My Goals: Past, Present, and Future
By: Stephanie Jablonski
As far back as I can remember, I have wanted to be an educator. Even when I was in Elementary School, I loved helping my friends understand concepts that we were learning in school, and I felt a very strong appreciation for all of my teachers and what they did in my daily life. As I continued through school, I realized that not only did I have a passion for teaching, but also for the world of literature and writing. I was always reading a book, writing a poem, or working on a journal entry. It is and always has been who I am. When I finally reached my dream of becoming a teacher, I realized that while I love teaching all subjects to my first grade students, most of my enthusiasm lies in that 2-hour block of time that I dedicate to literacy instruction each day. I love teaching my students the basics of decoding and comprehension, and that point of the school year that they publish their first piece of writing is one of my favorite times of the entire school year.
When I applied to the Master in the Art of Education program back in March of 2011, there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to have my concentration be in literacy. When I first wrote the Goal Statement to apply to the program, the main thought in my mind was: How can I grow in my literacy instruction to better reach all of my students? I work at a Title I building where our students come into us needing intensive instruction, especially in literacy. I wanted new ideas for assessment, instruction, and presentation to not only more effectively give my students the basic tools that they need in order to be literate, but also to make them feel successful and excited towards reading and writing.
I feel that during this program, I took many steps towards improving my literacy instruction, while also growing and expanding on past ideas and knowledge that I came into the program already having. I had the opportunity to not only work on my goals and studies independently, but also with other students and educators who have taught me so much more than I could ever have expected.
While I do feel that I learned a lot during this program, it also made me consider what my next steps might be in becoming a more well-rounded and knowledgeable educator. Different forms of literacy assessment were brought to my attention in a few of my classes, and I would like to explore these more within my classroom and find ways to integrate them with different students who I may need to instruct a little differently than others. Assessment has always been very important to my instruction, and I feel that this some of the classes that I took during this program have brought the questions to my mind: Am I assessing my students in the most effective way in literacy? This is an area that I would like to further explore.
I also had the opportunity to take two elective courses on classroom discipline and motivation. These classes opened my eyes to many new techniques and ideas in the areas of behavior management and effective motivation that I would also like to further explore and become more knowledgeable. While I do feel that my management has improved with each year of teaching, these two classes opened my eyes to ways in which I could better reach those disruptive and unmotivated and find out exactly what they need in order to succeed in the classroom. With the intensive behavior at my current building, my goals have expanded from literacy instruction to finding and tracking more effective strategies in discipline and motivation.
