教育学硕士PS

The most important element of my classroom, my office, or my home is a personal relationship. I have figured this out on examination of my activities in high school (youth group regional president), college (telephone crisis counselor, resident advisor), or profession (teacher). As a teacher I made a point of getting to know every student in my classes personally. It quickly became my experience that students were more willing to learn, work, and excel when they were appreciated as individuals and when they knew that the adult in the classroom genuinely liked them.

After a few years' experience teaching seniors, I accepted a teaching job at the middle school with the freshman class that had just learned they would not physically be moving to the high school. How would I motivate and get to know these kids? Everything that I had ever heard about or remembered about 9th grade made me want to turn and run. But what convinced me to take this job was technology. In my interview I learned that instead of the library, I was to use the Internet (the what?). I was told that I would receive a laptop computer (aren't those the things that people with "real" jobs used?) and that the kids could teach me anything I needed to know.

Computers became my thing. Immediately I began to learn how to surf the Internet from 8th and 9th graders (Sanj and Judy said I was teachers' pet). My kids opened up and set aside their raging adolescence to use technology to help me and help each other. As the year with the freshmen continued, I was overjoyed. First, my kids and I had the best rapport in years (gosh Miss Glazer, are all of your PowerPoint slides gonna look the same?). Second, my creativity in teaching increased as new doors were opened to me and in turn to my students (conspiracy takes on a whole new meaning when the Internet is your primary source). Third, I was learning new and exciting things. I had finally found a combination of skills that affected my students in such a positive way that I knew I had to share my findings.

I have since taken my computer knowledge, instructional design ideas, plus my emphasis on personal relationships and applied it to teachers and students in my district and other districts in the North Texas area.

Through the Learning, Design, and Technology program at Stanford University I hope to continue on the route that started for me at the middle school. I know that I will learn new things and have an opportunity to apply them to educational settings. I also know that I will be able to establish relationships with colleagues, professors, and other students. Although a master's degree is the short term goal, I believe that my long term goal remains the same as when I began using technology in my classroom three years ago: to see students better educated through a curriculum infused with technology by teachers who do not lose sight of the personal relationships that benefit all kids.

This long-term goal may be achieved by working in a single school, a school district, or an educational center. It may be reached by teaching new teachers on the university level, by instructing at-risk students in a county after-school program, or by designing a terrific new classroom model and implementing it through a regional education lab with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Whatever the job, my aim remains the same and as it did years ago with my freshmen, I feel certain that I will use any situation to fulfill my goal to benefit students