Why did you want to work in education? What inspired you?

The standard response here begins with, “When I was a child, I always dreamed of being a teacher.” For me, this was not the case. Unfortunately for me, it was not a great experience that inspired me to be a teacher. As a junior in high school, I really struggled with my Algebra II course. I completed all of my homework, took notes in class, and studied for all assessments. No matter the amount of time and effort I put forth in the class, for some reason I was still struggling to receive a passing grade. As a shy student, I tried to avoid asking the teacher for help, but at this point I had exhausted all other options and gathered enough courage to talk to my teacher about what I could do to improve my grade in his class. He simply told me that there was no other way to improve upon my grade.

I remember leaving his classroom feeling demoralized and broken. I felt like a failure. This horrible feeling is what inspired me to become a teacher. A teacher can mean the world to a student. They can build a student up or tear a student down. I wanted to be a teacher that builds my students up. So I made it a career, and to this day, I hold a standard of being that teacher that provides the support my students need to be successful.

Why did you choose Concordia University Chicago for your M.A. principal preparation program degree?

I honestly had not even thought of moving towards obtaining a degree in principal preparation until a colleague of mine handed me a flyer about all of the programs offered at Concordia University Chicago. The flyer stated how it would only take two years to complete the program. What appealed to me was that there was a location offered right down the street from where I live and the fact that the program was arranged so that you were able to continue working while moving towards your degree. After attending an informational meeting, I was excited to get started and pursue this new educational program.

What skills did you gain or sharpen through your program at Concordia University Chicago and how do you use them today?

Well, I have not become a principal just yet. I finished the program and received my degree, but I decided that I still want to teach for a few more years before I decide to move on to becoming a principal. However, my view point as a teacher has changed immensely. I view my principal’s actions and leadership in a different light. There is a different type of leadership required to be a principal and so many more aspects that I did not even take into consideration before completing this program. This program has also encouraged me to take on more leadership roles at my school to continue the practice of leadership over teachers and staff.

How has your master’s degree impacted you in terms of your current position or a position you’d like to attain in the future?

This program has made a great impact on the position that I would like to attain in the future. I realized that right now, I am not quite finished leading children. I want to focus on my practice of teaching children first. And when the time is right, I will be ready to move on to an administrative role. It will be a different type of leadership role as I will be responsible for leading the entire school community, but I know I’ll be ready to confidently take on this new career and challenge.

What was a challenge you faced during your principal preparation program, and who or what helped you overcome it?

The biggest challenge that I faced during this program was time management! Man, I thought getting my bachelor’s degree was hard! Now, I was going back to college to get another degree and working a full-time career at the same time. In the beginning, it was really difficult to balance both. After about a month, I worked into a routine that really helped me to become successful. During the week, my focus was on teaching my students. On Saturdays, my focus was on being a student. I would spend my Saturdays at a local coffee shop doing research, writing papers, and completing projects. This structure worked really well for me and helped me to maintain my expectations as a teacher and also learn how to be a principal at the same time.

What was the biggest takeaway from your principal preparation program?

I think the biggest takeaway was viewing challenges in two perspectives: as a teacher and also as an administrator. I have not yet stepped into the role as an administrator, but I continuously think about how I might make decisions in my current school. I have noticed that my views on certain challenges in the classroom have changed. I continuously think about the school’s mission and vision and how I am promoting those pieces as a teacher and leader in the school. I also give my current administration a lot more respect and gratitude when it comes to the amount of hard work and the many different hats that they have to wear on a daily basis.

What would you tell (or what advice would you give) prospective students considering the M.A. principal preparation program at Concordia University Chicago?

My biggest piece of advice would be to put a routine into place. It can be difficult to balance work life with student life. Find a routine that works for you that will help you to be successful in both. For me, I discovered that spending one day over the weekend towards my studies helped me to be successful. My other piece of advice is to get to know your professors. Many of them have had years and years of experience, and I learned so much from their experience that has really helped me to understand what it takes to be a successful administrator.

Is there anything else you would like to share? 

Have fun! There will be times that it will be stressful and overwhelming. Just remember to take it one step at a time. And remember, you are learning about a brand new career path! Take in all the new learning experiences as you grow from an educator into a leader!

The post Alumni Spotlight: Gabriel Hoerger, M.A. Principal Preparation appeared first on Concordia University Chicago.

Why did you want to work in education? What inspired you?

