SHAWN MCMANN
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Welcome to my pedagogical portfolio
"We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill... it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress."
-Li Ka-shing
The well-spent years at Michigan State University enhanced my educational potential in the classroom and on the field. I found that I can positively influence the youth, and through them the future of society, as a coach as well as a teacher. Though my journey is not yet done, as I discovered that the more I learned about education, there was so much more to be understood. Therefore, though my Masters was a vast step in improving my teaching craft, there is more to be done.
Next I turned my studies to arguably the most important social aspect of athletes in sports: leadership. All coaches want it, but most do not know how to foster it. I delved into research from leading psychiatrists, sociologists, and coaches that studied how to form leaders on a team. From this research, I developed a plan to be implemented by any coach for any sport that would create the essential atmosphere and climate that manifested leadership in athletes (Plan). It is the extensive studies I conducted on the mental aspect of coaching coupled with the physical aspects that molded my coaching practice into a well-rounded and highly beneficial craft for my athletes.
After the KIN 856 developed my understanding of the physical side of sports education, KIN 855: Psychosocial Bases of Coaching helped me comprehend a not very well known aspect of sports development. This is the mental and social side to sports. In this class I found that a coach must first have a firm grip on their own coaching beliefs and ethics before they step foot in front of athletes. As such, the first units of this class was focused on myself, in which I established my own coaching philosophy (Text) and a better understanding of coaching ethics (Text). These two assignments helped me keep my fundamental ideals of coaching in perspective as I coached my athletes, which I discovered is not a widely used tactic, thus became advice I offered to all head coaches when hiring new coaches on staff: ask what the potential coach’s philosophy and ethical beliefs are. After gaining a better understanding of myself as a coach, I observed another coach during practice after learning about effective coaching behaviors. The purpose was so I could offer coaching advice based on best practices (Results). Additionally, I found out that I could learn more about myself as a coach by helping others develop their coaching craft. I honestly believe I learned more about coaching during this exercise more than the coach I observed.
For nutrition, I examined findings from leading biomechanics and nutritionists who catered to top athletes around the world, and again I had to understand why before prescribing what to do to athletes. My inquiries lead to understanding nutrition on the cellular level and proper fueling and refueling athletes for consecutive peak performances. This unit culminated with a pamphlet on proper nutrition before, during, and after workouts or competition that I distributed to my athletes before season started. There was significant positive feedback about the changes it made with their performances. (Pamphlet) Considering video analysis, I had used videos before in my instruction, however I discovered I had not used videos nearly to its fullest potential. To reach beyond the proverbial tip of the iceberg, I learned about efficient body movements and effective force management in order to once again understand why before providing what to do. This lead to a lengthy video analysis meeting I had with one of my track sprinters about their initial take off out of the starting blocks, which lead to his advances in sprint competitions. These advances in my understanding on the physical aspects of athletics helped me become a better coach for my athletes as well as a source of information and advice for my fellow coaches at my school.
KIN 856: Physical Bases of Coaching delved into several of the vital components of highly effective coaching that takes place off the field of competition. The three that made a huge impact on me were proper strength and conditioning, nutrition, and video analysis. In strength and conditioning, before I could instruct athletes in what to do, I had to first understand why they should do it, which is a major component missing from most coaching instruction. I conducted research about bodily movements and their effects in order to maximize efficiency. The result was a periodization project that outlined workouts for beginner track athletes over the course of ten months. (Project)
In addition to teaching students in the classroom, I also impact the youth through sports and athletics. After being a high school coach for multiple sports for several years, I found myself inundated with sport-specific theories and concepts. However, my knowledge on ideas outside the court or field had not improved noticeably. Thus when I discovered that Michigan State offered coursework on athletic coaching that culminated with a graduate certificate in coaching, I leapt at the opportunity. The research and developments I conducted during my athletic studies transcended my coaching abilities to be far more effective and well-rounded.
The studies I conducted while attending Michigan State enhanced my pedagogical craft as a teacher to my students as well as a leader to other teachers. I developed units that assisted students with making greater connections to texts outside their realm of experience as well as helped other teachers do the same with their lessons. I worked hand in hand with my peers to create units that were based on student inquiry as well as pushed my students to ask questions then find the answers. I discovered new ways to differentiate my instruction that catered to all of my students as well as offered professional development on alternate methods for students to arrive at the instructional goal. My heightened educational abilities drastically improved the educational process for all of those around me, student and teacher alike. Moreover, my instructive improvements were not limited to the classroom; my expertise in the world of sports education went through significant advances as well.
