The Road Taken

MACT Synthesis Paper

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Curriculum and Teaching Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University

Gang Chen PID A44322845 March 28, 2014

Introduction Two years and 240 days ago, I embarked on the journey of MATC, young, passionate and full of expectations. Time flies like an arrow! It is hard to believe that three years has already passed and I have turned from a rookie to a veteran teacher. My passion and greenness faded gradually but my maturity and professionalism, as qualified U.S school teacher, grew day by day. It is the MATC that makes these happen. In the summer of 2011, I was enrolled in the MATC program and had a slight knowledge of what it was. I knew that I would be taking a road that would lead me to the pursuit of my master degree of education and meet the standards of goals of MATC. I had no idea what sceneries I would see, what stories I would tell and be told, what experience I would have and what people I would meet. I want to say that 2011-2014 had filled my autobiography with sweat and tears, gains and pains, challenges and successes. Words cannot exhaust, here, the great adventures and wonders I had following the path of this road. Now I am willing to share some of my shining anecdotes at MATC program along the road to the standards and goals. This road is paved by curriculum, child and adolescent development, action research, communication, literacy instruction, professional development, collaboration and conceptual frameworks. 1 Curriculum I made friend with a guy called curriculum, who had become my trustworthy and helpful buddy. His name used to remind me of his counterpart in China, which is a guide made by the Chinas Department of Education and applicable to all schools in China. Teachers in China, irrespective of what and where they teach, refer to the universal national curriculum for designing lessons or assessing students. They spare no efforts, nor do they have to create their own curriculum. TE

818 totally changed my conception of curriculum and I had learned a lot of useful stuff in curriculum design. I was taught setting goals and objectives, sequencing the topics, designing lesson plans, incorporating 5Cs, the ACTFL guidelines and assessments. The final project of this course was a unit plan consisted of 4 lesson plans, the jointed work of my partner and me. My partner and I put the topic, teaching objectives, key vocabularies and sentences, teaching materials, activities and detailed procedures (building background knowledge, learning vocabulary and sentence, role play). We even added a back up activity in case the class finished early. We planned to use a lot of approaches to assess students, like checking students homework, observing students performance and grading students role plan by rubrics, etc. I learned, through this project, to design curriculum, instruction and assessment to facilitate students understanding (Standard 2) and pursue personal goals of enhancing professional practice (Goal 2), in this case, professional practice in curriculum design. 2 Child and adolescent development I had stopped by the house of child and adolescent development, in which I talked to a lot of experts in this area and got to know the students and their behaviors better from different perspectives. I took TE 891 in the summer of 2012, which made an unforgettable summer break. TE 891 taught me the use of case study in analyzing students behavioral issues. My assignment was to write a case study every week, in which we were expected to read a case about students misbehaviors (problems), proposes hypotheses of the causes suggest possible solutions and write challenges that might come. This course connected the theories of child and adolescent development with the real cases in life. I became more aware of students diversity (ethnic, cultural, gender and age) as I completed more and more case studies. I learned to use the theory of child and adolescent development to explain why students behaved in different ways. It

helped me to become committed to students and their diversity (Standard 1). Moreover, case study developed my ability to analyze complex matters from different perspectives (Goal 1). For example, one of my case studies was about a story of red pants. In this story, a boy named Nathan wore read pants, purchased by his mother, to school but only meet with his peers jeers. I tried analyzing this matter from three perspectives. Firstly, it was cause by the mother, who could prevent all of this happening by not buying his son the red pants. Secondly, if Nathan was obedient to his mother, he could not be wearing the red pants to school. Thirdly, his peers reactions and jeers turned him down. Case studies always reminded me to view a matter from different perspectives for better solutions. 3 Action research I had found a map of treasure that guided me to academic wealth in teaching, which was called action research. This map was found in TE 808.TE 808 has helped me to meet Standard 4 and Goal 1. Standard 4 states that teachers research their own practice to develop and refine their repertoire (MATC Program Goals & Standards Reference Form). I had been finding best strategies for improving my students speaking skills. I thought group-discussion might help with my students motivation and speaking skills but I had no idea of what actions to take to make this happen and evaluate my action research. It was through TE 808 that I had an in-depth understanding of action research and became an independent researcher, who could evaluate his research for further improvement. In TE 808, I learned to propose a reachable proposal, do literature review, raise action research questions, make a plan and set a time frame, collect and analyze data, make conclusions and suggestions for future research. Goal 1 requires that the candidates review of literature and scholarly response to the professional research (MATC Program Goals Standards Reference Form). I reached this goal through literature review and

