Our zones of comfort are often defined by what we know, what we have experienced, and what we are most familiar.  This cozy sense of security provides us with an expectation for how things should be.  When things in our lives are comfortable, we slowly become lulled into a sense of ease and a reluctance towards change.  Comfort zones, in this sense, can be dangerous.  While inside our comfort zones, these boxes for which frame known experience and expectation about the world, we provide ourselves little to no opportunity for growth.

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In the Fall of 2019, I found myself in a position I had never believed I would be in.  I was standing on the frontline of a ten thousand person picket demonstration.  The Chicago Teacher’s Union, for which I had recently become a member of, was during a two-week long strike fighting for lower class sizes and equitable funding.  Amid some of the worst autumn weather the city had seen in years, I stood in solidarity, through rain and snow, with my colleagues.  This fight was to guarantee a better future for the children of Chicago.  This fight was outside my comfort zone.  Participating in rallies to raise awareness, marching through the streets to disrupt the system, raising awareness around the importance of public education.  My participation in these events was a new experience for me.  While educational and eye opening, the coziness and security of my comfort zone dissolved as the days of the strike seeped into each other with no end in sight.  Though this experience was difficult at times, with looming financial insecurity of not being paid and concern about the safety of my students while not in school, I could feel a sense of growth building from within.  This sense of growth pushed me to continue to fight.

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The sense of growth that I was feeling on the frontlines of the Chicago Teachers Strike reminded me of the growth I had made years’ prior during my first year with Chicago Public Schools.  This first year with the district was spent at a school on the city’s south side.  This school was a fourth and fifth grade split classroom and had nearly 40 students of varying ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and levels of achievement.  I was on my own in this new environment.  I was out of my comfort zone.  I very quickly needed to learn to navigate around this new environment for the sake of my students but for my own sanity.  I saw, from day one, just what is expected of a classroom teacher.  It is far, far more than just teaching.  College coursework and textbooks cannot fully show you what is expected of a teacher in an environment like this on a daily basis.  I was an educator, a social worker, a nurse, a psychologist, a conflict manager, and a role model.  Through this first year of new experiences, I began to better understand what inequitable education looks like on the frontline of urban education.  The same frontline for which I stood in solidarity with my colleagues while on strike to secure a better future for these kids.  Inequity looks different across different schools, districts, and communities.  It takes form in misallocation of funding, a lack of basic resources, or poorly staffed schools.  Now, while at a new school on the city’s upper west side, I finish my fourth year in the district still stepping in and out of my comfort zone to learn and grow.

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This reflection on my time spent with Chicago Public Schools is important for two reasons.  First, these experiences have caused a profound shift in my thinking, practice, and levels of comfort in new, challenging experiences.  Secondly, these experiences pushed me to complete a Master of Arts in Education (MAED) from Michigan State University.  From the day I set foot in that classroom on the city’s south side and saw firsthand the adversity that these schools face in terms of inequitable funding, lacking resources, and a serious lack of staffing, I felt changed.  I was uncomfortable at times, but I was growing by the day.  I grew as a person and as an educator.  Despite this growth, I knew that more needed to be done to meet the needs to my students and these communities.  My experience with the MAED program at Michigan State University not only allowed me to reflect and refine my practice within urban education, but it also has left me more equipped to advocate and campaign for equity within the public education.

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Throughout my experience in this program, I have seen an overwhelming shift in the way I think, reflect, and teach within a public, urban educational setting.  I mainly attribute this shift, of course, to the coursework I have completed as part of the program.  To explain this shift in greater detail, I want to focus on a specific theme that I encountered across my coursework: confrontation.  From confronting my own comfort zone, I found that confronting ideas, ideologies, and challenges was present throughout my learning in the MAED program and has catalyzed immense growth in my professional practice.  There are three experiences as a MAED student that stand out to me as representative of this theme.

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It goes without saying that as an educator of diverse young students, it is critically important that I am practice self-reflection to build up our students and prepare them for the realities of privileged, oppression, and systemic racism that are present in our educational system today.  Having studied concepts related to racial achievement across literature and lecture, nothing can truly prepare you for what you see in the day to day life of our students in public, urban educational institutions across the country.  I have been exposed to these issues in my own professional practice and fought for equity, in terms of the racial achievement gap, as part of my participation in the 2019 Chicago Teachers Strike.

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Whether we would like to admit it or not, we all come to situational contexts of race, class, and ethnicity with bias.  This bias can be overt or underlying.  In EAD 830, Issues in Urban Education: Racial Achievement Gap, we take a critical self-reflective look at how bias shapes education and contributes to issues of equitable education and the opportunity gap.  We refer to this as the equity debt in education and it begins with us, the classroom teacher.  As we know in education, equity begins with the classroom teacher.  Educators must be reflective in this sense.  This course showed me that adapting and critiquing our assumptions and bias, whether we realize we have them or not, is the only way to ensure we teach critical consciousness.  When we teach with critical consciousness, we are doing all we can do to protect and prepare our students for the world outside the confines of their school and community.  This course was essential in developing a better understanding in ways I can design equitable instructional materials, strengthen my school environment to promote critical consciousness, and allowed me to confront my own unintended biases around education.

