Running Head: THE JOURNEY JUST BEGINNING

Personal Reflection
The Journey Just Beginning

ECUR 812
March 18, 2015

Amber Kraus

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Its not who you are that holds you back, its who you think youre not
~attributed to Hanoch McCarty

There is a distinct point early in my career that I truly began to question if I had picked
the right career path, and reflecting now, may have been one of the earliest indicators that I
would be returning to university in the near future. I had just completed my first year in a fairly
small school and had been offered a permanent contract in a much larger, highly desired school.
A school, which I would quickly realize, had a much faster pace and higher expectations than my
previous location. While I am more than capable of keeping the pace, it was a hard transition to
come from a school that felt like home, to one that made me feel like a hamster running on its
wheel. That first year, though I dont recall the context, I was part of a discussion where the term
lifelong learner was brought up. I cant say for certain it was the first time I had heard that word,
but I think the difference was that I took it as an accusation, not a definition. For me, the
impression I walked away from that conversation with, was that if you are not a lifelong learner,
you certainly shouldnt be a teacher. That only life longer learners made good teachers. To many
people that comment might seem quite harmless, as well as truthful, however for me it was cause
to question who I was as a person and a teacher. A comment that would nag at the back of my
thoughts for months following and erode the confidence I had in my professional ability. You
see, when I looked at myself critically, I didnt see myself as being a lifelong learner. I was never
someone who truly enjoyed school, and while I completed my undergrad, it was more a means to
an end for me rather than an enjoyable process. I wasnt enjoying the professional literature I was
being told to read as part of my schools professional development and I really didnt have any
strong passion in life that inspired me to continually seek out related knowledge. I am and have

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always been a generalist. I love a lot of things, and have been fortunate to be relatively good at
anything I try, with no desire to become more skilled or knowledgeable at any one thing. And so
I let that comment get to me and I put up walls to protect myself. Worried that others would
criticize what I was doing, I allowed myself to work in isolation, rather than collaborate with
colleagues whose experience would have allowed me to grow as teacher. Thankfully I have never
been good at holding grudges.

Honor the space between no longer and not yet ~ Nancy Levin

At some point in time I made the decision to return to university. I had a lot of extra
credit I had acquired before I entered the College of Education and felt it made sense to complete
the final few classes I needed to obtain my Bachelor of Arts degree. At the time I cant say I had
much intention of working towards my Masters. It was more a guilt over the wasted credits
sitting on my transcript. The first class I had to complete was one I had attempted to take, and
had withdrawn from years before due to absolutely hating it and leaving class feeling miserable.
However, I knew that in order to complete this degree, I had to complete this class. All six credits
worth. As you can imagine, I started that first class very nervous. Not only was I going to a class
that had previously defeated me, but I was returning to university as an almost thirty year old
taking a first year course. What I didnt realize at that time was that class is where I entered the
space of no longer, but not yet. It gave me a new confidence in myself, which at the time I
simply appreciated it for what it was. However, reflecting back now, I would guess this is where
the shift began in understanding that I too was a lifelong learner. As Palmer (1997 ) says, If I am

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willing to look in that mirror, and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain selfknowledge and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my
subject matter(p. 15).
The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other. Without
collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives ~Robert John
Meeham
At this point I would consider myself a beginner in the masters program. Currently
working on classes two and three is essentially the beginning of my journey. However, I am
quickly coming to realize that the one thing I value above everything else I have done so far is
the connections and conversations I am having with my peers. I am fortunate enough to be
working in a school with a great staff, however, we all live the same problems day in and day out
and so the opportunity to grow and reflect feels somewhat limited. In hearing the perspectives of
other teachers from different schools, different towns and sometimes different countries, I am
gaining insight and ideas that are allowing my thoughts to flow in new directions. According to
Palmer (2007),
Our task is to create enough safe spaces and trusting relationships within the academic
workplace- hedges about by appropriate structural protections- that more of us will be
able to tell the truth about our own struggles and joys as teachers in ways that befriend
the soul and give it room to grow. (p. 21)
I truly feel that the most beneficial part of my masters journey will be the opportunity I have to
create these relationships with my colleagues. I have found my classes to be a safe place, where

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judgment is withheld, and support is given almost unconditionally. I often wonder how that
would look if the same could be said about our workplace.

