Tag: Education

MTOY Essays – Equity in Education

~ Kyle Shack ~ Leave a comment

In the fall of 2023 I was honored to be nominated for 2024-2025 Michigan Teacher of the Year (MTOY). As part of the nomination process, each nominee submitted a collection of essays responding to various prompts related to their career, experiences, key educational issues, and Michigan schools overall. While the audience of each essay was the MTOY committee, it felt inauthentic to keep my ruminations private, languishing in a forgotten folder on my desktop. The opportunity to reflect on these questions and formulate my ideas was a wonderfully rewarding experience twelve years into my career, and one that I would like to share if for no other reason than to push myself to keep these ideas, and the process, at the forefront of my mind while I continue to engage in the deep work that is education.

Formatting note: Each essay was limited to no more than 2 pages, double spaced, size 12 font. My original drafts exceeded this by several multitudes, but I appreciated the exercise in concise expression.

MTOY Essay #2:

What does equity mean to you in the context of education? How do teachers factor into equity? What have you personally done to ensure all students receive an equitable education?

In the field of education, teachers are faced with the challenge of providing high-quality educational opportunities to students with unique backgrounds, experiences, needs, and abilities. Regardless of the teaching context, educators often grapple with issues of equity and the potential negative impacts of inequities. It is essential to recognize the inherent inequalities in the learning journey and to implement systems that support individual student needs in an equitable manner.

Teachers play a crucial role in directly impacting the learning experience for each student in personalized ways. While they cannot single-handedly solve societal inequities, they can create an educational environment that fosters student growth and meets their individual needs. By keeping the focus on learning as the central mission, teachers can design pedagogical approaches that minimize barriers and maximize student success.

The increase of student reading skills has been a focus of our School Improvement Team, particularly for our non-white student population. It was this goal that led me to a conversation with our building librarian about how to more authentically cultivate a culture of reading within our student community. We identified a deficit between the text that students are assigned to read, and the culture, background or interest of some students. To address this we created an independent book project that focused on connecting student learning and student interest authentically, as opposed to prescriptively.  At the start of our course, students choose a book that is of interest to them, and then are given protected reading time in class each week to read. The goal is to address the potential inequity that might exist with the materials traditionally provided within school, as well as student time after school in which much of the student reading is expected to occur. This takes place consistently throughout the course with the culmination being a project where students need to create an artifact that illustrates the connection between a theme from their book and a theme from our Civics course. While it may seem as if those two are disconnected at first, it is actually that perceived disconnection that enhances the rigor of this project. By using student interest, and protected classroom time to facilitate this connection we are able to address multiple inequities that may exist but could have potentially gone unaddressed – that of cultural relevance of the material, and the imbalance of time outside of school to read. 

Providing high-quality education to students with diverse backgrounds and needs requires acknowledging and addressing inequalities. Teachers can make a significant difference by focusing on individual student needs, reevaluating assessment practices, and incorporating student interests into the learning process. Through these efforts, we can create more equitable educational environments and maximize student success.

MTOY Essays – Discovering The “Aha” Moment

~ Kyle Shack ~ Leave a comment

In the fall of 2023 I was honored to be nominated for 2024-2025 Michigan Teacher of the Year (MTOY). As part of the nomination process, each nominee submitted a collection of essays responding to various prompts related to their career, experiences, key educational issues, and Michigan schools overall. While the audience of each essay was the MTOY committee, it felt inauthentic to keep my ruminations private, languishing in a forgotten folder on my desktop. The opportunity to reflect on these questions and formulate my ideas was a wonderfully rewarding experience twelve years into my career, and one that I would like to share if for no other reason than to push myself to keep these ideas, and the process, at the forefront of my mind while I continue to engage in the deep work that is education.

Formatting note: Each essay was limited to no more than 2 pages, double spaced, size 12 font. My original drafts exceeded this by several multitudes, but I appreciated the exercise in concise expression.

MTOY Essay #1:

What motivated you to become a teacher? What was the biggest obstacle you encountered in your journey to becoming a teacher, and how did you overcome that obstacle?

Early in my educational journey, I discovered my passion for working with and helping people. While nearing the end of my Political Science Pre-Law degree in college and contemplating law school, I decided to take an elective called “Reflections in Teaching.” This course opened my eyes to the science of learning and sparked a profound interest in the “aha” moment – the moment when understanding dawns and everything falls into place.

Studying learning and education allowed me to experience and embrace that “lightbulb” feeling firsthand. The more I delved into the field, the more fascinated I became with all the elements that contribute to the process of learning and comprehension. Each time I witnessed that “aha” moment, I realized it was the feeling I had always cherished, and I wanted to explore it further. I wanted to understand how to foster it in others and provide support along the way.

Discovering the intricacies of this epiphany shifted my vision and career path. I made the decision to change my major and pursue a degree and career in education. However, this sudden shift came with challenges. I was well into my junior year of college, and I found myself a year behind my peers who had been dedicated to the field of education from the start. This meant I had to navigate a change in my financial timeline and add over thirty additional credit hours to my educational journey.

To address these deficits I focused my energy on the element of the discipline that had drawn me to the field, which was the process of learning. I knew that extending my degree by thirty undergraduate credits, and the required year of unpaid internship was going to be a strain, so I identified how I could address this while also deepening my understanding. I used this as an opportunity to become a student employee within the College of Education at Michigan State University, serving in the role as a Technical Intern throughout my undergraduate studies. In this role I juggled the act of working and learning to ensure my financial possibilities aligned, but more importantly I took the opportunity to live in the discipline beyond the walls and hours of my teacher prep program. 

As a student employee I served the faculty of the College in their technological needs and was able to turn my relatively late transition into the field of teacher preparation into an opportunity to learn by doing. Assisting academics and practitioners in molding their craft allowed me to think deeply and reflect on the practice, and how I envisioned my own career as a facilitator of learning. Through this experience I truly lived the notion that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone. Without the constraints that guided me toward being a student employee, I am certain I would not have been as successful or prepared when I joined the field as a practitioner.