Goal Reflection

Change of a Mindset

At the start of 2018, I was giving a lot of thought into where my life was going and where I wanted to focus my energy. I had been teaching at the same school for 5 years. I loved that school and experience, but I needed to branch out and challenge myself. I was 27 years old and my life looked nothing like I had thought it would. My Dad wanted me to move home and try the family business to see if it was even something I would be interested in taking over one day. I knew that I needed to further my education but I was reaching the limits of what the professional development available to me could do deepen my learning. I decided to get my master’s degree. I wanted something that I was passionate about. I found the Master of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) at Michigan State. When applying I was asked to come up with a goal or two, little did I know that I would need those later (thanks, google drive for saving everything!).

My original goals:

Continue to challenge myself academically
Better my professional ability to help my students achieve their goals.

Even though I haven’t given much thought to these goals through my master’s program it is interesting to look back and see how my mindset has changed.

I have always been a person who loved to learn and I missed learning in an academic setting. A setting with accountability and goals. While my goal will always be to challenge myself. It no longer focuses on me or academics specifically, but rather on everything around me. Now this goal looks at focusing on a variety of questions that challenge me. How can I make that lesson push my students deeper into their learning? How can I encourage other teachers to use technology as more than just a digital worksheet? How can I share my knowledge with others? I know the only way for myself to grow is to push myself, but the question now is how can I push myself in ways that also help others to grow and challenge themselves.

The second goal to better my professional ability to help students achieve their goals continues to stay the same. I have concluded that this goal will never be achieved as it is much too broad but is something to keep striving towards. MAET has opened my eyes to the difference between what we know about educating students and what we actually practice as a whole. My goal before was to just help my students achieve their goals, but I want to do more than that now. I want to help my students, colleagues, and district to be their best and achieve goals we have set out before us. To put it more succinctly my goal has morphed into wanting to continue my learning to help myself and those around me use the information available to achieve the best versions of ourselves.