Time Well Spent

Wow!!  I cannot tell you how excited I am about completing my Master’s degree.  As many of you know, being a wife, mother, full-time teacher and a college student is tremendous work.  This program has taken great dedicated and commitment.  I have thoroughly enjoyed my learning and growing through this program especially the capstone class.  One of my deep felt learnings from this program is the importance of knowing my own biases.  Of course everyone has biases but do people really know their own biases and know how those biases are influencing their work, relationships and ability to help other people.  During this program I found that knowing my own biases and being aware of them is extremely important in forming relationships and helping children reach their developmental potential.  A second deep felt learning from this program is just the knowledge of what diversity entails and the importance of making sure that every family that enters my preschool feels welcomed, needed, visible and appreciated.  A third deep felt learning from this program is the importance and necessity of having strong effective relationships with coworkers, students and the families you serve.  I have always felt this is a very important quality but this program has highlighted the necessity of relationships and their impact on children’s growth and development.  It has also highlighted the necessity of relationships on my own professional growth.

One short-term goal I have is to actually use some of the technology I talked about in my capstone project in my own classroom.  I have already created a Class Messenger account for each of my preschool classes and I am excited to use this technology with my students and their families.  For a long-term goal I would eventually like to be able to use a digital tool such as Evernote to help families have more opportunities to actually see what their children do in class each day.  Another long-term goal would be to continue to learn and grow in the field of early childhood education.  I want to do the best I can do to help reach more children and make an early childhood education more attainable for all children in my city and state.

I would like to say I huge thank you to Dr. Embree for her guidance, encouragement and support throughout this capstone project.  She did a great job pushing me further forward in my thinking.  I believe the capstone class helped me learn and grow the most throughout my educational experience at Walden.  Also a huge thank you to all of my colleagues that have gone through this experience with me.  It was encouraging to learn from each of you and to see different ways of looking at topics through your thoughts and ideas.  I wish you all the best in the future and congratulate you all on achieving such a huge accomplishment. I leave you with this graduation video containing some of my favorite quotes. 

Then for a little fun I wanted to leave you with a video of my son trying body surfing on our family vacation this summer.  The video wouldn't work so I am leaving you with a few pictures!  My son is eight years old and was very nervous and unsure if he was going to try this activity.  In the end he tried it, loved it and did it multiple times.  I think it is a good reminder to all of us of the importance of getting out of your comfort zone, trying something new and watching the amazing results!  Best of luck to all of you in your future endeavors!