SMSU Graduate Program in ED and SPED
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My favorite thing with working with kids is when
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They don't understand a concept or idea and you can help explain it to them
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And suddenly that light goes on and it suddenly clicks for them and they understand.
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That’s just such a fun feeling for them to
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Finally understand and be able to be the one to help them understand.
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I actually decide I wanted to be an elementary school teacher back when I was in elementary school. Anytime I would play house,
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I’d play school and I'd be the teacher and I had worksheets and I had different
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Things and my brother was an okay student. This year I started full time as a 5th
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And 6th grade language arts teacher. Along with completing my master's I’ve used a lot of my
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Knowledge and information from the professors to incorporate into my classes.
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In a master’s science and education program,
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Our first emphasis area that we offer is teaching, learning, and leadership. In this emphasis we have teachers who are taking the program
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To enhance their teaching and also to enhance the learning of their students. I graduated from SMSU with my undergrad
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Back in the year 2002,
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And I chose SMSU as a
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Graduate program because it’s close to home and it allowed me to
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Travel there on weeknights, take the classes, and work on the projects with
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Classmates.
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I chose
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Phonics as a topic of study because it's something that my students in
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My 1st grade class deals with on a daily basis.
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It’s something that I feel is very important to their developing reading skills. The literature
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View is a
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Component of the action of research project that we do as a final project in the
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Teaching, learning and leadership program
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In 1st grade the students come in with low ability in reading and they’re so eager to learn and improve
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The smiles on their faces when they bring about new information or reach new challenges is something that you
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Take with you day to day.
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In our sports leadership emphasis
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We have individuals who are interested in working
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At the college level
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As coaches or teaching in the coaching field.
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The reading licensure emphasis is one
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Where teachers can become K-12 specialists of reading.
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In addition we just added English as a second language emphasis
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And so teachers can work with students who are learning how to speak English within the field
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Emphasiarys also that we have that are offered totally online are our Math emphasis and our English emphasis
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This is designed for secondary math and English teachers who would like to enhance their teachings of the students in their classrooms
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They also might be interested in teaching the college in the classroom courses
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Or they may be interested in teaching in the 2 year community college
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Students work hard in our course. There
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Are a lot of papers and there are group presentations
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And things like that they need to do other such assignments
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But it’s very worthwhile
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At the end they say “Oh I didn’t know that I could do that and now I see that I did that I made it”
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And it’s just a wonderful thing
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I think they’ll find it’s a very friendly, accepting atmosphere which is something that we strive for
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It’s definitely a do-able program
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It is a lot of a work and it is something that you have to be dedicated to doing
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But after completing these two years of Grad School
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I am very happy with everything that I have learned and also everything that I am able now to incorporate into my classroom and into my teaching
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The areas that we can get yours masters in Special Education are
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EBD, Emotion Behavior Disorders, Learning Disabilities, Early Childhood Special Education, and Developmental Delays
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We also have recently developed and are now offering an Autism Certificate
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When meeting with students
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I sit down with them and if they have a particular area where they have expertise in
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And they want to do something else
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We can define and look at their program and make it a program that is going to be usable for them
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And being a small institution, we all work together in Education Department to do that
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One of the biggest moments in my education as a graduate student
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Is probably working on my thesis and having to research
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And then take that information that I learned and put it into the classroom with my students
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I looked at the comprehension and engagement of students with these literature circles and without
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So I looked at their comprehension before using literature circles and then I measured it afterwards
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And it did show that the students all increased in comprehension how much they remembered from a book
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So it was something that I wasn’t standing up the front teaching
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It was them in charge and they were involved with what they were learning.