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My favorite thing with working with kids is when
they don't understand a concept or idea and you can help explain it to them
and suddenly a light goes on and it suddenly clicks for them and they understand.
That's just a fun feeling for them to
finally understand and be able to be the one to help them understand.
I actually decided I wanted to be an elementary school teacher back when I was in elementary school. Anytime I would play house,
I'd play school and I'd be the teacher and I had worksheets and I had different
things and my brother was an okay student. This year I started full time as a 5th
and 6th grade language arts teacher. Along with completing my master's I've used a lot of my
knowledge and information from the professors to incorporate into my classes.
In a master's science and education program,
our first emphasis area that we offer is teaching, learning, and leadership. In this emphasis, we have teachers who are taking the program
to enhance their teaching and also to enhance the learning of their students. I graduated from SMSU with my undergrad
back in the year 2002
and I chose SMSU as a
graduate program because it's close to home and it allowed me to
travel there on weeknights, take the classes, and work on projects with
classmates.
I chose
phonics as a topic of study because it's something that my students in
my first grade class deals with on a daily basis.
It's something that I feel is very important to their developing reading skills. The literature
view is a
component of the action of research project that we do as a final project in the
teaching, learning, and leadership program.
In first grade, the students come in with low ability in reading and they're
so eager to learn and improve.
The smiles on their faces when they
bring about new information or reach new challenges is something that you
take with you day to day.
In our sports leadership emphasis, we have individuals who are
interested in working at the college level
as coaches or teaching in the coaching field.
The reading licensure
emphasis is one where teachers can become K-12 specialists of reading.
In addition we just added English
as a second language emphasis
and so teachers can work with students who are learning how to speak English within the field.
Emphasiarys also that we have that are offered totally online are our math emphasis and our english emphasis.
This is designed for secondary
math and english teachers
who would like to enhance their teachings
of the students in their classrooms.
They also might be interested in teaching the college in the classroom courses
or they may be interested in teaching in the two year community college.
Students work hard in our course. There are a lot of papers and there are group presentations
and things like that they need to do other such assignments.
But it's very worthwhile and at the end
they say "Oh I didn't know that I could do that and now I see that I that, I did that, I made it."
And it's just a wonderful thing.
I think they'll find it's a very friendly, accepting atmosphere which is something that we strive for.
It's definitely a do-able program.
It's a lot of work
and it is something that
you have to be dedicated to doing
but after completing these
two years of grad school,
I'm very happy with everything that I have learning and also everything
that I am able now to incorporate into my classroom and into my teaching.
The areas that you can get your masters
in Special Education are
EBD, Emotion Behavior Disorders, Learning Disabilities,
Early Childhood Special Education, and Developmental Delays.
We also have recently developed and are now offering an Autism Certificate.
When meeting with students,
I sit down with them and
if they have a particular area where they have expertise in
and they want to do something else, we can define and
look at
their program and make it a program that is going to be usable for them
and being a small insitution, we all work
together in the Education
Department to do that.
One of the biggest moments in my education
as a graduate
student is probably working
on my thesis and having to research
and then taking that information that I learned
and put it into the classroom with my students.
I looked at the comprehension and engagement of students with these literature circles and without
so I looked at their comprehension before using literature circles and then I measured it afterwards;
and it did show that the students all increased in comprehension how much they remembered from a book.
So it was something that I wasn't standing up in front teaching.
It was them in charge and they were involved with what they were learning.
