MyĀ āPersonal Statementā for my PhD application
Warning: SUPER long post ahead. What follows is the personal statement for my application for NC Stateās PhD in Design program, to begin Fall 2017.
Iād love to hear your feedback!
Iām not an artist. I donāt work in oils on canvas or throw clay into just the right shape. I donāt spend much time thinking about color theory or how to pull together the right elements in the right way to create the most compelling visual effect. Iām not a creative. I donāt have a portfolio of drawings or campaigns from which to pull. I donāt create web interfaces or think about UI. I donāt own expensive pencils or even a subscription to Creative Suite. Iām not a designer. I donāt have a drafting table and rolls of blueprints. I donāt create architectural marvels with CAD and work to raise them from the earth. I donāt have more than a cursory understanding of typesetting and I donāt spend my days sketching or thinking of ways to develop new, beautiful products to be introduced into the marketplace. In many regards, the pursuit of a Ph.D. in Design might seem to be a mismatch. With an undergraduate degree in Business and a Masterās of Education, shouldnāt I pursue education policy? Or at least some kind of doctoral level program in the College of Education? What business do I have in a Design program?
The role of education has always been to get out of its own way. Education is rarely, if ever, for its own sake. Education is the silver bullet not because of what you know, but because of what you can do with what you know. It might, perhaps, be more appropriate to say ālearningā instead of āeducation.ā Learning is about changing the way you see the world around you and developing new models from which you develop new opinions. Learning is taking a pinhole camera and creating a panorama. In my work at the Friday Institute, I have been fortunate enough to be able to tinker and explore new ideas. To play and see how things may or may not work. To puzzle and ponder, open my eyes and wonder. To talk with any number of educators from K-12 classroom teachers to building principals to district superintendents to college faculty and experiment with these ideas. Will students have deeper, richer, more meaningful experiences as a result? What are the pain points and how might I reduce the friction? What changes can I make and then try again? Whether you call it the scientific method, design thinking, iterative design, or even trial-and-error, my work puts me in the midst of some of the toughest work in the realm of education: how do we improve our practice, as educators, for the benefit of our students?
In my first year of teaching, I had applied to be an 8th grade math teacher. I had enjoyed math and wanted to see if I could spark the same interest in others. However, after being hired by a small, rural district in east Texas, I was informed that I would be teaching 6th grade math and 8th grade keyboarding. Keyboarding, as it turns out, is categorized as a ābusinessā class and since I had a Bachelorās degree in Business Administration, the principal thought it a natural fit. I was not, however, particularly excited about teaching a class that, when I took it in middle school, had stolen all joy from the computer lab, the one place school was supposed to be fun. I resolved, on behalf of my students, that they would enjoy the computer lab and learn something along the way. I went to work creating a new kind of classroom. The first problem I faced was that I had 25 teenagers and, since I had come upon my career nontraditionally, had none of the requisite skills with which to manage my classroom. So I created a business simulation experience, where students would learn to type as well as how to format specific documents by working through a series of required document types, but instead of each student working on an individual packet, I put them in teams of 5. Each team then had a āCEOā that was responsible for overseeing their understanding of correct formatting, typing technique, and even monitoring their teamās overall behavior in class. I, then, worked exclusively with the CEOs, helping them to understand what to look for, how to format the documents themselves, and coaching them through some of the difficult issues that invariably arose in a group of two dozen thirteen and fourteen year-olds. I was praised at the end of the school year by both my principal and my superintendent for my innovative classroom practices, but the truth was that these practices were borne not from any particular pedagogical insight but rather my own naĆÆvetĆ©.
