essay: my future as a learner
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Life 2.0: Learning after Fifty
by Mary Anna Thornton (turned fifty on August 5, 2011)
I haven't wanted the MAET program to end. I’ve learned so much with each class, and I’ve wondered how I will ever keep up with technology innovations without the classes to provide structure and opportunities.
The MAET program has been so important to me in part because I live and work in a uniquely remote location, at a conservation-based boarding school surrounded by thousands of acres of wilderness on the northern Wisconsin border. Living here has many benefits. As I write this, I’m sitting on a rocking chair on the porch of my cabin, comfortably fanned by cool lake breezes despite the high temperatures, looking out on the wildflower garden I’ve planted, and putting down my laptop occasionally to photograph the butterflies, hummingbirds, and dragonflies swooping in to snatch a mosquito or to sip nectar from the purple spikes of wild lupines.
Idyllic though it may be at times, living in the Northwoods has its drawbacks. Opportunities for social connections and collegial support, for example, are limited. I supervise the majority of the school staff, so, for me, collegial support is even more limited than for most school employees. While I value the cordial relationships I’ve developed with most staff members, I’ve learned over the years as an administrator not to look to direct reports for social support and personal connections. Opportunities for professional development are also slim in rural northern Wisconsin, and traveling to good-sized cities involves a five-hour drive to Minneapolis or Madison or an hour's drive to a tiny airport followed by a day-long marathon of flight connections.
So, prior to starting the MAET program, my professional and intellectual growth felt stalled, particularly frustrating to me since I had earned a Ph.D. in anthropology at Northwestern University years ago, with the intent to teach and do research at the university level. By the time I completed my doctorate, however, at thirty, I had two little boys. Repeatedly doing long stints of anthropological fieldwork overseas and moving from university to university to climb the tenure ladder did not seem to me to be compatible with raising a family. Instead, I stumbled into my career in K-12 education and discovered it meshed well with my hopes for my family. My career in K-12 independent education has worked out beautifully for me and my family, and yet I’ve always felt lingering frustration at having given up on a career at the university level.
The MAET program has helped to fill in these gaps in my life: it's given me welcome opportunities to exercise my scholarly side and provided me with a wide social network of colleagues to draw support from. The question for me now is, since the program truly is coming to an end, where will I find my intellectual stimulation and collegial support? What do I do with my desire to follow up properly on my Ph.D. with scholarly research and writing? I’m about to turn fifty – literally, in a few days – so for me this isn’t just about finishing the MAET. It’s a minor midlife crisis: two children are out of the nest and my last little chick has recently metamorphosed into a tall, angular, independent teen; I’m reminded regularly by aches and pains (and by the mirror) that I’ve passed the mid-point of my life; my husband just turned sixty – yikes; and I have a new sense of urgency about doing whatever it is with my life that I think is truly important before advancing years catch up with me.
Because this question has been on my mind for some time now, I have several ideas for my Life 2.0:
1) My school recently set up a partnership with a University of Wisconsin branch. I've been appointed an adjunct professor, and I’ll be teaching my first hybrid graduate course in curriculum and instruction this spring. This appointment is an avenue for combining university-level teaching and research with my K-12 career, and for developing collegial connections with supportive individuals who do not report to me. Teaching online and hybrid courses through UWSP will also keep me learning new technology.
2) I’ve been contemplating possibilities for writing and publishing. I work closely with Conserve School's Academic Dean, who has a Ph.D. from Yale in literature. Between the two of us, surely we ought to be able to write something worthy of publication in a scholarly periodical. We've been carefully collecting and analyzing data on our new school program, with hopes of publishing research results in the next few years.
3) Since starting the MAET program, I’ve begun a school blog, individual teacher websites, a student e-portfolio system, and a school Twitter account. All of these could be improved or enhanced one way or another, and I know I will learn new technology and new skills as I work to make these better.
4) I'm making plans to collaborate with one of our teachers on a Flat Classroom project this year, and as a result I'll learn new educational technology skills and concepts.
5) I’ve been working with colleagues this year to organize and teach a college and career program at our school that students actually like. Usually parents are very enthusiastic about SAT prep, college counseling, and career talks, while high school students are lukewarm at best – for most of them, it’s right up there with a trip to the orthodontist. One of our students wrote memorably in an end-of-semester survey that our college prep sessions were a "snoozefest." As an alternative, we’ve created a once-a-week, afternoon-long mélange of activities during which we bring professionals in various careers to campus. They work alongside our students in some capacity on or near campus. Ideally, they lead students in campus or community service work that relates to their career. While our career visitors work alongside our students, meaningful interactions and communication develop naturally, and both speaker and students enjoy the process immensely. Students are left with admiration for the visitor, a general understanding of how and why the individual trained for and otherwise pursued the career, and a realistic sense of what the visitor does an a day-to-day basis in their career.
My continued involvement in this program provides me with two areas for growth. First, I’ve sent in two proposals for presentations about this program at national education conferences. Second, I hope to find ways to use technology to make the planning for this program less onerous. Several staff members collaborate on the planning, and, for a simple first step, I’d like to find an online calendaring program to ease some of the planning and communication struggles we’ve experienced.