As a child, my parents were always very big on education. I had three siblings, and growing up, they always talked to us about the importance of education and doing well in school. They also emphasized the benefits of going to college and having a career. During my school years, I had teachers who taught me more than academics. They taught me things like having good character and not giving up, and they made a positive impact on me. The passion for education that my parents instilled in me and my desire to do make a difference in someone’s life, like some of my teachers had done, led me to decide that teaching was the right career choice for me. 

Why did you choose Concordia University Chicago for your M.A. degree in curriculum and instruction with ESL/Bilingual endorsement?

I chose Concordia University Chicago for several reasons. I liked that they offered programs that fit my interests and needs and that these programs were accredited. I also found it very convenient that all the classes required for my master’s degree program were available online. While completing my program, it was not necessary for me to go to the campus very many times. However, when I did have to go there, I found that the campus was within a reasonable distance from my home and in a convenient location. I had also heard about good experiences that individuals had in their programs at Concordia, so I felt confident that I would have a good experience as well.

What skills did you gain or sharpen through your program at Concordia University Chicago, and how do you use the today?

After completing my M.A. degree in Curriculum and Instruction with ESL/bilingual Endorsement program, I became much more knowledgeable in the area of teaching ESL/bilingual students and an overall better teacher. I learned a great deal of in-depth information about teaching using best practices. Most importantly, I gained a better understanding of how bilingual and ESL students learn. As a dual language teacher, these skills have helped me tremendously. I always have the concepts, skills, and strategies that I learned in my program in mind when teaching my students. This program helped me better understand my students, how they learn, and how to help them to be successful.

How has your master’s degree impacted you in terms of your current position or a position you’d like to attain in the future?

My master’s degree has helped me to become more of an expert in my field. I feel more confident in knowing what my students need and how to meet their needs. I also believe that it has helped me to stand out as a leader in education. In the future, I would like to have a position where I could possibly teach teachers in the school setting or even in a college setting. My degree has helped me to go in this direction because I have a much deeper understanding of important areas of curriculum and instruction such as planning, differentiation, and teaching ESL/bilingual students.

What was a challenge you faced during your curriculum and instruction program, and who or what helped you overcome it?

One of the biggest challenges that I faced during my program was balancing my personal life, work, and school. It was a lot, and I often found myself extremely overwhelmed. However, taking advantage of the flexibility that my program offered really helped me to deal with this. I worked on my schoolwork during times that were most convenient for me, and that worked best around my personal life and work schedule. My classmates also played a large part in helping me to overcome this challenge. While communicating on class assignments, we often shared our feelings with one another and found that we were all struggling with this same issue. This led to us becoming supportive of each other and often encouraging one another.

What was the biggest takeaway from you curriculum and instruction program?

The biggest takeaway from my program was that as teachers, we never stop learning. When I started my program, I had been teaching kindergarten for over five years. I felt like I was an experienced kindergarten teacher and I knew what I was doing. However, I learned that quite the opposite was true. There was a lot that I did not know, even as an experienced teacher. Not only did my program help me to see that there was a lot that I did not know, but it also helped me to understand some of the things that I was missing.

What would you tell (or what advice would you give) prospective students considering the M.A. curriculum and instruction with ESL/Bilingual endorsement program at Concordia University Chicago?

This program requires lots of dedication and hard work. However, it is well worth it. If you want to grow as a teacher and offer your students, especially ESL/bilingual students, the best learning opportunities possible, then this is a great program for you. This program will help you to gain a deeper understanding of curriculum and instruction, especially as it relates to ESL/bilingual education. It will teach you to see learning through the eyes of these students, and to have a clearer understanding of how to meet their needs. Furthermore, if you are looking for a program that is offered completely online, but still yields the same results as that which is offered in a classroom setting, then this program is a good choice.

The post Alumni Spotlight: Janet Blackmon, M.A. in Curriculum & Instruction with ESL/Bilingual Endorsement appeared first on Concordia University Chicago.

Why did you want to work in education? What inspired you?

My freshman year of high school, I was blessed with an English teacher who had a love for education, an interest in each of her individual students, and a true desire to not just educate, but to be effective. Additionally, she displayed a quality that as a fourteen-year-old, I had not yet experienced in school: Passion. When discussing literature, her eyes would light up and she spoke as if she were the author discussing her inspirations for writing, her life experiences that prompted her writing, her loves and her losses. She was fervent in her literary opinions and challenged her students to disprove and support her literary sentiments. School was no longer the place where knowledge was dropped upon me, but a place where ideas were exchanged, learning was reciprocal, and lives were changed. I never wanted this to end, and so, at that moment, I was inspired to become what I had learned she was: a true educator.