"You see, one of the best things about reading is that you'll always have
something to think about when you're not reading." ~James Patterson

This term I have found it a challenge to deeply connect with any of the articles. Perhaps it
is because my thoughts are already occupied in a space outside of these course readings, or
perhaps I simply need time to process. It can be a frustrating feeling knowing that time and effort
was put into selecting useful readings and you struggle to find the big meaning in them. I did
however, find small bits of information in many of the articles that spoke to me and allowed to
store some new tidbits of information in the back of my memory, that I hope at some point will
be important in my journey.

In the article The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching (Palmer, 1997),
there were a few ideas that spoke to me. The author states Here is a secret hidden in plain sight:
good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and
integrity of the teacher (Palmer, 1997, p. 16). I think this quote spoke to me because it related
back to the comment about being a lifelong learner I discussed earlier, and the way that one thing
made me question myself as a professional. As I mentioned my school is quite fast paced, and
this means that we are often jumping on the bandwagon, so to speak, with new ideas that come
around. Most recently our school has been all about a readers workshop model in English

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Language Arts. For me that method never sat comfortably. The creator of the technique had a
script that did not fit into who I am as a teacher, and attempting to teach that way made me feel
like a fraud. For the first couple years, I managed to fly under the radar in choosing to not
prescribe to that method of teaching. I felt like by admitting I was choosing to teach in a way
more comfortable to my character, that I was less qualified of a teacher and certainly not as good
as my peers, and would be judged as such. As Palmer (1997) says that pain is felt throughout
education today as we insist upon the method du jour- leaving people who teach differently
feeling devalued, forcing them to measure up to norms not their own (p. 16). In my own
classroom I was essentially covering the same objectives as this other program; I just did it in a
less structured, less scripted kind of way. So why did I feel the need to hide as if I was doing
something wrong? Inherently I believe Im a good teacher, but as people we want to feel we
belong to a group, and sometimes the challenge becomes whether you join the group and ignore
your own needs, or you stand alone and potentially isolate yourself. As someone who recently
mentored an intern, I feel more aware of this and wonder if I did the best I could possibly do in
helping her to understand that while this is my way of teaching, the ideas she has are just as
valuable, and that not everything I do will work for her. Did she leave my classroom feeling
confident in herself, or will she be like I was those first few years? In speaking to this, my
intention in not to come across as an insecure person full of self doubt, but rather, someone who
is beginning to recognize that their ideas are just as valuable as the next. What I am coming to
see, and feeling further enforced by this article, is that techniques are simply one aspect of
teaching. That there is more than one technique that can make you a good teacher and that there
is more than one way to make a connection with your students and the curriculum you teach

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them. For me this is a huge step from where I am coming from towards where I hope to someday
end up.
The second reading that I chose to reflect on was chapter one in The Field of Curriculum
Foundations, Principles, and Issues (Ornstein and Hunkins, 2009). This was a reading I did after
the first day of class and had not yet taken much time to reflect on. In looking at articles that I
wanted to include in this reflection, I realized that reexamining this one from the viewpoint of
near the end of the course may be of value. I explicitly remember feeling very stumped, for lack
of a better term, when we were asked on that first class to brainstorm what curriculum was. To
me the only thing that came to mind was that set of outcomes and indicators on the government
website that told me what I had to teach. As so, with this lack of connection, writing a paper that
asked me to deconstruct curriculum was incredibly overwhelming. An important moment that
changed my understanding is when the idea of parents being part of a curriculum came up in
class. I suppose you would call that my a-ha moment. If Im being truthful, at this point in my
career, Im not sure my interest lies in understanding who writes our curriculum and why. That
is, the curriculum of school subjects. For me, I am not in a space where I am ready to critically
examine that in a way that would result in any change in my practice. Perhaps one day I will be
reflecting back on this paper as a curriculum writer myself and laugh at my naivety. It wouldnt
be the first time I ended up somewhere I hadnt planned on being. However, when I came to
realize that there was much more to curriculum, I suddenly felt I had a place, and this place
seemed like a realistic space where I could make changes. By now it is clear to me that parent
engagement is going to continue to be of interest to me, and is the curriculum I am currently
choosing to explore. Something I would not previously labeled as curriculum. So what then can
we use to define curriculum so that other teachers have a better understanding that curriculum

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encompasses so much more? Ornstein and Hunkins (2009, p. 10-11) state that curriculum
consists of the following:

