My Growth Continues

My Contribution to My Learning Community

EDLD 5317- 90

EDLD 5315- 90

As the summer session winds down I am reminded that I am closer to reaching a personal goal, and I will be earning my Master's degree. The journey in the ADL program has been life-changing. This program has reignited my passion for learning. I view tasks differently and I am more confident in sharing the knowledge I have obtained. My future goals are to continue challenging my perception and ideas in order to strengthen my beliefs and values of education. Most importantly, I aim to empower other educators in finding their voices and trusting in their pursuit of advocacy for students. My journey in advocating for students and educators is just beginning. I want to provide real change not just on my campus, but in our district and region. Since last October 2022, I continue to reflect on how began as a contributor to my Learning Community, then being an investor in my Learning Community, understanding that my Growth comes in phases, to the present of creating knowledgeable content to assist others in moving forward with the benefits of blended learning.

My WHY has always ignited my passion but reflecting on the two courses, Assessing Digital Learning(5315) and Resources and Digital Environments (5317) prepared me to take on different challenges and the urgency to continue our mission to share our knowledge about blended learning and the successes when incorporating adaptive learning programs. My ultimate goal is equitable learning and I believe the ADL program is equipping me with the resources and learning community to pursue that. The tools I am gaining are effectively connecting and engaging me as a professional. I have transformed from someone who used to listen, then took steps to provide input while learning, and now a learner who listens, collaborates, reflects, and is invested in a blended learning model and planning on sustainable change. Reflecting on my first semester I stayed in the shadows, and learned, but rarely engaged. I can positively say I am closer to not only being an empowered learner but helping others within my organization become empowered. This semester Erika Pena, Ileana Reyna and I were able to connect our Innovation plan to develop and create highly engaging lessons to deliver during our alternative Professional Learning for administrators, K-5 Reading teachers, and students.

Reflection on 5315 and 5317

The 8-week Accelerated ADL program at Lamar allowed me the flexability I needed, and I appreciate that. The program is set up with the full time worker and full time family in mind. This provided me to learn and apply a flipped model by wathcing the recorded sessions in a blended learning model. Watching the recorded sessions allowed me to meet later with my colleagues and discuss weekly topics. Keeping up with discussions was a challenge for me this semester. Although I completed all assignments on time, read and commented on discussions, and viewed all videos. I still found discussions to be my challenge. I found it easier to use the discussions as reflection pieces after the assignments were completed. It could be the way I internalize the information. This is still something I have to tackle and improve on. I knew I could have benefited from delving deeper and branching out to further discuss. I made sure all assignments were turned in on time and I reflected I continued to update and revise my e-Portfolio. I did make sure to update assignments based on feedback left on my blackboard. This semester guided my self-growth as an educator, a colleague and as the leader, I strive to be.

EDLD 5317: Resources and Digital Environments

Resources and Digital Environments challenged me to prepare myself as a future published author and media content creator. This course was a great opportunity to collaborate with Erika Peña and, Ileana Reyna about our next opportunity to share our research and present our evidence. We took our action research from 5315 and connected it to taking the next steps in publishing our article. We started by creating a Publication Outline, which connected our innovation plan to our proposed publication and briefly detailed an introduction. This information was a stepping stone to our Publication Rough Draft, and then to our final Publication. The course took us to research different publication journals and learn their criteria and guidelines to see which one fit our agenda and goal. We want to submit our publication in order to reach a broader audience, but at this time we know we have more research to include. Our Media Project was probably my favorite assignment. This was our promotion pitch for our article, which allowed us to be creative and capture the attention of our audience so they could want to explore and read our article.

EDLD 5315: Assessing Digital Learning

Digital Learning, tasked us with continuing to build on our innovation plan and bridge the connections with action research. While we created our Action Plan Outline we focused on what our main goal, to provide quantitative and qualitative data to present that our adaptive programs within a blended learnig classroom helped with closing academic gaps while increasing motivation and engagement. Our research for our Literature review lend itself to revising and incorporating those same ideas and focus on our final Action Plan-Measurement Strategy Although we are still not 100 percent done with including our quantitative data, we were able to create all the necessary measurement tools and resources to begin as soon as we return to campus. Our data, literature review, and research did prove that when we incorported Lexia Core5 and i-Ready within a blended learning environment, the programs assisted our elementary level students in closing

learning gaps that have been caused by the disrtuption in schooling due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Collaboration and BLIT

The collaborative cohort on GroupMe continues to be a solid foundation for clarity and support. I am a part of a core collaborative group that consists of Erika Peña and Ileana Reyna, who are also my coworkers at Victor Fields Elementary. Dr. Harapnuik allowed us to pursue our innovative plan as a collaborative team and I can say the creativity, passion, and group cohesiveness continue to be phenomenal. Our, Blended Learning Implementation Team (BLIT) is a dynamic blend of all the ADL is teaching us. We are invested in creating equitable learning with the use of blended learning and adaptive digital programs. Together we make a cohesive and synergistic team.

How is the next chapter shaping up…

As I begin to prepare for my final block in Graduate school, I am looking forward to the next block in the ADL program map. I am to complete this chapter of my journey with courses 5318 Online Learning and 5320 CSLE+COVA Capstone. My big takeaway after reviewing these courses is presenting all our collaborative efforts in designing and creating media. I am inspired to have a final opportunity in the ADL to influence minds and know this will not conclude our work but we will be powerfully equipped to change students' lives and influence educators' minds And again, the best is YET to come because all students deserve an equitable learning environment.