evaluating my classmates action research. My question research was to what extent topic-based, group discussion could affect senior students Chinese speaking skills. To learn more about my research question, I reviewed 11 articles about speaking skills or group discussion and found that discussion could improve students English speaking skills. I had a good better knowledge of speaking skills and group discussion. It also occurred to me that not much study had been done on students Chinese speaking skills and discussion, so I did this research to fill in the blank. Our TE 808 instructor asked me and my classmate to review our literature review before submission. We read each others literature view and gave suggestion of revision. I found that she had put a lot of personal feelings, such as I was delighted to find that, in her review and recommended that she could delete this kind of emotional descriptions, which would read more academic and professional. She helped me with my English writing and corrected several grammar errors. We both benefited from this peer review of literature review and became more professional in writing literature review. 4 Communication There were a few times I got lost, feeling confused in my journey but a lady named communication , from the city of TE 891, dragged me back on the right track. TE 891 not only adds to my knowledge and improves my skills of classroom management, but also helps me to become a good communicator and someone aiming to strengthen his professional experience. These are what MATC Standards and Goals expect of me, for Standard 5 addresses the skills of communicating clearly and skillfully to different audiences and Goal 2 needs the teacher has sought personal goals to enhance his/her professional practice. The final assignment of TE 891 was a project, a website which included a letter to parents, a self-introduction essay, a description of my class, classrooms and routines, rewarding policies, classroom management

strategies, homework and grading policies ,etc.. At first, I was a little stressed out by the requirements of this project for two reasons. Firstly, I had no experience designing a website and was not very good at technology. Secondly, I doubted whether I could write a letter to U.S parents, which sounded professional and caused no misunderstanding due to cultural difference. I fell into thought: what makes a good teacher? My answer was a good teacher challenge himself to the areas he is not good at but facilities his teaching. I was aware of the significance of technology in teaching and decided to be a good user of modern technology. Designing the website was my first step. After visiting some on-line resources for website design, I learned to select website background, create columns, write articles, insert images, compose hyperlinks and put in my contact information. Making a website was challenging but I made it with my efforts and time. This proved that I had achieved my goal of strengthening professional practice. In addition, I had become a good communicator addressing to different audiences for different purposes. Parents could find, in my letter to parents, my introduction and expectations for their kids, which were measurable and realistic (e.g.: Students will be able to write 500 frequently used characters in 4 years.). Students seldom had questions regarding their grades for I had detailed grading polices. My principal and other teachers were satisfied because I posted great news of our school and hyperlinked to our school website, which, as one colleague told me, was a good way to fit in the school community. 5 Literacy instruction I took a great view of a park by the name of literacy instruction, located in the kingdom of TE842. I admired the beauty and charm of this park and could help not falling in love with it. TE 842 has taught me best practices in literacy instruction. Speaking of literacy, I admitted that my understanding of this concept was superficial. I simply thought it was a matter of reading and