In the interview for my second teaching job at a very large, urban school district, the principal mentioned that he wasnāt actually sure what was involved in the open position but that, āthey make a lot of posters and the kids seem to like it.ā Upon accepting the position teaching Technology Applications at the 8th grade level, I was congratulated and given carte blanche to create the class however I saw fit. And so, as a second-year teacher with essentially no formal training in how to teach, I started writing my own curriculum for a class in which I had no prior experience. I borrowed some of the structures from my business simulation but ultimately landed on a class that was set up much more like a production studio with creative products, open-ended assignments, and rolling deadlines that allowed for multiple attempts based on feedback they received. One year, students worked as travel agents, creating compelling pitches for where to go on your next vacation. Another year, they made short films where they wrote, storyboarded, directed, filmed, and edited their original creations. In my third year, they worked as political consultants, selecting a candidate and then working to get them elected President. In each of these projects, I was far more focused on what was happening between their ears than the raw quality of their work and, as a result, many students felt the freedom to continue developing their skills outside of class, creating websites, learning to write code, learning new video editing techniques, and more, far exceeding what I could have taught them in the constraints of a one-semester, 90-minute block schedule. It was the boundless possibility of technology as experienced by my students that piqued my interest in a Masterās of Education, focused on Educational Technology Leadership. I wanted to grow. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to improve. I wanted to expand my influence and help other teachers discover what had been revealed to me through these four years as a Ā classroom teacher. I had already started presenting at conferences and really enjoyed getting to share my ideas with others as well as continually feeding my own desire to learn and grow.
I would move from the classroom into an instructional coaching role in Austin, Texas to assist with an iPad initiative that would provide a device for every student and teacher in the district. My role was to work with middle school teachers to create new learning opportunities and I found myself again trying to blend a great student experience, strong learning outcomes, and ways for technology to create modalities of learning previously not possible. It was in this role that I really began to expand where I sought input for new ideas. I was fortunate enough to be a part of EdTech Austin, located in a downtown startup coworking space where I could connect with other educators and some entrepreneurs and ask more expansive, generative questions. These opportunities propelled me into a consulting role for a number of education technology startups, helping them to create new products and strategies to better serve teachers.
I was hired at a middle school in Chapel Hill shortly after moving to North Carolina and was given great latitude to design and execute a new vision for what teaching and learning might look like in that school. My thinking would shift again, this time expanding to encompass not just classroom experiences, but organizational structures and methods for systemic change. It was here I caught the attention of the Friday Institute. I was invited to facilitate one of their programs aimed at instructional coaches and not long after this, I was asked to join the team full-time. In this role, I am able to leverage the whole of my experience as well as untried, divergent theories. I am able to work with any variety of education stakeholders and not just hear about what they need, but Iām able to experience it for myself and help create mutually beneficial solutions.
In truth, I am an artist. My media are my learning experiences. My canvas is a room full of educators, wondering what their day holds in store. My muse is a vision for the future where students play substantive roles in creating their own destiny, well-equipped with the skills and dispositions theyāll need to take them there. Instead of color theory, Iām digging into behavioral psychology and organizational politics and neo-constructivist pedagogy. Iām spending a great deal of time pulling together the right elements to create the perfect effect: Iām changing what you believe to be possible. In truth, I am a creative. I have compiled a decade of research and practice into a portfolio that I can pull from at will. I spend a great deal of time in UX design, but instead of wireframes, I rely on sentence stems and metacognitive questioning strategies. At my core, Iām in sales. Will you ābuyā with your time and your teaching what Iām trying to sell you? Will my sales pitch resonate through compelling design, meeting a need you felt but had never named? In truth, I am a designer. At my desk are notebooks and Google Drive files full of blueprints for how to facilitate deep, meaningful change personally and organizationally. I spend my days sketching notes about how best to connect you to a future you havenāt seen, a reality unknown. I am trying to design and create much more than a product: I am creating the very capacity youāll need to create products for yourself.
In this spirit, I pursue my Ph.D. in Design. My strengths lie in my ability to take what has been a heretofore unconventional path and show others how to blaze their own trail. Ā I am not naive to what I lack, particularly in terms of the āhard skillsā of design, but have yet to shy away from a learning experience that didnāt also refine and sharpen my understanding and expertise. Further, I look forward to being able to work with trained designers and creatives, perhaps even in a studio setting, to be able to see how we might complement one another to create new opportunities at State, in North Carolina, and even around the country. Through research, through iteration, through design I am privileged to work alongside the best educators our state has to offer, helping to raise a new creative class. But Education cannot afford to remain in its walled garden. Education must reclaim its heritage rooted in learning, one that always excelled when it eschewed the silo in favor of the studio; when it remembers that it is in the diversity of our backgrounds and experiences that we find particularly interesting and nontraditional solutions to the problems we face. NC State offers a world-class College of Design and excels in its ability to bring together elite minds that both think nontraditionally and then do the extraordinary. I seek to continue this longstanding tradition of designing the future for our state, for our country, and for our world.
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