A COMMITMENT TO NEVER-ENDING GROWTH
Synthesis Essay
As a student, I lived somewhat in a bubble. I attended school in an affluent district, and I had a family who supported me and encouraged me all along the way. I lived in a safe, stable community and had reliable and trustworthy friends. I had even planned out my future: graduate high school, attend college, get married—I never once questioned this course.
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But looking back, this calls to my mind that song, “Little Boxes.” I put myself on the conveyor belt to be churned out with the masses. Now, there is nothing wrong with this; it’s exactly what I did and I’m happy! However, when I reflect on this journey, what I’m missing is that I didn’t see how it could be done any differently by anyone. To me, there was one right path, and because I did all the right things, I was rewarded. I was blind to the fact that because of the advantages and privileges I was lucky to have, my “Little Box” started out a bit bigger than others’.
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This perspective was challenged when I began my teaching career. I saw just how many variables shape the path someone takes in life, and just how many of those variables are tied to education. After beginning my master’s degree in the Master of Arts in Education program at Michigan State University, I began to understand more about how the complexities of schools, communities, and curriculum affect the development of a child into an adult.
Truly Multicultural
When I began teaching, the way I taught was absolutely a reflection of my suburban bubble. Though I discussed with my classes the topic of racism in To Kill a Mockingbird, we didn’t dig deep enough into how its publishing, these issues still remain; I didn’t interrogate why I still teach The Odyssey or why I decided it would be a good idea to read Persepolis; I wasn’t questioning whose story I was telling and whose story I was omitting.
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However, when I began my master’s program, that mindset was deeply challenged by the first course I took: Issues & Strategies in Multicultural Education (EAD 850). This course pushed me to think about why and how I teach what I teach. The main text for the course, Is Everyone Really Equal (SensÓ§y & DiAngelo, 2017), encouraged me to seek, recognize, and affirm perspectives that were not a part of the dominant culture’s narrative.
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What affected me as a professional educator from this course was the idea of “good intentions, bad practices” as discussed in the article “Good Intentions are Not Enough: A decolonizing intercultural education” by Paul Gorski (2008).
Gorski explains that while it is all well and good to have strong feelings about decolonizing education, the practices actually serve to further inequities in power and social dynamics. This article provided an example that resonated with me deeply, as I am sure it would resonate with many: the elementary school “Taco Night.” Its design was meant to celebrate Mexican culture, but what it actually did was reinforce that learning outside of the dominant narrative was not important enough to be a part of the curriculum; it was merely a stop along the way. The intention? Clearly good—celebratory, even! But the execution is less than stellar.
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This course forced me to reflect on my own education and teaching practice and made me realize I needed to make some serious changes. The school year after I took EAD 850, I approached a colleague of mine to propose the idea of totally redesigning the To Kill a Mockingbird unit to better incorporate diverse texts and to address the themes of racism and prejudice in a more authentic and sustainable manner. We also worked to incorporate diverse voices in our classroom in units where we didn’t have as much freedom to change in order to make sure we weren’t just providing the “drive-by” version of multicultural education. I learned in another course (TE 818) that educational equity is strengthened by creating curriculum that students can use as a mirror (one in which they can see themselves) and also a window (one in which they can see into the lives of those different than themselves). EAD 850 helped me understand that positive representation matters when it comes to educating the whole child.
Money Talks
Money: a topic most consider “impolite” to discuss. But when it comes to schools, we can’t ignore it. How is being spent? Where is it going? Which schools have advantages, and which do not? EAD 853: Educational Finance & Policy helped me re-frame my ideas about equity and education through the lens the “big decision.” Before I took this class, I was—ashamedly—too ignorant of how schools in Michigan are financed and how policy shapes public school funding. This course helped me gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of funding and policy in our public-school system.
In this course, we completed an extensive examination of Michigan School Finance at the Crossroads (2019) in conjunction with the text A Better Way to Budget (2015) to better understand creating effective policy and finance plans while engaging key stakeholders. The analysis of Michigan’s Proposal A helped me understand how Michigan has worked to close funding gaps across the state, but also shed light that though it has improved, inequities in funding still remain. My attitudes about finance & policy also changed immensely after reading about how to engage key stakeholders in key decisions for school districts. Though I at some level understood that these types of decisions were not solitarily made, I didn’t understand the careful dances important decisions makers had to choreograph in order to achieve results.