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The MAED program holistically has given me a new sense of awareness surrounding these issues in urban education.  I not only am better equipped to speak to these issues within my school and my district, but I am more prepared to teach students of marginalized groups.  My practice has been shifted at the disciplinary, communication, and pedagogical levels due to the MAED program.  It is through self-reflection that I am now more comfortable teaching as a culturally responsive school leader.  When we begin with the educator to build critical consciousness, make commitments to confronting our own assumptions and bias, and reflect on ways we can create more equitable environments for the students we teach, the equity debt in education can be disrupted.

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We all face varying levels of adversity throughout the schooling process.  For me, this adversity manifest itself during my first year of college in which I struggled to find a passion.  Everyone around me seemed to know what they wanted to do with their life and I felt lost in the shuffle of decision making.  Being a strong student prior to this, I was going through something that I had never gone through.  This was a moment of adversity that defined me.  I tell this story to my students from time to time.  It seems to resonate most with the students who dwell on their missteps often saying, “I just can’t do it”.  In almost every case, there is a root cause of this pessimism.

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Often, we see academic adversity in elementary aged students in the core subjects of reading and math.  In TE 846, Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners, I studied issues related to adversity in literacy learners and developed ways for which we can support these students.  This course focused on the impact that literacy preferences, skills, and deficits can have on student success in a classroom space.  Yet, the most profound portion of this course required one on one work with a focal student.  A student who was struggling with literacy instruction.  For my field work, I worked with a focal student who was struggling with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.  This student was in the middle of the most significant bout of academic adversity they had faced in their life, and they were only ten years old.  Using what I learned in TE 846, I was able to work with this student design, using best practices, literacy lessons that accommodate a literacy learner who learns differently than others.  While this work is essential to ensuring the success of my focal student, it has had significant impact on my practice and thinking related to accommodating these differences in literacy learners.  The best practices I learned in this course and used in practice through my field work, this course taught me to help my students confront varying forms of academic adversity.  Through TE 846 and the MAED program, I have truly could apply the best practices in literacy education.  Not only has this program left me more equipped to teach literacy learners of varying levels and challenges, but it has allowed me to zero in on those students who are facing types of academic adversity. 

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In an ever-changing, globalized world, opportunities for growth and learning are all around us.  From various opportunities to learn remotely, to free online classes that are self-directed, our idea of what it means to be a part of a learning society is changing.  When we consider “education” and what it means “learn”, I am sure that most of us go right to traditional, formal schooling as being the primary site for which learning takes place.  This fundamental idea of traditional school as an adolescent being the primary site for learning in one’s life is simply outdated yet we still subscribe to this idea on many systemic levels.

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Adult learning is a form of education that all of us take some part in, regardless of our profession or circumstance.   Whatever the circumstance may be, adult learning occurs all around us and it rapidly evolving with advances in modern technology.  In EAD 861, Adult Learning, I developed an understanding of what it means to be an adult learner and how public schooling plays a crucial role in the development of lifelong, adult learning.  In this course, I worked with adult learners and developed a critical consciousness surrounding their unique educational journeys.  In this course, we confronted the status quo with regards to education.  The impact that these interactions with adult learners and the study of these adult learning case studies has had on my thinking and practice is significant.  While I am an elementary educator, I also work closely with my school in mentorship, professional development design, and the facilitation of training programs.  To effectively do these varying tasks within an educational setting, it is crucial that you have an understanding of adult learner.  

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The MAED program has effectively prepared me for work with adult learners across varying contexts and settings.  Adult education is important and often ignored due to the status quo of education being anchored in traditional schooling.  I left the MAED program understanding what it means to be an adult learner in today's ever changing world and understanding the clear relationship between learning and development in adulthood.  In my own practice, I have taken from this program an ability to design training curriculums that could be tailored to my own working environments and take them back to my workplaces with ease.

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The Master of Arts in Education program at Michigan State has taught me more than I can synthesize in one essay.  I am leaving this program having encountered many new learning opportunities, handling each with reliance, effort, and passion.  Not only am I leaving this program with a better understanding of the educator that I am, but I am leaving this program a better person.  I’ve been tasked with stepping out of my comfort zone in every course, across every semester, and within every learning opportunity.  Though this program challenged me and forced me to be reflective, challenge biases, confront adversity, and challenge the status quo, it was one endless opportunity for growth.  And grow I did.