6) I need to choose a few educational technology blogs to follow closely to keep me up-to-date on new technology. Right now I have several in Google Reader that I glance at frequently, but I will get more out of them if I focus more intently on a few.
7) I may continue to take MSU ed tech and ed psych courses occasionally on particular subjects that interest me – quantitative research techniques, for instance. I don’t have a strong background in that area and statistics seem to be becoming only more and more important in educational research.
8) I don’t understand much about networks and computer programming, and I'd like to take online courses to fill this gap in my knowledge.
9) Last night I was frustrated with my school laptop – security strictures were preventing me from downloading a program I wanted – and my 19-year-old sat down next to me and quickly showed several ways of “hacking” through our school security program. I was delighted to be able to successfully download the program yet alarmed to see how easy it is for students to get past the security systems. After my son's impromptu lesson, I decided I should ask my children to teach me about technology more often. While I now have better technical skills in certain areas than my children, they are, of course, infinitely better at whatever it is that young people like to do with computers. Since I’ll be teaching graduate students around their age, and because technology innovations are steered by young people, I need to keep better abreast of trends in how young people use technology. So, I’ll be asking my kids for more informal lessons. (It will also be a great way of maintaining relationships with my fledglings now that they’ve flown!)
10) Finally, I’ve become more and more disenchanted with standard educational programs (even my own) and more and more interested in alternative, tech-based, student-centered, interest-driven education. I know that, over the course of a school career, students waste countless hours while discipline issues, administrative details, and the other necessities of group education are attended to. Even the best teachers and schools can't prevent or work around all of the inefficiencies built into group education. My youngest son, now twelve, just finished an uninspiring 6th grade year, and so we’ve made a family decision to take him out of the regular educational system and homeschool him, leaning heavily on online courses, since both I and my husband are employed (although my husband at this point is semi-retired and has a flexible schedule). Our local public school system has been admirably supportive of our decision and is providing a variety of services to my son and to other home-schooled students so that they -- and we -- can create a tailored mix of home, school, and online experiences. I am hopeful about the possibilities, and I have considered journaling about our family's experimentation with alternative, tech-based schooling, and then perhaps publishing, either through a blog or through a more traditional avenue.
Since I also am an administrator at a specialized school that offers a unique, interest-based semester experience for high school students, it makes sense for me to focus my thoughts both personally (for my son) and professionally (for me as a learner and for my school) on the burgeoning world of alternative, tech-based educational options. It seems like a fruitful area to focus on, considering my recent MAET training, my son’s needs, and the cultural steamroller that online learning, formal and informal, is becoming.
Life 2.0: Learning after Fifty
by Mary Anna Thornton (turned fifty on August 5, 2011)
I haven't wanted the MAET program to end. I’ve learned so much with each class, and I’ve wondered how I will ever keep up with technology innovations without the classes to provide structure and opportunities.
The MAET program has been so important to me in part because I live and work in a uniquely remote location, at a conservation-based boarding school surrounded by thousands of acres of wilderness on the northern Wisconsin border. Living here has many benefits. As I write this, I’m sitting on a rocking chair on the porch of my cabin, comfortably fanned by cool lake breezes despite the high temperatures, looking out on the wildflower garden I’ve planted, and putting down my laptop occasionally to photograph the butterflies, hummingbirds, and dragonflies swooping in to snatch a mosquito or to sip nectar from the purple spikes of wild lupines.
Idyllic though it may be at times, living in the Northwoods has its drawbacks. Opportunities for social connections and collegial support, for example, are limited. I supervise the majority of the school staff, so, for me, collegial support is even more limited than for most school employees. While I value the cordial relationships I’ve developed with most staff members, I’ve learned over the years as an administrator not to look to direct reports for social support and personal connections. Opportunities for professional development are also slim in rural northern Wisconsin, and traveling to good-sized cities involves a five-hour drive to Minneapolis or Madison or an hour's drive to a tiny airport followed by a day-long marathon of flight connections.
So, prior to starting the MAET program, my professional and intellectual growth felt stalled, particularly frustrating to me since I had earned a Ph.D. in anthropology at Northwestern University years ago, with the intent to teach and do research at the university level. By the time I completed my doctorate, however, at thirty, I had two little boys. Repeatedly doing long stints of anthropological fieldwork overseas and moving from university to university to climb the tenure ladder did not seem to me to be compatible with raising a family. Instead, I stumbled into my career in K-12 education and discovered it meshed well with my hopes for my family. My career in K-12 independent education has worked out beautifully for me and my family, and yet I’ve always felt lingering frustration at having given up on a career at the university level.
The MAET program has helped to fill in these gaps in my life: it's given me welcome opportunities to exercise my scholarly side and provided me with a wide social network of colleagues to draw support from. The question for me now is, since the program truly is coming to an end, where will I find my intellectual stimulation and collegial support? What do I do with my desire to follow up properly on my Ph.D. with scholarly research and writing? I’m about to turn fifty – literally, in a few days – so for me this isn’t just about finishing the MAET. It’s a minor midlife crisis: two children are out of the nest and my last little chick has recently metamorphosed into a tall, angular, independent teen; I’m reminded regularly by aches and pains (and by the mirror) that I’ve passed the mid-point of my life; my husband just turned sixty – yikes; and I have a new sense of urgency about doing whatever it is with my life that I think is truly important before advancing years catch up with me.