However, TE 843 took it a step further and introduced inquiry from the student point of view. Inquiry has become the foundation of dealing with difficult text in my classroom, as inquiry seamlessly transitions students from basic questioning of text to more complicated tasks, such as synthesizing themes between multiple texts and using literary criticisms as a lens for analysis. This is possible for students by following the simple three steps outlined previously. Texts such as Hamlet become not only a worthy challenge, but a manageable one at that, as students are able to design their own process of learning that works best for them through inquiry.
TE 843 showed me how to not only plan a lesson using inquiry more effectively, but also became an integral component in heightening the learning process with my students on another timeworn yet difficult text, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Initially, I learned to plan lessons using three simple steps: Essential Question(s), Final Product, and Backwards Planning. Essential Questions begin typically with turning the state standard(s) into questions aligned with the theme or focal text. Then from the questions look ahead at what the final product the students need to produce will be, be it a paper, project, or presentation. Finally, from the final product, work backwards establishing key steps that students must take in order to be successful with the final product. In planning lessons, these steps became very helpful in streamlining the process. I designed a lesson that took full advantage of the usefulness of essential questions as a starting point to build background information for students with Beowulf once again as the main text. (Lesson)
Strangely enough, it wasn’t until I worked with creativity in teaching and learning for over a year that I recognized that the very process I used in the preliminary stages to make the connection between creative geniuses to my students could be used to further enhance my lessons. The idea of “Inquiry” was first introduced to me in ED 800: Concepts of Educational Inquiry. I explored examples of pedagogic inquiry ranging from first grade teachers asking students guiding questions to how one of the greatest First Ladies to ever grace the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt, attributed a majority of her success to seeking out masterful mentors. The culmination of the class was an inquiry of my own, in which I outlined my own inquiry process that scrutinized the effects technology has on contemporary classrooms. (Inquiry) My knowledge of lesson and unit analysis through inquiry greatly grew, and I use it in teaching reflection often, however I did not realize the full potential of inquiry in the classroom until two years later in the class TE 843: Secondary Reading Assessment and Instruction.
The unit involving Beowulf was an enormous success when compared to former years. Students made connections to the texts that far surpassed my expectations, especially the associations between their own cultures and the Anglo-Saxon culture exemplified in the text. Students who came back the next year after they graduated couldn’t wait to tell me how much they remembered about Beowulf. Additionally, I brought my understanding of cognitive skills and creativity to other lessons I developed in conjunction with my pedagogical peers. I assisted teachers within and even outside the Language Arts discipline. As of now, I have lead several Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in developing lessons and assessments with creativity and ingenuity in mind.
Reading texts that are hundreds of years old with today’s adolescents is a challenge. One class that heightened my ability to overcome this challenge is CEP 818: Creativity in Teaching and Learning. In this class, I researched cognitive skills through numerous examples of history’s most creative individuals, such as Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, and Virginia Woolf. I then designed lessons that fostered ingenuity similar to the experiences articulated by those mentioned previously. This was not an easy task at first. The connection between Einstein and my students was not readily evident. However, after reimagining creativity as simply the method of arriving at one’s goals, Woolf and Picasso became much more accessible for study and exemplar. It was my final project to develop a lesson for our current class that used several cognitive skills we explored via these creative geniuses. The lesson I designed was for the oldest text in the English language, Beowulf. The lesson’s objective is to “apply the given cognitive skill (Perception, Embodied and Dimensional Thinking, and Playing) to the topic (Beowulf), create an effective method of displaying the results to students, and finally analyze how this approach helps students understand in ways that are more influential and effective.” (Lesson link) Ultimately, my hope was to take a text written in the seventh century and bring the characters and themes to life for my students in the twenty-first century.
In becoming an effective Language Arts teacher, the initial major factor is knowing the content. The more connections a teacher can make to a text for the students, the stronger the students’ understanding of the text and concepts within becomes. More so than any other educational discipline, Language Arts has a vast assortment of information that may be used in the classroom to enhance the student’s education. Simply put, nearly every book ever written is viable for selection by a skillful teacher. Because of this, I chose to focus my initial studies exclusively on the content, which is to say literature. Having made substantial progress in that endeavor, I altered my studies to the next major factor to being an effective Language Arts teacher: what to do with all that content knowledge. Simply knowing content is only half the battle; how to convey it to the students effectively is the latter, and some would say the more difficult, half. As my studies in effective teaching strategies for literature come to a close, it is important to note some of the more substantial contributions my classes at Michigan State have made towards my journey in enhancing education.
