Annotated Transcript
This annotated transcript offers a chronological look at the courses I completed to earn my Master of Arts in Education as well as a brief description of the individual class content and my learning therein. A green star beside the course titles denotes the classes I completed to earn Graduate Certification in Teaching and Learning in Postsecondary Education.
Spring 2018
EAD 850: Issues and Strategies in Multicultural Education
Dr. Riyad Shahjahan
This course highlighted societal and multicultural understandings surrounding the production of personal identity profiles, critical reflection on issues of diversity, colonization, and the role of globalization in education. Emphasis was placed on understanding hegemonic forces and how to critically reflect on where power is held in educational organizations. This class was fundamental to my understanding of how my own social conditioning inherent in all my life experiences influences me as an educator and citizen. This course provided me with the skills necessary to understand hegemonic forces and how think critically about knowledge production.
Summer 2018
EAD 801: Leadership & Organization Development
Dr. Leslie Gonzales
The objectives of this course highlighted applying a critical lens to historical and current leadership and organizational theories and how they intersect and are represented in our educational organizations. Focus was given to applying these lenses through an equity and justice mindset to determine how our educational organizations are serving all students and stakeholders. Through this course, I learned skills and tools to analyze case studies, leadership and structural issues within my organization and to work to remedy issues of structural injustice and apply best leadership theories and practices.
Fall
2018
EAD 861: Adult Learning
Dr. Riyad Shahjahan
This course explored the concept of adult learning using a critical lens to look at the historical and current context of what constitutes an adult learner and also what is adult learning. Attention was given to the values and assumptions made about adultt learners in both formal and informal educational settings. The course also examined adult learning from both Western and non-Western contexts with significant emphasis on centering non-Western cultures norms and knowledge of adult learning production and contexts. I produced some of my favorite work in this course and particularly enjoyed centering and learning about informal and non-Western perspectives as both of these topics are essential to my current work and also my personal educational values and interests.
Spring 2019
EAD 866: Teaching in PostSecondary Education
Dr. John Dirkx
This intense course covered a multitude of topics integral to teaching in a wide range of adult learning contexts. Learning goals and tasks covered concepts of teaching, instructional design and planning, assessment, instructional strategies and methodology for higher education environments, as well as teacher professional development. Through this course I gained invaluable insight in how to integrate my background in elementary education and teacher preparation, to effectively meet adult learners' needs. This course gave me the opportunity to revamp the syllabus and instruction for the course I teach as well as the academic/internship program I currently serve in.
Summer 2019
ED 800: Educational Inquiry
Dr. Steven Weiland and Mr. Nathan Clason
This course is considered to be the introductory course in Michigan State University's MAED program. It serves to intrroduce and contextualize inquiry in education, the purpose and tradition of educational reform, and what learning looks like throughout the life cycle. This course drew heavily on a variety of readings, poetry, media, and scholarly educational history and theory. This course was presented utilizing Dr. Weiland's signature style of "hypermedia format" with self-paced student involvement. This was course was web-based with the professor's writing and lectures interwoven into the internet based/hypermedia modular structure. I learned so much about time management and technology usage in education from the format of this course, as well deeper understanding of how philosophy, practitioner inquiry, and reflection affect my own teaching and learning.
Fall
2019
TE 822: Issues of Culture in Classroom and Curriculum
Ms. Lauren Elizabeth Reine Johnson
This course fulfilled my first elective requirement and my "core issues" course requirements for my academic program. This class was a deep dive into tthe socio-cultural contexts and how classrooms and educational organizations function as cultural systems. This course focused on diversity in education and highlighted how students own social conditioning and cultural backgrounds relates to their teaching practices and how to develop best practices for creating effective and diverse multicultureal curriculum for students of all ages. TE 822 was one of my favorite and most challenging courses in my program. I learned so much about creating, teaching, and assessing diverse curriculum. I also deepened my understanding of the structural presence and implications of hegemony in our educational systems and how to critically analyze curriculum to incorporate multicultural perspectives.
Spring 2020
TE 818: Curriculum in its Social Context
Dr. Kyle Greenwalt
This course explores the philosophical, social, and historical foundations of curriculum. The content explores issues and practices across grade level and subject area as well as taking into consideration the moral consquences inherent in the decisions that teachers make in the content and delivery of their developed curriculum. Teachers are situated as having agency and as curriculum-makers. The course looks at various ways curriculum manifests itself in school settings, how to innovate and identify issues within curriculum design and decision making, while remaining grounded in the historical context of American curriculum and schools. The assignment format for this course took the form of a blog (which you can find linked on my homepage). This course was an excellent opportunity for me to develop my knowledge of how curriculum is linked across the p-12 and postsecondary educational institutions as well interact with my own philosophy of teaching to consider how personally intertwined all the domains of teaching and learning are to each individual teacher and student.
Summer 2020
EAD 822: Engaging Diverse Students & Families
Dr. Jada Phelps-Moultrie
This course articulates student and family engagement as an ever evolving experience between educators and families with varied life experiences as they come together to create a school community. This course details historical aspects of how schools and educational institutions serve their students and families in addition to teaching skills and tools for examining how our own educational organizations are serving our students. The relationships between school and home, teachers and families, school and student, etc. are examined and interrogated for how these relationships impact both school culture and student educational outcomes. The course taught me the practical application of much of the theory and research I learned in many of my courses. I truly appreciated the practical bent of this course and it's relevance to issues and problems facing educational administrators. The "problem of practice" that we prepared and presented was ultimately one of the greatest learning experiences in my graduate program.
Fall
2020
EAD 860: Concept of a Learning Society
Dr. Steven Weiland and Dr. Graham McKeague
This course describes and explores developments across educational institutions and workplace over the past several decades and how they relate to/contribute to the "learning society". This phrase has long held rather problematic and confusing meanings and this courses looks at how all aspects of the learning society are enacted and expressed both within the United States and as we move to increasing global education. This course is also a self-paced, hypermedia format which allowed me to explore extensively how all the domains of the learning society are expressed and I particularly learned a great deal about workplace learning and how adults can leverage and utilize all the informal and internet based applications for learning and training across the lifespan for personal and professional development. For a lifelong learner, this course was extremely interesting and relevant.
Spring 2021
ED 870: Capstone Seminar
Dr. Matthew Koehler and Mr. Aric Gaunt
This seminar course is the capstone to my MAED program. In this course, I am engaged with synthesizing and reflecting on my time in this program. Through this reflective journey, I am creating this webpage as a representative portfolio of my graduate and professional work to exhibit and showcase my evolution as an educator through my learning.