MURFREESBORO, Tenn. —
Wrapping up her second year as an assistant principal at Oakland Middle School
in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Annie Ralston is spending her weekends paving the
way for more career opportunities by pursuing an advanced degree at Middle
Tennessee State University.
Ralston is enrolled in the MTSU College of Education’s
doctoral program for Assessment, Learning and School Improvement. Ralston started
teaching at Oakland Middle four years ago as an eighth grade social studies
teacher when the school first opened its doors within Rutherford County Schools.
She’s now embracing her role as an administrative leader at the school and is
scheduled to graduate from MTSU in August 2016.
“This (doctoral) program is amazing. I use it all the time,”
she said. “Every weekend after class, I go back to my house and I plan how I’m
going to implement what I learned into school. Then I start implementing the
plans on Monday.”
MTSU has been a leader in preparing teachers and
administrators for more than a century, and that role has grown in importance
as K-12 education reforms sweep through the state and nation.
From its foundation as the Middle Tennessee State Normal
School in 1911, the university’s mission as a teacher-training institution has
grown, and the commitment to serving a leadership role in improving Tennessee’s
teacher workforce remains central to the MTSU identity.
MTSU College of Education Dean Lana Seivers emphasizes that
a master’s or doctoral degree in education can:
- Help a teacher become a
more effective educator;
- Increase a teacher’s
earning power over the course of a career, and
- Help a teacher qualify for
advancement into leadership positions or administration.
While recently revised state guidelines have reduced the
number of incremental pay increase steps in teacher salaries, “the fact remains
that a teacher in Tennessee does make a higher salary with an advanced degree,”
said Dr. Michael Allen, dean of the College of Graduate Studies at MTSU.
In addition, he noted that many Tennessee school districts
do support their teachers’ pursuit of graduate education.
For Ralston, the pursuit of an advanced degree is also showing
tangible benefits in the classroom all along her journey toward “Dr.” status.
The key has been putting the theory and practical research knowledge base learned
in the university classroom into practice inside the walls of Oakland Middle,
she said.
“It’s helping with student learning. It’s helping implement
a culture at my school,” said Ralston, mentioning a book written by nationally
known education reformer Anthony Muhammad that she read and in turn had her
teachers read.
“This is something that is helping my school, currently, and
can be expanded and extended into the future.”
Ralston is in a cohort group with 19 other students. The
intimacy of the small group allows for greater collaboration and idea sharing.
“We do a lot of group discussions. We have become a family,”
she said. “We talk when we’re not in class. We email and we Facebook all the
time, we’re asking each other questions: ‘How would you handle this situation
at work?’, things like that.
“We’re reading, we’re discussing what we’re reading, then we
try to use what we’re reading in large projects. We learn from each other a
lot.”
Ralston and her classmates will play an important role in Gov.
Bill Haslam’s “Drive to 55” initiative, which seeks to bring the percentage of
Tennesseans with college degrees or certifications to 55 percent by the year
2025.
MTSU teaches the teachers who will ultimately help achieve
that goal. In fact, MTSU produced significantly more licensed teachers — 540 —
than any other program in Tennessee in 2011, the most recent year of available
data from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.
Teachers can build upon a strong undergraduate experience by
getting an advanced degree at a university founded on pedagogy.
“Our programs at MTSU focus on what we have known for a long
time — the fundamentals of education,” said Seivers, who served as Tennessee
commissioner of education under Gov. Phil Bredesen.
“We are not trendy or fad-driven: our programs help teachers
deal with whatever comes their way. We have always kept our focus on what helps
teachers teach and students learn.”
For example, MTSU’s master’s programs address many critical
needs — reading, inclusion, counseling, English as a Second Language — and can
help teachers now. The strength of these programs is their
ability to help improve teachers’ classroom practice, add areas of licensure or
help propel them into administrative roles.
Neil Watson, in his first year as an assistant principal at
Cascade High School in Bedford County, Tennessee, is in the administrative
licensure program at MTSU and graduated this spring.
Before becoming an assistant principal, Watson spent several
years in the classroom as a science and social studies teacher. The MTSU
graduate program allows Watson to earn the master’s degree necessary to take
the state licensure examination for administrators.
Watson feels the classes he’s taken in the program, such as
school finance, school law and current events in education, will be “very
beneficial” in his career because they help build the foundation needed to be a
well-rounded, knowledgeable administrator. Issues such as legal requirements,
school maintenance, public relations and transportation require a wider breadth
of training.
“This program is built around helping a future administrator
understand all of those foundational pieces to what’s going to take place when
you step into this role,” Watson said, adding that an administrator also must
become “the instructional leader” for faculty regarding the latest teaching
strategies or compliance with initiatives such as Common Core.
That’s what makes the MTSU master’s program so satisfying
for him.
“The professors that we have, I like that they are in the
field,” he said. “Most of them have been assistant principals, principals or
even superintendents from other schools and districts. They’re current,
hands-on every single day.”
Meanwhile, MTSU’s doctoral programs are unique in the
nation. The Ph.D. in Literacy helps teachers understand the process of
children’s learning, and the Ed.D. in Assessment, Learning and School
Improvement is designed to equip teachers and administrators to make immediate
improvements in their schools.
In addition, MTSU has interdisciplinary programs with the
College of Basic and Applied Sciences — a Ph.D. in Mathematics and Science Education
— for teachers in those fields.
Danica Wright Booth enrolled in MTSU’s doctoral program in
literacy studies in 2008 and, like Watson, graduated in May. She teaches in
Metro Nashville Public Schools at H.G. Hill Middle School, where she’s taught
eighth grade literacy for the past six years.
She describes the Ph.D. in literacy program as
“multidimensional,” exploring issues ranging from neurobiology (how the brain
works and develops), to how learning is affected by a student with dyslexia or a
student who is an English as a Second Language learner dealing with the accompanying
sociocultural influences.
“We look at every way and everything that could affect a
child learning to read,” Booth said. “It really gives you this comprehensive
overview of who your students are and how best to teach them.”
Booth said her dissertation was related to teaching English
language learners, which directly related to her teaching role at H.G. Hill
where she’s seen a jump in the number of students learning English from 2
percent to 11 percent in two years.
“That’s something we’re seeing across the nation right now,”
she said.
Booth connecting her graduate studies directly to the
realities of students in the classroom comes as no surprise to Seivers. In
making the choice to pursue a graduate degree, according to Seivers: “For most
good teachers, it is not about what they want, but what their students need.”
Ralston, the Oakland Middle assistant principal, encourages
other teachers considering an advanced degree to “just do it.”
“I have never been happier with a program than I am with
this program I’m in right now,” she said. “I would highly recommend it because
it is worth it, for sure.”
“It’s going to be the best move that you could possibly
make,” said Booth. “I know there’s a lot of hesitancy, and it is a long-term
process and it is exhausting, but you come out on the other end a better
teacher.”
Said Watson: “If you think you want to do it, go ahead and
do it.”
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