Though I am not currently in a position where I would make financial or policy decisions for a school, putting to practice what I learned from this course in our final project helped me understand the possible decisions I would make should I ever find myself in that position. We were tasked with designing a school budget based on our professional context. Since I was working in a private school at the time, I used my home school district: Royal Oak Public Schools. Using this school district gave me a unique perspective on what it would be like to budget for a fiscal year: I was not only approaching this task through the eyes of an educator and a decision maker, but also through the eyes of a community member who pays the property taxes that help fund the schools. In creating this budget I had to make and justify careful decisions about teacher salary, support staff salary, supplies, general and special educational funding, and everything in between. This demonstrated to me just how difficult it is to not only create a financial plan that is the best possible fit for the highest number of people, but also how difficult it is to get stakeholders on your side when topics that so many feel so passionately about—like money and education—hang in the balance. After taking this course, I now have a better grasp on what it means to decide and implement important decisions in a school district that benefit the most people.
Leading the Way
As I learned from my multicultural education and finance & policy courses, affecting change that creates more equitable education takes those who are willing to lead that cause. During my seven years as a professional educator, I have been placed into some leadership roles. However, I never felt that I performed well in those roles. EAD 801—Leadership & Organizational Development—gave me the opportunity to better understand how to be a better leader in addition to how to use leadership as a part of a larger organization. We also looked at leadership as it relates to Critical Race Theory, which helped me understand how identity impacts leadership in organizations.
Part of this course was to examine multiple leadership styles and create overviews of those styles. In doing this, I was able to better understand what types of leadership I was drawn to as well as what types of leadership would work well in certain situations. I also applied these leadership theories to case studies in the Santamaria & Santamaria text, Applied Critical Leadership (2011) to understand how they function in practice, and where strengths and weaknesses appeared. As a final project, I examined the organization in which I worked in light of leadership theories and organizational theories to find strengths and weaknesses. My conclusion was that in my current job, the organization was not wielding effective leadership strategies and thus, created an environment that was less than effective for its employees and ultimately, the students in the school.
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I took this course in the Spring Semester of 2020; during this time, the leadership roles I held at my then current job had been paused by the pandemic, and thus, I was not able to apply my newfound knowledge to those roles. I now work in a new school district and have yet to take on any leadership roles there, which again does not allow me to apply this knowledge. However, I have been able to take what I have learned from this course and apply it to my teaching practices. Though my classroom is not a formal organization, as the teacher, I am somewhat it a leadership position among students, and realized that different leadership strategies can help me achieve better learning outcomes and help me create stronger classroom community. For example, using Dugan's (2017) theory of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership can help my everyday practices, whereas Team Leadership may be used during group projects, while Shared Leadership could be used when the whole class—students and teachers together—make important decisions about classroom operations. This course helped me understand how to strengthen leadership skills both in and out of the classroom, and that leadership that creates change does not always have to be on a grand scale.
Forward Motion
As my master’s program comes to a close, I look back on what I learned with an understanding that I am coming out of this a different educator. Thinking about my own educational experience, I now realize that just because I may have found success on the “traditional” path does not mean that it is the sole path to success. Education is not a means to an end, but rather a fluid journey that should match the needs of the one in the midst of it. I entered into this program two years ago with the goal of creating change to better serve students who may be on the fringe, but without the depth of knowledge as to how to achieve that. I exit with an understanding that change takes time, and that creating equity in education means digging deep into our identities, histories, policies, and communities. I now recognize that it’s not only important to work to understand my students, but to also understand who I am and how those identities interact with one another. I now recognize that simply “leveling the playing field” with money doesn’t truly help struggling schools and students. And I now recognize that being a leader is more about creating a spark in those you lead rather than taking on everything on your own. Though I believe I am leaving this degree program with more questions than when I entered, I count that as progress: they are not questions that are left unanswered, but questions that I know have the knowledge with which I can seek those answers. I feel confident in my ability to question and reflect on my own practices—be they in the classroom or in leadership positions of a larger scope—because I know that this means I am applying what I have learned in hopes that I can make a student’s educational experience more meaningful to help guide them along their path to success. I leave the Master of Arts in Education with a strong foundation of what education should be: a means to help guide all our next generation into the movers, thinkers, and shakers who create the type of world in which they want to live.
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