Because this question has been on my mind for some time now, I have several ideas for my Life 2.0:
1) My school recently set up a partnership with a University of Wisconsin branch. I've been appointed an adjunct professor, and I’ll be teaching my first hybrid graduate course in curriculum and instruction this spring. This appointment is an avenue for combining university-level teaching and research with my K-12 career, and for developing collegial connections with supportive individuals who do not report to me. Teaching online and hybrid courses through UWSP will also keep me learning new technology.
2) I’ve been contemplating possibilities for writing and publishing. I work closely with Conserve School's Academic Dean, who has a Ph.D. from Yale in literature. Between the two of us, surely we ought to be able to write something worthy of publication in a scholarly periodical. We've been carefully collecting and analyzing data on our new school program, with hopes of publishing research results in the next few years.
3) Since starting the MAET program, I’ve begun a school blog, individual teacher websites, a student e-portfolio system, and a school Twitter account. All of these could be improved or enhanced one way or another, and I know I will learn new technology and new skills as I work to make these better.
4) I'm making plans to collaborate with one of our teachers on a Flat Classroom project this year, and as a result I'll learn new educational technology skills and concepts.
5) I’ve been working with colleagues this year to organize and teach a college and career program at our school that students actually like. Usually parents are very enthusiastic about SAT prep, college counseling, and career talks, while high school students are lukewarm at best – for most of them, it’s right up there with a trip to the orthodontist. One of our students wrote memorably in an end-of-semester survey that our college prep sessions were a "snoozefest." As an alternative, we’ve created a once-a-week, afternoon-long mélange of activities during which we bring professionals in various careers to campus. They work alongside our students in some capacity on or near campus. Ideally, they lead students in campus or community service work that relates to their career. While our career visitors work alongside our students, meaningful interactions and communication develop naturally, and both speaker and students enjoy the process immensely. Students are left with admiration for the visitor, a general understanding of how and why the individual trained for and otherwise pursued the career, and a realistic sense of what the visitor does an a day-to-day basis in their career.
My continued involvement in this program provides me with two areas for growth. First, I’ve sent in two proposals for presentations about this program at national education conferences. Second, I hope to find ways to use technology to make the planning for this program less onerous. Several staff members collaborate on the planning, and, for a simple first step, I’d like to find an online calendaring program to ease some of the planning and communication struggles we’ve experienced.
6) I need to choose a few educational technology blogs to follow closely to keep me up-to-date on new technology. Right now I have several in Google Reader that I glance at frequently, but I will get more out of them if I focus more intently on a few.
7) I may continue to take MSU ed tech and ed psych courses occasionally on particular subjects that interest me – quantitative research techniques, for instance. I don’t have a strong background in that area and statistics seem to be becoming only more and more important in educational research.
8) I don’t understand much about networks and computer programming, and I'd like to take online courses to fill this gap in my knowledge.
9) Last night I was frustrated with my school laptop – security strictures were preventing me from downloading a program I wanted – and my 19-year-old sat down next to me and quickly showed several ways of “hacking” through our school security program. I was delighted to be able to successfully download the program yet alarmed to see how easy it is for students to get past the security systems. After my son's impromptu lesson, I decided I should ask my children to teach me about technology more often. While I now have better technical skills in certain areas than my children, they are, of course, infinitely better at whatever it is that young people like to do with computers. Since I’ll be teaching graduate students around their age, and because technology innovations are steered by young people, I need to keep better abreast of trends in how young people use technology. So, I’ll be asking my kids for more informal lessons. (It will also be a great way of maintaining relationships with my fledglings now that they’ve flown!)
10) Finally, I’ve become more and more disenchanted with standard educational programs (even my own) and more and more interested in alternative, tech-based, student-centered, interest-driven education. I know that, over the course of a school career, students waste countless hours while discipline issues, administrative details, and the other necessities of group education are attended to. Even the best teachers and schools can't prevent or work around all of the inefficiencies built into group education. My youngest son, now twelve, just finished an uninspiring 6th grade year, and so we’ve made a family decision to take him out of the regular educational system and homeschool him, leaning heavily on online courses, since both I and my husband are employed (although my husband at this point is semi-retired and has a flexible schedule). Our local public school system has been admirably supportive of our decision and is providing a variety of services to my son and to other home-schooled students so that they -- and we -- can create a tailored mix of home, school, and online experiences. I am hopeful about the possibilities, and I have considered journaling about our family's experimentation with alternative, tech-based schooling, and then perhaps publishing, either through a blog or through a more traditional avenue.
Since I also am an administrator at a specialized school that offers a unique, interest-based semester experience for high school students, it makes sense for me to focus my thoughts both personally (for my son) and professionally (for me as a learner and for my school) on the burgeoning world of alternative, tech-based educational options. It seems like a fruitful area to focus on, considering my recent MAET training, my son’s needs, and the cultural steamroller that online learning, formal and informal, is becoming.