Off We Go!

I cannot believe we have finally reached the end of our journey.  I began my master’s journey over 2 ½ years ago and took lots of breaks due to family illnesses, etc.  I am excited and very ready to graduate.  Despite my excitement, it is bitter-sweet.  I have grown so much as both a person and an educator over the last few years. 

One thing I feel that I have learned through this program is how deeply my relationships with the people around me affect my work.  Not only my relationships with co-workers, but with families and children as well.  Everything I do is based on a relationship, which is built on trust and knowledge.  Establishing trust is the first step, then backing it up with deep, broad knowledge of my field is what really brings it all together.

Aside from all the facts and knowledge I gained, I also value (very highly) the research skills I learned while in this program.  Learning how to find information and decipher it validity is priceless.  While it is impossible to know everything, it is possible to FIND the answers to anything. 

Most of all I have learned about myself.  I have discovered my deep-seeded passions for education as a whole, as well as the families in my care.  I have learned about my own biases and how my brain reacts to people that are different than myself.  Bottom line about myself, I have learned that I am truly capable of anything. 

The completion of my Master’s Degree has been a “long-term” goal of mine.  I put it in quotes because I am still young, so long-term has been short compared to some of my colleagues.  I feel that I am generally happy in the classroom setting for the time being.  That being said, I know that I will not want to be in such a physically demanding job forever, thus I have developed a long-term  goal of working for a larger organization, like Zero-to-Three, in some kind of family education branch of ECE. 

It is not without my classmates that I could have completed my courses, and for that, I would like to say thank you.  Our course readings, videos, and lectures were all highly valuable, but it was my colleagues that brought our course work to life and made it interesting and treasured.  Sometimes I get lost in the smallness of my own center, and forget that there are professionals like myself out there that view ECE the same way I do.  I and thankful for each of you. 

I would like to leave you with words from Dr. Suess:

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

Best of luck to each of you!