Brooke Ramos

 

I have never been good at living in the moment.  I’m the type of person who sets a goal, makes a plan, and executes it.  I get so fixated on making it to the end that I forget to enjoy and explore the means of getting there.  Success has addictive properties, but if I can’t even enjoy the ride…what’s the point? 

 

To be utterly blunt and honest, my Master of Arts in Education (MAED) at Michigan State University (MSU) started out as another bullet point on my lengthy “Life To-Do List.”  I had just moved to Mexico City as a newlywed and had decided to make a career change.  When I first arrived in Mexico City, I struggled to find paid work, so I started volunteering at World Vision, which is what I had always dreamed of doing.  I received my BA in International Studies: Political Science at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) with dreams of living on a remote island in a hut back home in Asia, serving the poor and eating mangoes in the rain.  Little did I know I would marry a Mexican investment analyst whose work would lead him to one of the largest metropolis in the world. 

 

My dream of working at World Vision serving the underprivileged youth in a developing nation did not live up to my ideals.  I envisioned teaching English to children in a classroom of 40 with students ages 4-14.  I imagined taking a break to play soccer on the slanted, but functioning dirt football field in a remote urban slum.  I had dreamed of eradicating child poverty and abuse, yet I was stuck behind a desk and the nearest group of children was a 2 ½ hour drive away in heart-stopping traffic.  I had an ache in me that was supposed to be filled by my dream job, but all I could think about was the low-income youth I had worked with in an after school program for three years back in San Diego.

 

What was missing? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I missed mentoring and teaching children.  That’s when I made the switch.  It wasn’t so much the desire to eradicate poverty that drove me; it was more the passion to improve the lives of children no matter their income status.  I met a few ladies at church who worked at the American School Foundation, Mexico City (ASF) and one teacher invited me to speak on behalf of World Vision in her fifth grade classroom.  I had a blast.  The deal was sealed.  I was going to be a teacher.

 

MSU is a top-ranking school for education and I was determined to get in.  I am always looking for a challenge, and school has always been my strong suit, so I wanted to push myself and I knew MSU would deliver.  And deliver it did.  I was concerned about the course being fully online, but my options were limited due to living outside of the US.  It was a challenge, because I didn’t consider myself the most technologically inclined and I thrive in group settings, not on my own.  I was fearful that I wouldn’t learn as well in an online setting, but I don’t feel I missed out on anything.  The technology I learned about and mastered had its own benefits and I still had group discussions and an open line to the instructor. 

 

I had lively debates via Google Hangout with instructors and fellow classmates as well as longer-term written discussions that allowed us to think before responding, a benefit to online learning!  It was tough at times when I would have liked to sit in a group and hash out our differences and ideas, but the new technology allowed for a very real classroom experience.  In one of my courses, my group joined the same Google Doc and we were simultaneously creating a document and chatting on the side.  Technology has made us into multi-tasking beings and Google Docs provided the format for our multi-tasking to thrive.

 

Although there were times during the past two years when I wanted to pull out my hair and scream into a pillow, I still didn’t want to just get through the MAED; I wanted to devour and put into practice every last word from every book, journal, and professor.  I was determined to live and learn in the moment instead of overlooking the present because of my usual blinders setting my gaze on the future.  When I was in middle school I couldn’t wait to be a cool high schooler.  When I was a junior I was close to taking the exit exam so I could get to college faster.  Once in college, I graduated in three and a half years instead of the average four to five.  I have always been looking to the next life event instead of living in the moment.  I made it a point to break that habit while pursuing my MAED. 

 

For example, I took classes that were relevant to the students I had in my classroom and practiced what I was learning with my students.  Even after a class had finished I referenced my past projects, papers and books both for other classes and my own students.  When I found myself getting overwhelmed and wanting to finish the long research papers I took a step back, refocused, and made sure that what I was working on was applicable to my current student population and needs as a teacher.  For once, I learned in the moment. 