writing. It was not until I took TE 842 did I realize that literacy was more than reading and writing. It combined speaking, listening, reading, writing, phonetics, words, higher-order reading skills, differentiated literacy instructions, literacy assessments. I had tried the literacy assessment approaches from TE 842 on my students and found it worked well. In this assessment, I showed my commitment to students and take them as individuals and their capacity to learn (Standard 1) and evidence of assessing students needs (Goal 1). Two year ago, I had a girl in my Chinese class who struggled greatly in recognizing Chinese characters. She could hardly tell the difference between similar looking characters, which resulted in hear poor reading skills and low motivation. I assumed that teaching Chinese radical could help her with her characters recognition and boost her confidence. I firstly showed her five characters that shared the same sound but vary in radicals (), which she hardly told the difference. Then, I explained to her the different meanings of these radicals (e.g.: is related to sun). She was then to explain the meanings of these radicals and she got it correct. I went on to assess them and had her in a match game. Again, she did a great job in this assessment and got all the matches correct (e.g.: matched love). She reasoned her matched correctly, too, as she saidwas related to mood or emotion. After this assessment, I wrote in my project that I would ask students to grasp more radials for Chinese character recognition. Most importantly, I would be working on motivating those struggling students through different approaches. 6 Professional development I came across the stream, the water of which tasted sweet and refreshing, in the village of TE 843. TE 843 fosters my professional development as a language teacher. I designed a PD plan at the beginning of this course, which showed me proactive role in a professional community (Standard

6) and commitment to start changes that enhance teachers teaching and students learning (Goal 3). In this plan, I listed my professional needs, which were getting good grades in TE 843, improving my English writing and reading skills, using best practices for students Chinese skills and engaging kids in communicative-based activities. Then, I introduced the grades I was teaching, the demography information, special needs of students and the language spoken. Since I had no ADHD kids in my class and had no classroom managements issues, I focused my PD plan on students literacy improvement. I set up very clear goals that I would be learning effective and useful strategies that better my students literacy skills. With goals made, I listed activities that could help me to reach my goal: reading textbook and articles, responding to peers post, checking students homework and grading students writing. I also demonstrated my proactive role in PD by showing my eagerness and readiness to take IB training and other workshops on students literacy instruction. At the end of my plan, I talked of how my PD goals could be achieved: students writings, students evaluation on me (plus and delta), field instructors evaluation on me (TE 894) and students grades in IB assessment. 7 Collaboration and conceptual frameworks Finally, I took the road test, conducted by TE 870, on my collaborative skills and conceptual frameworks. I took this test seriously and passed it with flying colors. TE 870 facilitates my collaborative professional development (Goal 3) and assists me in using conceptual frameworks to analyzing problems in policy (Standard 3). TE 870 engaged my peers and me in weekly discussion over the issues of K-12 curriculum based on two or three articles. The topics included common cores, technology in curriculum, cross-discipline curriculum, student leadership, etc. I had a good opportunity, through weekly discussions, to learn from other subject teachers and appreciate their ideas beyond the classroom, which got me into a deep insight of U.S curriculum

and education. Moreover, TE 870 trained me on how to put theoretical knowledge into practice. One paper of TE 870 was about colleague support strategies, which required me to interview a practicing teacher on her curriculum and teaching, work out a plan to support her curriculum development and give her the plan for feedbacks. To complete this paper, I decided to follow a four step action. Firstly, I wrote 30 questions that helped me examine her teaching, like what do you think of the immersion program? Then, I asked her these questions and recorded the interview upon her permit. Thirdly, I listened to the recorded conversation (data) and noted down the main ideas. Fourthly, I analyzed the data and found that she needed resources for her curriculum design and she could improve her formative assessments. Therefore, I provided her some Chinese textbooks, a French language curriculum guide and two articles on formative assessments. Lastly, I gave her my paper and supported materials for feedbacks. She told me that the paper was informative and the resources were helpful. Conclusion Almost 3 years has passed and the road is approaching its end. I could recall that in the summer of 2011, a young man stood with hope where the road started. Now, I could see a man with confidence dressed in a master robe and celebrating with the other Spartans in the graduation ceremony. If I were to make a speech, I would say: Ladies and gentleman, I felt greatly honored to stand here today celebrating our graduation. I am thankful to TE 894, which has been with me for 3 years and seen my academic growth through adobe meeting, improvement project and teacher evaluation. My thanks also go to the professors of the MATC program, who never hesitate to help me to reach my goals. Lastly, I want to thank my classmates, it is you who make my stay here enjoyable and meaningful. Class of 2014 MATC, we made it.