Goal Getter Essay

My Current Goals as a Student

As a teacher in today’s day and age, technology is in the forefront of my classroom. I use it every day and use the many technological resources that my district has to help enrich my lessons and support and challenge my students. I decided to pursue my masters degree in educational technology so I could learn more about how to use technology in my classroom. My original goal was to deepen my knowledge and comfortability in implementing technology on a daily basis in my classroom. I also know that with this degree, I could choose to leave the classroom one day- either moving to another role within my district or finding a job with an educational technology company. 

 

I decided officially to pursue my Master of Arts in Educational Technology at Michigan State University. I wanted to learn more about technology and the resources I could use while teaching in my classroom. I completed my first summer of classes overseas in Ireland and had an incredible experience learning and growing. I learned about new technological tools, new projects and activities to implement in the classroom and discovered creative ways to use technology I have been familiar with. It was an eye-opening experience and my goals for myself stayed pretty much the same. I still wanted to best educate my students using different technology. But, I decided to incorporate more technology into my classroom and share this with colleagues across my district. 

 

As of lately, my goal has been to focus on educational technology within my context as a fourth grade teacher. While I have been working on my masters degree, I have taken on more projects within my district that have allowed me to use the skills I have learned. I have become a unit designer, creating digital resources for all the fourth grade teachers in my district. This has allowed me to use my background of educational technology and integrate it with the curriculum that I use daily in my context. I am really enjoying creating digital lessons and units that are accessible to all teachers and allow us to teach the curriculum using best practices. What I have learned as an educational technology student has given me the opportunity to create challenging, applicable and enriching digital resources for teachers in my district to use.

 

My current goals are to continue learning what I can to make great digital resources to support equitable learning for all students in my district. These goals haven’t changed much yet, as I am currently happy in my role as a classroom teacher and enjoying the additional challenge and job of creating resources to use in the classroom setting. I hope to continue this in addition to my teaching for the next couple of years, as I grow in my knowledge of educational technology and continue discovering new resources and ways to implement them in the classroom. 

 

I am grateful for all of the educational experiences that have gotten me to this point and I look forward to continuing to learn and grow as a student and an educator. I hope to continue to learn and grow and keep sharing my love of teaching and learning with others.