"I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education." Mark Twain
Academic experiences divorced from practical application is not useful because it does not positively impact progressive social change. The goal of becoming a scholar practitioner elicits the kind of reaction that the priorities of anyone pursuing academic training is to improve the part of the world you occupy in order to positively impact social change. My academic experiences include two graduate degrees in the field of education and graduate classes in the fields of religion and church history. In every part of my graduate experiences I have been volunteering and/or working with children and/or young adults. The academic experiences provided me with the training to effectively do research and demonstrate what was learned through writing, teaching, presenting information. However I have almost always been refreshed by my professional experiences as an educator as I have been pursuing academic degree programs. I have found many times that academics are disjointed from practical experience, hence why I agree with the idea that educating myself in many ways is done outside of academics and schooling.
My first graduate school internship was to create a mentoring program for incoming college freshman who were admitted on academic probation. After I transferred to a certificate Master's program in Secondary Education I substituted at all levels, especially middle and high school. After numerous permanent substitute teacher positions that ranged from 7th grade language arts to high school gym teacher I received my certification and taught religion at a private Lutheran School for 6th-8th graders and taught religion and theology to preteen students up to young adults. I happily moved with my family to Chicago after receiving a job at Chicago Public Schools teaching high school social studies to students who were academically-at-risk for a special program in a South Side predominantly African American high school. Throughout all of these experiences I was a part-time student and I continue to be committed to being a scholar practitioner. I enjoy and feel rejuvenated by fulfilling the dual roles of teaching and learning simultaneously. It provides my teaching practice with fresh ideas and provides me with opportunities to teach others whom I work with about the latest scholarship about education. It also anchors the theory of academics with the practicalities of being effective in the school and classroom.
My professional role in this small school within a school did include being assistant disciplinarian, lead teacher, and high school social studies teacher at a small school for academically-at-risk students on Chicago's near South Side until my host high school became a "Turnaround" and was handed to the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), and everyone was let go. Currently my status is a displaced tenured teacher, one of the more than 1000 teachers who have this status due to CPS's budget woes, and approximately 1700 other teachers will be in a similar place due to CEO Ron Huberman's new 2010-2011 CPS budget. I am currently interviewing at various CPS schools and have already sent over 100 resumes over the past few months to various teaching and administrative positions. However I just received a position as an adjunct professor at Trinity International University (TIU), a small Christian University, Graduate, and Divinity School in the northern suburb of Deerfield. I will be teaching the ED 110 Technology for Teachers course, which is very exciting. I spent and three semesters pursuing an Master's of Divinity at the Seminary right after I graduated from college before I switched to the education profession. will be Within my role as a CPS teacher I deal with the realities of poverty and its ravages on youth on a daily basis and in many cases it is an entirely different reality than educational theories. Examples include when teachable moments come concerning gang violence, or when interpersonal issues result in fights in school, or instances occur that are manifested as a result of the social and emotional struggle of being a poor minority student in an urban setting which in some instances circumvents the ability to being academically successful no matter how hard a student tries. It is at these moments that I as a scholar practitioner can bridge the chasm and provide students with the encouragement and hope to break through the ethnic and academic barriers they face. Educational theory and academics fail to provide the adequate training to react accordingly in these situations because the interpersonal communication and relationships that are built as teachers and students which are necessary to live and thrive in these challenging urban educational settings are difficult to measure.
"A constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive -- though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point. The goal now, it seems, is simply to become known, to turn oneself into a sort of miniature celebrity. How many friends do I have on Facebook? How many people are reading my blog? How many Google hits does my name generate? Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection. Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely. Now, it is impossible to be alone." William Deresiewicz
I currently hold two graduate degrees and am pursuing an Educational Specialist (Ed. S.) in Educational Technology at Walden University. One is Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) with an emphasis in Secondary Social Studies from National-Louis University. The second is Master of Education in Educational Leadership (M.Ed.) from American College of Education. I have excelled in these programs and they provided me with the quantitative and qualitative training to understand and complete research in the microcosm of the classroom and the school. I consider myself capable of the skills that are necessary to be successful to participate in quality research, writing, in-depth analysis, teaching, learning, communicating, leading others, concentrating, conceptualizing what I am reading, and capturing ideas. Many of these traits were fostered during my two graduate degrees and my grades and graded work reflect this reality.
I also completed an intensive 120 hour administrative internship as part of my M.Ed. in Educational Leadership which I embodied the five principle competencies as laid out by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Office of Principal Preparation and Development's website oppdcps.com (2009). They include: 1) Develop and articulate a belief system through voice and action; 2) Engage and develop faculty; 3) Assess the quality of classroom instruction; 4) Facilitate and motivate change; and 5) Balance management (http://www.oppdcps.com/downloads/Eligibility_Communication.pdf ). The principal eligibility program of CPS exceeds state standards and works directly with the American College of Education (ACE) to provide a principalship training degree program that is a collaboration of CPS and ACE. ACE works with urban school districts throughout the country to improve teaching and educational leadership. All principal preparations for CPS and other districts and institutions throughout Illinois are about to change due to the new laws concerning the principal endorsement, reviewed here, which will have to be addressed in detail at a different time.
Before I started pursuing my graduate degrees in education I pursued a Master's Degree in Church History for three semesters. This rigorous academic program provided me with the technical training, writing, and academic skills to successfully research, cite, and produce research papers. I will always feel indebted to the thoroughness and attention to detail that I learned as a student in this program. In both my undergraduate and graduate experience in religion I pursued courses in ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek. The discipline it takes to become literate in these languages and the familiarity with English language and grammar that I learned because of it is invaluable to my current competencies.
"The principle goal of education is create men and women who are capable of creating new things, not simply repeating what others have done." Jean Piaget
My leadership development in the field of education includes participating on VOISE II school design team for CPS Renaissance 2010 initiative from April 2009 to July 2009 when it was abruptly stopped due to politics between an alderman and CPS. Included in this process is extensive 3 hour professional development sessions led by national and local educational innovators and leaders on nine topics that range from developing and implementing, school operations and financial management to assessment and data-driven instruction. I also was the leader of the Chicago World School design team for CPS Renaissance 2010 where I worked with leaders from a Local School Council (LSC), other educators, parents, and community partners to plant a school that combined the International Baccalaureate Organization's curriculum and standards with innovative educational technology and environmental awareness to create internationally-minded students with 21st century technology skills and are able to model living and learning in an environmentally sustainable way. This school concept has now been placed on hold due to the CPS budget woes and the lack of funding for the small school movement, a past trend in national urban education reform which has since been replaced with the school "Turnaround" that Duncan has made national policy. I was a Virtual High School mentor and lead credit recovery initiatives and Saturday School in order to maximize opportunities for our students to graduate successfully prepared for a number of post-secondary options. I also mentor did mentor new teachers and regularly facilitate professional development that range from training teachers on the online Gradebook to leading teachers through articles and activities that are targeted around instructional strategies.
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