Denzel Drone
Synthesis Essay
The Passion of my Life
Can you tell me that one thing in your life that you cannot live without? To some it is entertainment, others it is exercising. I do not think many people can say that their career or job is what they cannot live without. Luckily for me, my career within the helping field is something that has been a yearning of mine since I could remember. Growing up, I never knew exactly what career path was for me but I knew I needed to be in a position where I could help others. The helping field is where I found a passion that I could not live without. Even today, when it is harder to help people I love than when I have to go out on the limb to help a child I am working with, I realize that the grass is always greener on the other side. Also I love the chance to pass learned knowledge along.
As a child, I received so much help by the time I was an adult I realized I would not be able to thank everyone who had helped me. My first embedded memory of being helped by someone outside of my family came when I was in the sixth grade. My sixth grade history teacher Mr. Sweat challenged me to try out for the basketball team. The first time he asked me to try out I told him I could not do it since my mom worked and would not have a ride home. The second time he asked I told him that my mom would not be able to pay the cost for me to get everything I needed to play. The following day I went to Mr. Sweat class he asked me to stay back after class and he told me I called your mom yesterday and she told me that you could try out for the team and if you actually made the team she would be able to take care of any expense that came up. Right now you may be thinking or "he was scared to try out or never had played basketball before" but that was not the cause at all I was just simply afraid to ask my mom for help. Mr. Sweat was able to help me with a big step in my life. He was able to bridge a fear gap I had in my personal life while being an educator.
At the time of applying for graduate school, I had just finished my undergraduate degree from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s of Arts in Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS). At that time I was taking care of a newborn baby and working full time at Sunny Crest Youth Ranch. My mentor kept advising me that I needed to pursue and further my education. While going through a variety of graduate programs I knew I wanted to expand my abilities of work with students who have special needs and that the program would have to be online in order for me to excel.
The Master of Arts in Education (MAED) graduate program gave me the opportunity to learn more about helping and allowed me to add education into my professional background. This opportunity would show me how to help other how I was helped my entire life. I felt that the MAED program would help me tie my abilities of helping to teaching. This was a big motivator for me since I wanted to continue helping others but with my aspirations to be a teacher I thought that I had to put one before the other.
After starting in the MAED program I was nervous that I would not fit in since I did not work in the school system or even have the experience of teaching a classroom before. When classes began I felt that most of the students enrolled were already teachers and majority of them had classroom experiences that related with the course materials. While most of the courses asked for teaching examples, I was able to use my work with abuse and neglected teen boys to relate to the course work. Many of my instructors and classmates enjoyed hearing my feedback because I gave it from a perspective outside the normal classroom setting.
Download Synthesis Essay Here
Growth through Academics
My first couples of concentration classes for the MAED program were highly related to my job as a Youth Care Worker at Sunny Crest Youth Ranch (SCYR). These two courses focused on two areas;the first was teaching children with challenging behaviors and the second one was consultation and collaboration. These classes allowed me to grow and develop in my professional career. My favorite subject during the MAED graduate program was CEP Counseling, Educational Psychology and special education. The two courses were CEP 832 – Teaching Children with Challenging Behaviors and CEP 801A – Consultation and Collaboration. Both of these CEP courses focused on behaviors, which helped me to improve my professional growth.
CEP 832 – Teaching Children with Challenging Behaviors, was the best course that I took during my graduate program without a doubt. I don’t know if many educators in the program will agree with me, since I do not know how useful this course was for teachers. For me, this course allowed me to look at the signs of challenging behaviors before they occurred. This course was essential to my professional growth as this course deepened my understanding of bipolar disorder, personality disorder, and autism. Many educators may not find this course beneficial but I would strongly disagree since the course provided me a great overview on how to engage with youth while they are lashing out.
The assignment that I benefited mostly from in CEP 832 was the ABC project (Addressing Behavior Challenges). The professor asked us to apply course concepts from four chapters to a specific student in our teaching practice. The four chapters consisted of working effectively with aggressive and angry behaviors, working effectively with impulsive and active behaviors, working effective with shy, withdrawn, and socially isolating behaviors, and working effectively with low achieving and failure oriented behaviors. For the ABC project I started by finding a description of a behavior I found challenging and my reaction to it. The second step was to revise the challenging behavior and to observe the challenging behavior. The third step was to collect data and write about our student by applying the data to three sections; strategy selection, description, and rationale. The fourth step was to implement the strategy, add a description of changes to the practice problems and prospects updated strategy description. The fifth step was to evaluate the strategy, and critique the strategy. This course enabled me to gain perspective for the teens I work with and gave me the opportunity to grow through the academics.
CEP 801A – Consultation and Collaboration was another CEP courses that correlated with my work at SCYR. This course asked us to develop the knowledge and skill sets that special education teachers will require to perform a consultation and collaborative roles. This courses element of collaboration was detrimental to my success of working well with one of my colleagues at SCYR. This course allowed me to work with another one of the supervisor directly to increase both of our skill sets. When we were directed to work together to finish past projects one of us would just take the task as a whole and report that we worked together to complete the task to save time.
When I was given the CAPP (Collaborative Action Plan Project) I knew that this assignment could help me with my work relationship with this particular co-worker. The purpose of the collaboration for me and him is that things transition well from my shift to his. This is so important for a few reasons, the first is so that our boys feel that I and he are on the same page and that they can trust me and him and not only one of us. The plan that I put together consisted on of both of us working together to increase our abilities in different areas so that transiting for the youth would be seamless. The first step was to make sure we both knew the importance of time management and cleanliness. The second step was to make sure we both knew how to drive and knew how to do the upkeep on our tractors. The third step was to make sure we both knew the routine and how to do the animal chores. With this project and other assignments this course helped better my understanding of collaboration within the work place.
Understanding and Investing
While the CEP courses of teaching children with challenging behaviors and the Consultation and Collaboration courses were highly helpful to my professional growth, I still needed to bridge the gap of understanding how to help a student who is being taken advantage of by his or her peers. During me third semester of the MAED program I was provide this information. I knew that I would be equipped with the abilities to be the best mentor, leader, and teacher I could be.
In residential care, I have found that we are the protectors of the youth we work with and we cannot allow them to be look at as less than or even worthless since we are all they have. I believed that when you are a teacher you are to focus on their academic success and allow the students family and friends deal with the emotional distraught.
CEP 841 – Classroom management in the Inclusive Classroom, while taking CEP 841 the project for this course was the special topics paper. For this project we were asked to choose a topic that directly effective us in our current line of work. For the special topics paper I decided to go with the topic of bullying. Through this project I was able to understand the role of a teacher. This course gave me another outlook on education. Teachers are more than typical average Joe’s whot goes to work to get paid educators are more than the lesson plans they put together. Teachers are fully invested in the students they teach and encounter. As a teacher in the 21st century you are doing more than just molding the brain of a students you are trying to invest your all into each one so you can instill the desire to become a lifelong learners.
Conclusion
To conclude, my graduate degree and master’s courses have given me more than what I could have expected coming into the MAED program. I have been able to grow as an educator and become what I always wanted to become, a lifelong learner. Without the information that I received over these past two years, I probably wouldn’t be the man I am today with the opportunities that lie in front of me. I am poised that I can, and one day will, mentor, lead, and teach students who will have a positive effect within society. Educators are those who impact the world by simply being caring, loving, supportive, and tough all in one. I want to thank my graduate program for giving me the tool to become a lifelong learner and I promise to never stop taking wisdom, adjusting, and maturing both professionally and personally. Now that I have a passion that reaches past helping, my passion now that I cannot live without is truly learning and educating.