Throughout my time in my graduate program, I have studied many different aspects of education.

Each piece that I have studied has made me a better teacher and has given me skills that I need to continually improve as an educator. I have learned much about student motivation, various teaching strategies, and classroom management.

Student motivation can be defined in many different ways. It can be broken down into intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. It has countless theories that explain how it is positively or negatively impacted. Honestly, study of student motivation can be a little maddening. The best thing that I have realized about student motivation came from very early in my grad school program; teacher interactions with students significantly impact both the short and long term motivation of students (Anderman & Anderman, 2010). I have tried to keep this in mind ever since I learned this. What was profound to me about this fact is that it has wide ranging implications in the progress of students. We, as educators, have to be mindful of every interaction we have with students as all interactions will impact the trust, motivation, and progress of our students. I do not believe I felt this way before this program and now, because I am mindful of this, I feel that I am a more responsible and effective teacher.

The different strategies that I have learned over the course of my program are numerous. I feel that I am so much better equipped now than I was before in differentiating instruction. It comes more natural to me and often times I am doing it without necessarily realizing that I am doing it. Where I think I have learned the most, however, is regarding assessment. I had never thought this in the past but, after spending time in this program, I realized I was limited in my range of assessment. One of the more powerful techniques I learned about assessment was that by using assessments that are driven by students, you can put students in the position of driving the learning process (Chapman and King, 2012). I have been using these self-driven assessments often in my room with great success and plan to continue using them in the future.

The subject of classroom management is a subject that has come up in every one of my education classes. I find that it proves itself a little more troublesome in the corrections environment that I work in. Classroom management in my school can be tricky because if students do misbehave, there are very real and severe consequences in the prison. However, if students feel that they are constantly at risk of being punished because of the environment, the environment for learning is very poor. Striking a balance between these two ideas is something that I am constantly at odds with. Things such as appropriate student groups, reasonable and concise classroom rules, and proper distribution of workload have all helped with my classroom management. These are all skills that I have learned in my graduate program and have made me better equipped to educate all of my students, particularly my students with learning disabilities.

My time spent at the University of New England has been wonderful. While I am sad that I will no longer be using the online format to engage in great discussions with my professors and classmates, I am very happy to be completing my program. Completing this program is just one step that I have taken to become a better educator. If I can keep in mind the concepts I have learned and use them in my classroom to keep making myself better, I think that I can be a teacher that I would be proud to have.

Anderman, E. & Anderman, L. (2010). Classroom motivation. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Chapman, C. & King, R. (2012). Differentiated assessment strategies: One tool doesnt fit all. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.