Why did you choose Concordia University Chicago for your master’s degree in reading education?

At the time of my decision to seek a master’s degree, several of my colleagues were students at Concordia University Chicago and often spoke about the manageability of the coursework load, the accessibility of the program, as each of them were in cohorts that met much closer to his or her house than the actual campus, and most important to me, they loved the instructors, their passion for learning, and that many of them were current public school teachers as well, who could understand and address current educational issues. I was sold!

What skills did you gain or sharpen through your program at Concordia University Chicago, and how do you use them today?

As an inner city educator, yearly, I am faced with a wide range of students with varying degrees of knowledge, and as a secondary education certificate recipient, much of my undergraduate education assumed that students in the sixth grade and beyond had already acquired skills that many of my students had not. I needed to learn to identify and remediate deficiencies common in younger grades. Through Concordia University Chicago’s reading program, I learned how students acquire literacy knowledge, environmental factors that enhance or diminish their ability to do this as well as some of their counterparts, and most importantly, how to identify specific deficiencies and implement practical strategies to address them either as a reading specialist or within the context of the classroom. This helps me every day as now my differentiation of instruction is intentional, focused, and I feel better prepared to actually address the issue, helping my students swim towards proficiency and not just float through the year.

How has your reading education degree impacted you in terms of your current position or a position you’d like to attain in the future?

Another unexpected aspect of my reading education program was that I not only learned to remediate, but I also learned to challenge students who are higher performing. As I now teach in a college preparatory setting where many of my students are high performing and few are in need of remediation, as a result of my reading education at Concordia University Chicago, I feel confident in challenging my students, choosing academically yet developmentally appropriate literature, and creating questions that engage, challenge, and encourage critical interaction with texts. Additionally, my reading education has been helpful to informing specific accommodations and modifications that will best help my students with 504 and Individualized Education Plans.

What was a challenge you faced during your reading education program, and who or what helped you overcome it?

The biggest challenge I faced during my reading education program was time management. In addition to lesson planning, paper grading, and other responsibilities that come with having a full-time teaching position, I now had all of the responsibilities of being a full-time student. What helped me overcome this was my students. If I was to be the teacher I once had who poured everything she had into her students, I had to acquire the knowledge to do so. Although it seemed like more work in the immediate, I knew once I was better at teaching my students where they were currently and utilizing effective practices to get them where they needed to be, my day-to-day work would be easier and more meaningful, and that is what pushed me.

What was the biggest takeaway from your reading education program?

My biggest takeaway from the reading education program is that no one is born disinterested in reading. I learned that if non-readers are created then so are life-long readers. This idea that either students liked to read or did not was replaced with the idea that disinterested readers can be converted into life-long readers through exposure to a variety of literature, remediation of any deficiencies that would diminish a student’s confidence in his or her reading ability, and attention to his or her personal interests, and it was my job to try.

What would you tell (or what advice would you give) prospective students considering the M.A. reading education degree program at Concordia University Chicago?

The advice I would give prospective students considering the M.A. reading education program is in the form of a quote I once read and never forgot: “There’s a difference between teaching and reaching.” Teaching a curriculum to the best of one’s ability can only happen if one is able to identify the varying ability levels of each of his or her students and teach to them. The reading education program allowed me to do that. I am no longer just teaching a curriculum; I am teaching and reaching my students, and it is the best feeling in the world.

The post Alumni Spotlight: Shakura Weathers, M.A. in Reading Education appeared first on Concordia University Chicago.

Why did you want to work in education? What inspired you?

As a child my stuffed animals were the most educated in town, and my chalkboard easel with colored chalk was likely the best gift that Santa ever brought me. From five years old, I was certain that I wanted to be a teacher, and I lived for Institute Days in my district so that I could “help” my mother teach kindergarten in her district.

Oddly enough, my mother was the one to initially caution me against going into education because of the political shifts that she felt detracted from the best interest of children, teachers, and families. However, despite her frustrations, she remained in education and helped lobby for a more progressive education system. She was passionate about making change that was meaningful rather than just for the sake of change, and her determination has inspired me to pick up where she left off.

Why did you choose Concordia University Chicago for your principal certification?

