Week 1 – AHH!
Hello! I will start by saying my life motto is fake it until you make it. Make of that what you will.
A quick introduction to me before I get into the knitty gritty. My name is Kate Sparks. I grew up in LA (Pasadena, CA to be more specific) with two brothers, two parents, one dog, and one cat in a large house that my father built with his own hands. (It took 3 and 1/2 years and was ENDLESS). I went to Purdue University located in Indiana where I majored in Elementary Education, graduated, then went to UCLA to get a MA in Education. I moved to Washington, DC and was a 5th grade teacher for 2 years before I ended up here. I use too much punctuation, LOVE Diet Coke, and have no idea what I am doing with my life.
At the start of my journey into the foray, I assessed my “soft skills”. I am still a little uncertain what soft skills are, but I took this survey to discover what mine are. Last year, my school embarked on a similar journey to assess our skills so I knew what my general area of expertise would be. I am what you would call an “Initiator”. So, the fact that on this survey my top two skills were leadership and learning to learn was not a surprise (4 in each). My lowest skill (awareness with 1) was also not a surprise. I am not good at self-reflection and know this about myself. This is also an important thing to note when conducting any type of research.
I chose to enter this program because I believe that it can give me the most experience in the areas that I am lacking knowledge and skill. I already have a Master’s degree and learned a lot during my year there. However, the experiments I conducted and papers that I wrote were exclusively in qualitative data. I chose that area for two reasons: I enjoy that type of data more and it is the type that is most often used in the field of Education. It is much more healthy to see students as people rather than numbers; for both students and educators. Still, as an American educator, I know that data and numbers are what are considered more “important”. I wanted to have background in quantitative data for that purpose, but specifically through a lens that supports the humanity of education (hence the inequality and society aspect that drew me in).
For the past two years, I have been an elementary school (ages 10-11) teacher in Washington, DC. I have wanted to be a teacher since I was 5 years old. Growing up knowing you feel like you were destined to do something is a very stressful experience, especially when you “jump ship” two years in. Being an American teacher where you know you’re going to be paid terribly, constantly working, and do work that is entirely thankless was the most jarring thing about the profession. I knew all of that going in, sure, but the workload you have when you’re in the middle is hard to romanticize. Especially during the Pandemic, where everything was doubled. I have always, (and still will always) want to be a teacher with my whole heart. But in order for me to not grow resentful and bitter and angry (three qualities you do not want in your child’s teacher), I need to do something to help the profession.
After the program, I am hoping to impact education a little higher on the totem pole, most likely from a policy standpoint. Where exactly that will take me or what kind of job that will look like is uncertain. But what I do know is eventually I want to return to teaching. I also know that if I return to teaching now, I will burn out within 5 years (as a majority of my colleagues have done in America).
This is why, for my project, I had briefly debated comparing America’s approach to their treatment of teachers with another country or region’s treatment of teachers, potentially analyzing current policies in each of the countries or even in attitudes towards their own professions. I have not become permanently set on this topic. I know for certain that I would like to do something involving education and policy, but am unsure what exactly that will entail. I am enrolled in a great deal of education based courses, so hopefully this will help with my true discovery of my final project. I am excited to use this blog to watch the progression of the project.
Finally….AHHHHH!!!!
-Kate 🙂
Hi Kate…Thank you for bringing your authentic self to this space. Although you mentioned that your score on awareness did not come as a surprise to you, it seems clear that you’ve been able to make sense of your results and have been able to use your journey so far to both bring yourself here and set a direction to where you want to be.
I’m hopeful that you’ll also be able to bring something special to the policy space… the skill of teaching young people is that you lay the foundations and often make complex concepts digestible. A great transferable skill to have and something I feel is needed when formulating accessible policies.
Hi Kate, thanks for sharing! The mention of Pasadena grabbed me, because I was born there and grew up in La Crescenta. It’s been many decades since I’ve lived there, but this part of the world is still my heart. As a parent of a kid in the US school system, I’m grateful to your mission. We need you and all the other you’s that you’ll team up with. The US is indeed focused on the numbers at the expense of learning, including, quality, etc. – and where do we begin with regard to flaws and inequity. One brilliant thing that came out of the pandemic imo was the disruption to education and the production and use of numbers for grades and university application. Let’s seize this little moment to reset priorities, to question and to think/do differently. I’m rooting for you!
Hey Kate, lovely to hear your thoughts. It’s interesting as you’ve come out low on self-awareness but you are self aware enough to know that continuing in your teaching role would have not given you the best outcome (or the kids) and so you’ve looked for another way to help. The UK has similar challenges with it’s education system for sure – my sister recently went on the process of getting qualified to teach here (after many years of education-adjacent roles like sports coaching) and has ended up staying in the adjacent space due to the expected workload of teachers. I’m also seeing more friends move their children into private alternative education models (including homeschooling), which in the UK has traditionally been reserved for the very rich or very left. If you are thinking of doing comparisons perhaps it would be interesting not just to think about regions but maybe different education systems – for example in the UK we have Steiner schools and I know their ethical approach is hugely different to state schools…
The United States also has quite a bit of private education, I believe it is a little more popular there than it is over here. I myself went to private school (and think private school should be something of the past), so that’s an interesting idea for a comparison, especially if it’s becoming more popular here in the UK. Thanks for the input, that’s very helpful! I’d love to talk to you more about it.