 

I could rave about all of my classes, but four particular classes stood out to me and continue to resurface in my daily life as a teacher.  The first, and most inspiring class that shaped me not only as a teacher, but as an individual, was CEP 818 Creativity in Teaching and Learning.  This course and its professors, Dr. Punya Mishra and Jon Good, explore the thirteen thinking tools of our world’s most creative geniuses.  It turns out Einstein was just as creative as Picasso even if one was a scientist and the other a more obvious artist.  Creativity is key in education and we’re falling farther away from it because the arts are first to be cut and we have a misperception that creativity is not involved in math or science.  Students are arriving at college for engineering having created and played with ideas on a computer, but their hands have never built a model.  Our reliance on technology is a great expression of creativity as well as requiring plenty of creativity, but we’re getting too far from nature and our own two hands.  We give toddlers iPads and child-friendly computers instead of blocks.  We tell our students the questions they should be asking and hand them the answers instead of allowing them to generate their own questions and inquire their own answers. 

 

CEP 818 was an eye-opening course that expanded on the idea of creativity in the classroom.  I took it because I consider myself a creative person because I like crafts, cooking, and the obvious creative tasks.  I had no idea that creativity is so much more than that!  Creativity is finding mathematical equations in nature, it’s finding patterns in history, it’s using play to reach and teach students.  I delved into the idea of creativity both as a student and teacher.  I learned it has no bounds.  I intend to teach my students the thirteen key traits in order for them to be successful, creative beings.  All of my research, projects, and reflections were put into my very first website, which was an eye-opening experience on its own.

 

In CEP 818 I got to take pictures, design games, create videos, and journal.  It was easy to learn in the moment because I was having such a good time creating!  Every course I took was challenging, I had to get out of my comfort zone with new technology, I was trying out new assessments and teaching strategies with my students, and it was simply a ton of work, but it was fun and rewarding too.  Another class I thoroughly enjoyed that opened my eyes to literature was TE 849 Methods and Materials for Teaching Children’s and Adolescent Literature.  I got to spend my summer of 2013 with some of my old friends, Roald Dahl and Amelia Bedelia.  I spent hours sitting on the floor in the children’s section of the public library surrounded by piles of books and stuffed animals.  It was lovely.  My teacher, Kristen Mcilhagga, was a genius.  She had a way of making me see the books through both children’s and teachers’ eyes.  We looked beyond the words on paper and saw the hidden messages the author was presenting.  We looked at how children’s literature has changed drastically, while staying the same in some aspects. 

 

I was amazed to see that classics such as A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle are well-loved and fully stocked in the public libraries.  Before TE 849 I had never analyzed children’s or adolescent literature and with Kristen Mchilhagga’s guidance I was seeing it for the first time.  I wrote an essay that compared and contrasted as well as tracked the development of children’s literature over the years.  This course changed the way I view a classroom library and my selections, and has made me a more careful, analytical reader of children’s literature.

 

In addition to TE 849, I took another course to fulfill my Literacy focus.  Literacy was an obvious choice for me because I love reading and writing and want to pass on that love to my students.  Choosing to be a Language Arts teacher was a natural choice for me and the opportunity to expand on the subject at a Master’s level was fascinating.  In order to be a good writing teacher I took TE 848 Writing Assessment and Instruction and while I knew I needed the to learn how to assess writing, I had no idea I would learn so much about myself as a writer.  The instructor, Kati Macaluso, reminded us what it’s like to be a student.  We get so caught up with teaching and grading that we often forget what it’s like to learn how to write well and what a daunting subject poetry or narrative can be.  Kati Macaluso reminded us! 

 

We had the opportunity to write, share, and assess writing.  It was nerve-wrecking to hit the “send” button on my poetry and immediately after I became a different teacher.  Remember how difficult it was to write poetry?  Remember what it was like to share something as intimate as your deep thoughts in front of a group, or even worse, an entire class?  By having us go through the writing process in a variety of genres, we as teachers were reminded what it’s like to be a student.  It was exhilarating and humbling.  I have always kept a journal, but I couldn’t remember the last time I wrote poetry or a narrative.  It must have been high school.  All of my writing has been solely academic and it was refreshing to dabble in other genres.  It reminded me how important it is to teach our students more than academic writing.  Reading and writing narratives helps them become more descriptive writers.  Narrative also helps with sequencing and audience awareness, skills that are important in academic writing.  The result of the class was a newfound appreciation for narrative and poetry and a fresh perspective of their importance as both a means to academic writing and an end in themselves for creative expression and reflection.  I wrote an essay on the importance of cross-curricular narrative as well as a genre portfolio exploring poetry and narrative as a student and teacher.