CS
Why Exactly Are You In This Program?
I’ve been asked how my Masters of Education program has changed the way I approach my job. On first thought, I would say not in a single way! I’m not in education, haven’t been for fourteen years, and don’t plan on going back to teaching. I am in facilities management where I do work in operations, project management and people management. However, when I look at a few specific courses and skills that were learned, I can see how even though I’m no longer in the Education world, my coursework has helped me tremendously in my career with real estate facilities operations management. Specifically, my courses on leadership, inclusion and portfolios have helped me to succeed in my role.
In my role as a people manager, I have found that one course in particular, Instruction in Inclusive Classroom, has helped me. The course focused on how to build lessons and a classroom that allowed all students to learn, no matter if they had any limitations such as hearing, sight, loss of mobility, attention, etc. In it, we created resources that included closed captioning and voice-overs, we built unit plans that were varied in their approaches and demands so that if a student needed assistance in one project, they wouldn’t in another. The concept stemmed from the idea that you need to think about your lessons from the students’ perspectives.
As a first time manager a few years ago, I found myself in a situation where I couldn’t seem to get through to an employee. Requests that I thought were fairly simple, such as ordering sharpies, were extremely complex and stressful for him. Each task I gave him, I became more and more frustrated that he failed to succeed. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t see things the way I did for my expectations. It came to the point where I had to performance managed him. As I worked through the plan with him, I realized that I needed to also performance manage myself. I was only using my communication style, work methods and description preferences. I spoke in fast, short words assuming he could see the reality in my mind.
In our first meeting for the plan, I heard from him that he was confused, didn’t understand my requests, and didn’t have a clear view of my expectations. I realized that where I’m an “internal” thinker, he was an external one. He needed lots of descriptions and examples and explanations. I had to stop and figure out his learning and communication style and where he struggled. On the second meeting, I explained my revelation, and that I would try to communicate in a way in which he could be successful. Just as a teacher needs to adjust lesson plans to include all students by understanding each one and what works best, as a manager, I need to adjust my communication style so that we could be a better, cohesive team.
Once we started to work together as a team, I found opportunities to lead him. One of my focuses in my grad school program was leadership. I’m sure the official term of the study was educational leadership, but I found that the topics and skills and practices we discussed were universal in leadership and have helped me in both people management and operations management. One class that had a really big impact on how I began to see leadership and how we could build our team was Case Studies in Educational Leadership. Although all three of my leadership courses were wonderful, this one in particular stuck out to me.
We had great subject material and used direct examples from our own careers to study. For me, I was able to take a closer look at my best and worst managers to analyze what it was that made each who they were. The course identified certain skills and personalities that tended to be characteristics of leaders. Honesty, communication, support, encouragement and humility.
When I looked at my worst manager, I could clearly see the failing leadership traits as we studied them in class, and I knew what type of leader I did not want to be.
Then I studied my best manager, Gavin, who happened to be my manager at my last job and my job now at a new company. Gavin was open, honest, he communicated his expectations clearly so there was no room for failure. If he found I was struggling with something, he offered himself up for mentorship and what we call our “coachable moments” where he would work with me to improve. He gave stretch goals to push me further, even if it meant that we would both be up for the next job promotion. He gave credit where it was earned and put others in the spotlight. In his own performance reviews, he raved about his employees and gave them the credits for his own work as he saw more of their minute involvement to be important than his own.
When we were all outsourced by our last company, he worried more for his team than himself and searched for opportunities for each of us and made introductions. He is still working to help our old team, because he still sees them as our team even though it’s been a year and a half. When we worked on our case studies in class to identify those leadership skills, I found that Gavin had all of them. I’ve always known I wanted to be a manager and leader like Gavin, but could never quite identify what it was that made him so good. Honesty, communication, support, encouragement and humility. Now I could see it and identify it clearly and I work every day to be the type of leader he is.
When Gavin and I were first outsourced, I was taking a class, Electronic Portfolios in Teaching & Learning. The course came at a difficult point in my life. This was the first time in my life that I had not left a company of my own choice. I had always kept up on my resume, but facilities was a new career path for me. I’d always been in either education or working as an Executive Assistant to the CEO. Suddenly my resume needed numbers, stats, projects and proof. More importantly, experience! When I started my role, I had a foot in the door because they knew me from supporting the CEO and they knew I was great at my job. Even though the position required 7 years of experience, they trusted me to be able to take on the role. What they thought would take me a couple years to catch up on, I managed to complete in six months.
Three years later, I was next in line for a promotion to a position requiring 10 years of experience. When I had to start applying for jobs again, no one took me seriously because they didn’t know me and even though I said I could handle 10 years of experience, they had no proof. So, when I started my course on eportfolios, it was just in time! Although we focused more on formative assessment and how eportfolios benefited students, I saw it as an opportunity to look back at my own career. Formative assessment is meant to find ways to truly assess a student has learned and understood something. Part of that is self-reflection. The eportfolios are a way for students to document and measure their growth themselves and build on their knowledge. I saw how an eportfolio could be used as my own form of formative assessment on my career, to prove to job hirers that I could do my job.
I took that semester to work on my own eportfolio of facilities projects and operations management. When I went on interviews, I brought my laptop and a thumb drive to show examples of my projects, examples of a matrix I built for the team, proof of my success with budgetary evidence. This was my way of standing out among others who had nothing for the interview. If nothing else, they remembered the woman who brought a portfolio! As a manager now, I make my direct reports keep their own version of a portfolio. It a great way to make annual reviews a piece of cake! You already have all of your successes documented so there is no question and no forgetting the things you’ve done throughout the year.
One of the main questions I was asked on these interviews though, was about my Masters program. Why was I earning a Masters of Education? Was I planning on going back to teaching? You don’t need a Masters for this role, so why are you bothering? What I told everyone is that this program has taught me many things from identifying my own philosophy on education, which helps me when I’m looking for the perfect candidate in an election. I know adamantly what my view is on education and can find the best candidate to fit my expectations. I have had practice in creating professional development sessions for colleagues, which can be difficult. I have experimented with the Stanford Design Method and can use it in my Operations role to identify issues, test out some ideas and continue my passion for innovation. I can even explain to my sister and nephew exactly why he needs to identify and explain his answer for the story problem that day in math! I have helped my teacher friends to build their own flipped classrooms and I have helped my niece to create her own blog.
I began this program six years ago while living in Manhattan working as an Executive Assistant to the Global CFO. The primary reason was to complete nine credit hours so I could keep my Michigan Teacher Certification should I ever decide to move back home and teach. After those three courses, I took a three-year break. What I found during those three years was that I missed my online courses. I missed the intense challenge. I missed questioning my own abilities and stretching myself to try new things and make myself “uncomfortable”. The main thing I have learned is that I needed to push myself to have faith in my abilities, my future and me. Everyone thought I was crazy for spending another few dozens of thousands of dollars on a Masters with a title of “Education”. I explained to them that it may have had that title, but it was more than that. They should consider the “Education” exactly that, my education. I was pursuing my Masters for my own Education, in technology and leadership and acquiring skills that would further my career no matter what type of environment it was.