A plan for achieving goals

Dealing with the learners experiences

A system for dealing with people

A field of study with its own foundations, knowledge domains, research, theory,
principles, and specialists

Subject matter

Reflecting now I wish I had this knowledge when I was mentoring my intern. She was a willing
participant in my parent engagement activities, but now looking back on it, Im uncertain if I
gave her a solid reason for why I was exploring this. Perhaps the fact that I myself had yet to
recognize it as being curriculum lets me off the hook, but I do wonder how she might have
viewed it differently had she understood that much of what we do as teachers is a curriculum of
sorts, and is just as important as the subjects we teach. In The Field of Curriculum Foundations,
Principles, and Issues (Ornstein and Hunkins, 2009) it says that the unplanned curriculum is
about the interaction between students and teachers and the value they place on feelings,
attitudes and behaviors (p. 11). Thinking in terms of this definition has made me realize that not
only does each school have a curriculum to guide it, but each classroom teacher has one as well.
My personal curriculum is one of fostering independence, an alternative learning environment

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and utilization of technology, to simplify it to a few key points. However, when I look at other
teachers in my school I see a much different curriculum that defines their teaching.
This realization brings me back to a couple things that have been circling in my mind
recently. The first being the idea of what it would look like for a teacher to follow their students
from grade one to four. Noddings (1995) entertains this notion in her article titled Themes of
care where she says In addition to steadfastness of purpose, schools must consider continuity
of people and place. If we are concerned with caring and community, then we must make it
possible for students and teachers to stay together for several years so that mutual trust can
develop and students can feel a sense of belonging in their school home (p. 679). I am sure
there is further research out there, but at the moment, this is simply something I am casually
entertaining in my thoughts, not something I want to actively explore. The reason I am in this
mind space has to do with my personal curriculum and how I often feel frustration knowing that
the things I value and worked hard to instill in my students, will often be neglected in the
following year due to the new teachers personal curriculum. While I am not sure which
presentations this came up during, it makes me think of the idea of students needing to create
knowledge and understanding, which was discussed more than once in class. For example, I
mentioned that I place high value on independence. I know that I offer a lot of freedom in my
class compared to others, such as giving my students the choice of where they sit, rather than an
assigned seating plan. My belief is that it is better to guide the students about how to make good
choices than it is to make that decision for them. To help them create their own understanding of
intrinsic motivation rather than me spelling it out for them. However, I know that I am the only
one in the school that feels this way. Therefore next year, those skills I hoped to foster will
become meaningless in that context, and possibly altogether. So I wonder then, how do we

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determine what is worth pursuing of our own curriculum? Do we need to a see a shift happen
that creates more consistency between classroom teachers? And what would it look like if I was
able to spend four years with my students rather than one short year? Would they be better off or
would they have missed out on advantages different viewpoints could offer? All these ideas are
floating around now that I understand how much of what I do is part of my personal curriculum.

Remember how far you've come, not just how far you have to go. You are
not where you want to be, but neither are you where you used to be ~Rick
Warren
Reflecting on this term of class, I have often have moments of frustration because I feel
like I havent walked away with the big understanding I feel I should have. However, when I
look more critically at the words I have spoken in this reflection, I realize there are small seeds
that are nestled in the back of my brain. Some that may be beginning to sprout, others than may
lay dormant until the correct amount of sunshine beams down upon them. Perhaps this is my
lesson in lifelong learning. Perhaps for me, that was what I was meant to walk away from this
class understanding. I have never been a patient person. Even as an elementary school student
my parent-teacher interviews were focused on me needing to take my time, to not rush through
everything. So while I may not be where I want to be at this moment, I am certainly not where I
was when I first began my career as a teacher or where I began my journey as a grad student.
And perhaps understanding that about myself is what truly makes me a lifelong learner.

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As long as you keep letting life ask you another question- and reveal that
there is always more for you to be and do- you are unstoppable ~Jennifer
Krause

References

Noddings, N. (1995) Themes of Care. The Phi Delta Kappan, 76(9), 675-679.

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Ornstein A.C. & Hunkins, F.P. (2009). Curriculum foundations, principles and issues. (5th ed).
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Palmer, P.J. (1997). The Heart of a Teacher: Identity and Integrity in Teaching. Change, 29(6),
14-21.

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