Prior to becoming a teacher, I studied child law and earned my master’s in social work. My desire to work with children never wavered, but I found that I was my happiest while in the classroom. There aren’t many professions where you can say that you laugh at least once every day – even on your most frustrating day. Of course, that is the luxury of working with children. Their optimistic view of the world is contagious.

Considering leaving those happy four walls of my classroom for a more managerial position is a struggle, but Concordia’s unique commitment to servant leadership helped give voice to the urge that I felt to initiate change from a more systemic level, and the affordability and flexibility of their schedule for working teachers made it the perfect fit.

What skills did you gain or sharpen through your program at Concordia University Chicago and how do you use them today?

While I have not yet investigated principalship opportunities, I have brought that servant leadership model into my classroom and into my involvement in my district. Quarterly student and parent surveys guide my classroom expectations and procedures because they help me to understand the needs of those specific stakeholders, which we sometimes forget is the purpose of schools and education in the first place.

I also better understand the concept of learning and assessment alignment. Leading my department in creating more standards-based practices and reporting has been one of the most challenging and worth-while endeavors I’ve experienced as an educator, and it has forced us to reflect on our purpose, structure, and effectiveness as teachers. Without Concordia’s final internship project, I may never have had the opportunity.

How has your principal certification impacted you in terms of your current position or a position you’d like to attain in the future?

Since finishing my principal certificate, I have used my knowledge of the education system in my leadership role on the district’s union. Having this more well-rounded point of view has helped clarify for me the needs of both teachers and administrators at the micro and macro levels. It has given me a broader perspective that helps me create a more cohesive district that best meets the needs of students, families, and all faculty. It also gave me the confidence to mentor my first student-teacher because Concordia’s framework for leadership focuses so heavily on the importance of instructional coaching.

What was a challenge you faced during your principal certification program, and who or what helped you overcome it?

I have studied and taught at Christian schools for most of my life, but the faculty at Concordia lives these values in a way that I had not experienced before. As is the case with most students who attend Concordia, I am a diligent student and a bit of a perfectionist. Feeling vulnerable isn’t something to which I often admit, and I have high expectations for myself.

There was a moment at Concordia that really helped to reframe some of that for me, though. It forced me to acknowledge the human side of myself and of learning. My father was permanently injured and I had to take over as his caregiver and legal guardian. The emotional and physical exhaustion was visibly noticeable. When I opened up to my cohort, the outpouring of sympathy and kindness reinforced for me that this was a safe place. My professor even insisted that I go home, “eat something and rest.” He posted the slides from the class for me, and I didn’t have to take any time off. I am not sure that I had always shown the same grace and mercy to my own students, but I am mindful of that lesson now.

What was the biggest takeaway from your principal certification program?

Undeniably, the best part of Concordia’s program is the relationships built within the cohort. The bond that you form with your cohort creates a support system that motivates and energizes you. We looked forward to those four hours together every week, and we often chose to get together outside of that time, too. Moreover, for the eight weeks that we were with a professor, he/she felt like one of the group. They modeled flexibility, empathy, knowledge, experience, and servant-leadership in their interactions with students. It was clear from orientation that these are values prized by Concordia.

Being back in school while working full-time also reminded me what it felt like to be on the other side of the desk, and this I something all teachers could likely benefit from after teaching for several years. Sometimes we forget how challenging it is to balance the academic workload with commitments outside of school. Putting myself in the shoes of a student again reminded me how important it is to empathize with this more human side of learning. Students need a safe place to learn, to be vulnerable, and be known as a whole person. As a principal, I hope to create that culture for students, teachers, staff, and families, as well.

What would you tell (or what advice would you give) prospective students considering the principal certification program at Concordia University Chicago?

It is daunting to take on graduate courses while working full-time, but this program is designed specifically for that situation. You not only expand your learning, you form strong connections with people who share the same goals. Having at least a few years in education before taking on a leadership role may provide a little more perspective on the system as a whole, but once you are in the program, everyone at Concordia is invested in your success. Don’t be afraid to ask.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

At whichever level of education I end up, Concordia University Chicago has taught me to keep learning as the central focus of each endeavor and that it is through our actions as much as our words that we create positive change. My career path has been a winding road, but my five-year-old-self would not be at all surprised that my dream of being an educator finally came true.

The post Alumni Spotlight: Katlyn Culligan, Principal Certification appeared first on Concordia University Chicago.