Jessica Francis
Teacher. Student. Awakener. Empowerer.
Future as a Learner Essay
The More You Know, The More You Want to Know
Teaching is an ever-changing career. One must stay abreast on current pedagogies and practices in order to be most effective. For me, I have constantly tried to get involved at my school with different committees and school improvement groups. This, coupled with consistently seeking out articles and books have helped me to be a more effective educator. Next, I sought out a Master’s degree. For some, graduating with a Master’s degree is an end of a goal. However, attaining the information that I have learned over the course of the past few years led me to even more goals than what I started with! The more that I have learned, the more that I realize there is more out there that I do not know!
The biggest goal that I have for myself having gone through the Master of Arts in Education (MAED) is to incorporate more technology into my teaching. Even though I focused mainly on literacy, the ways in which I interacted with classmates online was astounding. I desire to incorporate more interactive technology into my classroom like Edmodo and Piazza. I also want to build my own classroom website in order to establish better communication with parents and other stakeholders of the school. I also learned about assistive technologies that can be used for students with special needs and I have made it a goal of mine to integrate these into my teaching regularly. Since the development of our current generation, it is clear that children need this technology in order to learn at their optimal level.
I never thought that I would leave the classroom as I have been teaching over the last five years. However, now with the new Master’s degree, I realize that I have more career opportunities now that I will have my degree focusing in literacy. Throughout the last few years, I have become involved with many tutoring opportunities with students in the area of literacy. This has given me the confidence and experience to someday partake in a literacy coach job instead of the fulltime teacher. One of my goals is to at least try out some sort of reading interventionist, kindergarten through fifth grade. I think I will find it satisfying to constantly work with those students who need it most. I also look forward to doing this in order to put the skills, best practices, and assessments in action all of the time: I could dive into teaching literacy in more depth and widen my knowledge base in order to help educate students, parents, and other colleagues.
Another goal I have for myself is to become a leader of my peers. As a teacher, I know how to lead and direct a group of students; however, I would love to work on being able to apply my skills in other aspects of my career. In order to become an effective leader of other colleagues, one has to be able to become vulnerable to others. An effective leader also puts other’s needs and desires before the need to be right. I know that I can do this through sitting and truly listening to others more, having empathy, and trying to help solve others’ problems. I know that I can do this through building stronger relationships with the teachers, administration, and paraprofessionals that I work with. I am currently in my first year of being the unit coordinator for my school. I am in charge of the first and second grade unit (made up of 10 teachers total) and am leading the discussions, collaborative planning, and data reflecting for our students. In order to establish myself as a leader, I need to continue to be involved with these things and even commit to being more active in the school community.
The last goal that I have for myself is to learn more about the world through travel. I want to explore new cultures, see new places, and meet new people. This also ties in to my saying of “the more you know, the more you want to know” because it has become increasingly important for me to learn about the world around me. I find this pivotal because in order to be an effective teacher (and overall educated person), one must be able to see things from other people’s point of view. I have traveled to England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Mexico. I have also traveled to most of the fifty states through my teaching experiences during the summer. Seeing and experiencing these places has helped shape the person I am today and has given me more information to share with my students. It’s also afforded me the opportunity to be able to learn how education works in other countries. In terms of my travel in the future, I want to visit Italy, Ireland, Spain, and all fifty states. I want to create more opportunities for myself to learn about the world through travel.
I have a plethora of goals set for myself and my future and I am excited to continue working at achieving them. As I look back onto where I have been, I am excited to where I am going. As I learn more, I realize there is even more that I have to learn. This is what makes my career so exciting and ever-changing. I truly believe that a teacher is never done learning!