Synthesis Essay:
Bringing Changes to Working and Teaching
I am delighted to be nearing the end of my current learning journey, but this action also brings a lot of reflection of the years and courses that are in my past. At the onset of this program, my intentions were to bulk up my resume and create a steppingstone to work towards my PhD. I had already completed a post graduate degree with my Master of Business Administration, but the school I was vying to attend did not consider my education accredited enough to even consider me as a candidate. I did not just throw a dart at a program listing and land on this program, I considered my future desires and possible timelines. With this interesting path to my current location, I am surprised by the amount of change I experienced throughout the program. I have learned an immense amount of information that was accumulated through each vastly difference class I took.
In a contrast to any course that I have taken before, the Creativity in Teaching and Learning class in Fall of 2017 was beyond any expectations. I have never experienced such freedom in assignments and encouragement to push myself outside of the regular realm of traditional education. The assignments provided in the course were all ‘outside-of-the-box’ and stimulated the mind to look at things in different ways. Specifically, the class requirement was to create a course-directed notebook and reflect on notebooks from other classmates. I think the largest lesson I learned from these exercises was the way I defined creativity and how I could use this new definition in my future teaching career. As part of one of the assignments, I had to select a person I thought had a creative mentality and define what makes them creative. The selection of my person was easy as I have always admired her ability to see beauty in things in much different ways that I had formerly. My university dorm mate always had the most colourful wardrobe, most wild ideas, and an ability to find happiness in any situation. Thinking back now, I am not sure how such opposites became such good friends, but I am glad to have found her. The ability to take her creativity and break it into pieces for the course assignment is something I will carry with me for more than just a teaching career. The largest lesson I will continue to follow in this aspect of my graduate work is to not worry about other’s opinions of my creativity and to help my future students think the same way. I seldom post photos of myself on social media because of my self-conscious issue, but she posts daily and likely does not care what people think of her photos. I want to use all the creative aspects I learned in this course to encourage creativity in my lesson planning in the future. I think adding some of the fun reflections into my syllabus will be a welcome change to my planned human resources curriculum.
As I continued with my coursework throughout the years, another course that changed my perspective was EAD864 Adult Career Development. This course was more focused on the aspects of developing a career in adulthood than it was in teaching courses, but it was also an enlightening reflection on how learning does not end when you graduate. The main project of this course followed along Dr. Danielle Ofri and her writings in her book Incidental Findings. When I first started reading the novel, I was worried I had started the wrong class. I was uninterested in reading about a doctor and did not understand the relevance between my Master of Education and the writing in the book. As the contemplation activities began, the importance of this course came to fruition. The most relevant part of the book to my current and future situation is the importance of trust within a workplace. Dr. Ofri demonstrates how trust plays a role in her adult career development and how she needs to ensure she obtains and maintains that trust as a doctor. In my career, the ability to trust a colleague outweighs many other personality aspects in a workplace by leaps and bounds. If I have trust and confidence in a colleague and they reciprocate, there is no limitations to our working relationship. As I continue to work towards being an instructor in human resources, I plan on highlighting the importance of trust in work relationships, especially within the human resources community. Oftentimes, human resources involve sharing plenty of confidential information and trusting that information remains secretive. The only way to work effectively within this environment is establishing valued and reciprocated trust. If I can convey the message of the importance of human relations to my future students, I will feel accomplished in my abilities of an instructor.
The final course I consider having a great impact on me is ED800 Concepts of Educational Inquiry. This course is an early requirement of the Master of Education and must be completed within the first few classes of my course plan. The project within this course that changed my mentality on education was as assignment on a movie called Whale Rider. This movie followed a traditional Maori tribe during a difficult time of transition from an old chief to a new chief. What was most interesting about this process is that the tradition indicated the first-born child would become the next chief and that first born child was female. For the first time in the tribe’s history, a female chief was aligned to take leadership. The reason this course resonated with me is the ability for something traditional to be revolutionized by the entire tribe and how that concept could be transitioned into the traditional teachings of human resources courses. The entire community within the movie was backing the female leader and were working together to ensure the current chief would overwhelmingly accept the change to tradition. The person who made the decision, the chief, was the last person to understand the importance and requirement of this change. I think this lesson brings the importance of not giving up on your dreams, even if the person who is responsible does not agree. There is always opportunities to make changes that will be accepted if given the time to allow people to change with the times. This movie also brought to light the importance of diversity and inclusion within the human resources courses and how I should ensure I add that aspect to all my teachings. In recent years, there has been a grand shift in hiring and maintaining talent and diverse employees, which starts at attacking the negative biases and beliefs at the beginning of the hiring process. If an elderly tribe chief can learn to accept what is best for the tribe, I can use this movie to help teach future human resources professionals that all hiring managers can be taught the same lessons over time.
The many years I have spent within my Master of Education courses have changed many ways I currently complete my job as a recruiter in a manufacturing company. As highlighted above, I have worked hard to include more creativity in my current function. This creativity has allowed me to improve the onboarding process for new hires and make their first day less boring. By using the creativity that I learned within the program, I have updated my slide, changed my colouring, improved my attitude, and tried to include diversity into my first day. Along with creativity, the importance of trust within a workplace has become a highlight that I will continue to strive for as I work along my adult career development path. I have tried to ensure I share with my colleagues that I trust their abilities and in return I ask for them to share the same amount of trust. The best workplaces have high levels of trust and modeling high trust to new hires and close colleagues is the best way to help my organization become the best. Also, working towards updating old traditions is one of the biggest ways I have changed since I have started in the course. I have learned that just because something has always been done a certain way, it does not mean it needs to always be done that way. I know I will carry this notion with me after I obtain my first college teaching career. I want to ensure my course is taught in a way that is engaging and new and not follow the traditional teachings of previous years. I understand the requirements to follow the curriculum, which I will make sure is met, but I will also use my creativity to bring new life to the class. Finally, the encouragement to bring about better diversity and inclusion is something that has changed me from within this master’s course, as well as in my personal life. Human Resources is the beginning step of creating equality within a workplace and preaching diversity and inclusion is the way to help get the message across. The Maori tribe was able to overcome sexism within their traditional tribe, so working towards equality in gender and race can happen within a workplace. I want to ensure this message is prominent in all my future endeavours.
Overall, I have enjoyed my years working through my Master of Education and I am hopeful for what the years ahead hold. The three courses I highlighted above discuss how these changes came to fruition and my hopefulness of what the future of these changes hold. I know the program has changed many aspects of my thoughts towards my workplace, my future educational goals, and towards my future teaching goals and I want to ensure these changes are implemented in all my future endeavours.