had never been challenged to look beyond the classroom and

consider how that impacts learning. Through blog posts, reading, and discussions, I discovered

how the world around us interacts with our own learning, creating a natural curriculum for what

and how we learn. This curriculum impacts how people think and how we interact with new

ideas. In this course, I explored controversial topics, nature, and research, and I wrapped up my

learning by writing a letter to my students to share some of my thoughts on learning (Artifact 4).

This course helped spark my mindset shift that learning is much bigger than I had previously

thought, and it set the stage for later courses in the program.

While TE 818 pushed me to expand my thinking outside of the classroom, TE 808:

Inquiry Into Classroom Teaching and Learning brought me right back in. This class was my first

experience with action research, which I was intimidated by at first. I thought that as a young

teacher, it was not my place to be researching and questioning practices until I had gained more

experience. However, I quickly realized that action research is really just a very intense form of

self-reflection. I thought long and hard about a problem I was experience in my classroom, I used
scholarly research to explore why I was having the problem and how I might work to solve it,

and then I put some of my theories to the test (Artifact 5). By the time I was done, I not only felt

an immense sense of pride, but I also felt more confident in myself as a capable teacher.

This type of research practice followed me throughout the program and was used again in

CEP 800: Learning in School and other Settings, TE 846: Accommodating Differences in

Literacy Learners, and CEP 802: Developing Positive Attitudes Towards Learning. Although the

context was different in each of these classes, the overall idea was the same. I was using my real

experiences with learners, analyzing them, researching the concept, and applying a change to my

current design. In CEP 800, I evaluated theories of learning, created my own theory of what

learning is, and I took part in a professional context redesign (Artifact 6), where I used the

learning theories I had explored to improve on my guided reading assessment strategy. In TE

846, I went a little bit deeper with my analysis and research. This time, I focused on one specific

student that I was working with other the summer. I assessed the student’s needs and compared

them to the learning that she had access to. Then, I adapted the learning so that she could become

more successful as a literacy learning. I combined all of this work into a Literacy Learner

Analysis Project (Artifact 7). While this type of analysis is a little bit deeper than what I would

have time to do with a regular student during the regular school year, it actually gave me a better

understanding of the surface level analysis and adaptation that I use on a daily basis. The same

can be said for my work in CEP 802. Instead of focusing on learning content, this time I was

focused on motivation and learning behavior in a specific student in my classroom. I was

challenged to take a step back from my everyday role and view the student (and myself) from an

observation standpoint. Without bias, I noticed the actions of the student and the actions of

myself, I determined what changes may need to be made, and I created a plan for implementing
those changes based on motivation and learning research (Artifact 8). Again, this is a deeper dive

than I would typically do in the classroom, but it gave me a better perspective on why my class

was running the way it was. I can use this information with future students and scale my level of

research back to fit the reality of my daily routine, while still maintaining the integrity of the

analysis process.

In Summary

Looking back at the past year and a half, I have grown so much both personally and

professionally through this program. When I began the MATC program, I had never taught in a

classroom of my own. I was fresh and excited and had no idea what I was in for. In each course,

I was challenged to be self-reflective and to challenge my current beliefs about my own teaching

even though I was still developing those beliefs. In fact, I still am developing those in my second

year of teaching now. Being pushed so hard to think deeply about my practice has helped me

gain wider perspective and a greater understanding of my own practice. It has been challenging,

no doubt, to start my teaching career and a rigorous master’s program at the same time.

However, I think the timing worked in my favor. Even though I am just starting out, I have

already built a strong knowledge-base and developed habits of self-reflection and research that I

will carry with me throughout my entire teaching career.

On a more personal level, this past year and a half has been the most challenging I have

experienced. There were many times that I felt overwhelmed by the newness of everything I was

experiencing – a new job, new courses each semester, new ideas to contemplate. I pushed myself

to keep going and reminded myself that this newness was exactly what I wanted out of the

program. It is what I needed. I hear time and time again from colleagues and administrators that

these past two years in education have been “unlike any other.” For me, this state of education is
all that I know. I do not have to adjust my thinking like others do; I can just ease in to the “new”

way of teaching and learning.

This makes me even more excited about my own future in education. I absolutely love

being in the classroom, but as I moved through this master’s program I have developed a feeling

that I need to do something bigger than my current role. Education is a huge topic in the

mainstream media right now, with headlines talking about how teachers are overworked, the

education system is failing students, and the country is plagued by teacher shortages (to name a

few). These aren’t new arguments, but it feels like the bubble is going to burst soon and

something major will need to change in order to accept all of the “new” parts of education. I will

never forget when schools first shut down in March 2020. I was student teaching at the time, and

the principal that I was working under told us that just like how airports were never the same

after 9/11, schools would never be the same after COVID-19. Now that we are almost two years

into the pandemic, I can confidently agree with her. I don’t think that schools will ever fully

return to the state they were in prior to 2020. Education is in the beginning stages of a change,

and the knowledge that I have gained in this program has made me feel that I am on the right

path towards helping to make that change.