I entered the Michigan State Master’s of Education program simultaneously as I entered upon my first year of teaching, straight out of undergraduate college. Many people advised me against this, saying that it would be too much to handle and that I should take time to adjust to my new professional life before going back to school. Fast forward, I am one quarter of the way through my second year of teaching, and about one month away from graduating with my master’s degree. I chose to enroll in a Master’s program right away because I felt that the additional education would actually help me to transition better in the first few years of teaching. Instead of reflecting back, I was able to reflect upon the present in my classes and learn from my mistakes, and work to find better alternatives for addressing certain issues. Completing my Master’s program while teaching gave me a more authentic experience because I was able to apply strategies and collect data on real student, my students. When I entered the program I knew that I wanted to focus on two areas of concentration: teaching science with the new Next Generation Science Standards being adopted throughout the states, and learning how to effectively manage a classroom in the challenging urban school district that I currently call “home,” which I immediately identified as an area of weakness. Within my first semester, I enrolled in TE 861B, Inquiry, Nature of Science with Dr. Gotwals. This course was centered around the Next Generation Science Standards, and much of the course was dedicated to simply having student understand how to transition from the Common Core to the NGSS, and how the NGSS is designed differently from the common core. Transitions can be difficult for educators, and although I had not been using the Common Core professionally, it was all I referred to in my pre-service undergraduate program, so naturally, I found the NGSS to be daunting. I feel that I have an advantage over some of my colleagues in the present because I was able to take this course that introduced and walked me through the NGSS; many of my colleagues, especially those who have been teaching decades, are suddenly having to change the way they have designed their curriculum for the last twenty years! The Next Generation Science Standards are inquiry based, and in TE 861B we discussed how we would apply these inquiry-based standards in our science content area classrooms, and how to design inquiry based lessons. I learned about the best practices for teaching science and conducting inquiry through the NGSS, all while creating and engaging and enriching classroom. One of the most valuable parts of the class was that I was introduced to a new movement in science teaching called Ambitious Science Teaching. Applying ambitious science teaching in the classroom involves the teacher working with students’ ideas over time. This starts with planning for engagement with important science ideas, eliciting student’s ideas, supporting on-going changes in students’ thinking, and finally pressing students for evidence-based explanations of their thinking. I was able to watch a video series of an entire Ecology unit planned using ambitious teaching. Seeing ambitious science teaching come to life, and how students were creating and constantly revising their predator-prey models also brought the NGSS to life. I was able to actually see the NGSS inquiry/model based standards come to life in a Biology classroom, and this really got my mind rolling about what types of activities and lessons I could do in my classroom in many of our other units. I used the ideas I gleaned from the videos to develop lessons where students built models of DNA and ultimately used these models to explain how different types of genetic mutations occur. Overall, TE 861B was an exciting and engaging class to take in my first semester of my graduate program, and ultimately changed the course of how I planned my lessons during my first year of teaching. Now in my second year, I can use these lessons as a baseline, and continue to improve upon them for this year and the years to come. As I was working with my newfound knowledge to develop engaging and inquiry based science lessons, I understood that with poor classroom management skills, the best lessons would ultimately be futile. In the spring of my first year I enrolled in CEP 832, Educating Students with Challenging Behaviors. I have found myself in a situation where the students with challenging behaviors actually outnumber my students without challenging behaviors. Therefore, this course was extremely informative in highlighting different areas of challenging behaviors and how to appropriately manage and deal with them. One of the resources used in this class was a book by Jere Brophy called Teaching Problem Students. My favorite part about the reading assignments I read from this book was the vignettes from ineffective and effective teachers. For each challenging behavior, there was a vignette from both an effective and ineffective teacher describing the situation and behavior occurring, as well as how the teacher approached and handled the misbehavior. It was very interesting to compare and contrast between the actions the effective teacher took versus the ineffective teacher. This course allowed for a great deal of self-reflection of how I was managing my challenging students as well as evaluate when I was taking an effective versus ineffective stance with these behaviors. For my Addressing Behavioral Challenges (ABC) project, I chose one of my most challenging students in my 10th grade Biology class, who was constantly disruptive, used inappropriate language and was otherwise hostile. I devised an intervention plan based on effective researched –based strategies, and collected data over the semester to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention plan designed to increase my effective teaching stance with addressing his hostile and violent behaviors, as well as decreasing the incidences of off –task and disruptive behavior. This project gave me the opportunity to put the research-based strategies I had learned about to the test, and evaluate which ones worked for me as an educator and with this particular student. This project only showcased a snap shot of one student, but I was able to use the same process and intervention plans with other students of concern last year, and I developed intervention plans for several students right out of the gate this year, as soon as I identified a cause of concern. Over the summer, I was enrolled in two more classes involving classroom management, CEP 883, Psychology of Classroom Discipline and CEP 841, Classroom Management in the Inclusive Classroom. I enjoyed taking these classes over the summer, because it gave me the opportunity to take the classes while reflecting upon my first year of teaching, and thinking forward about what I could do for the upcoming year to make my classroom organization and climate more effective for learning. That was, in essence, the purpose of these two classes. We studied different methodologies of authority, physical classroom organization, lesson plan organization, managing transitions, managing different abilities and personalities in the classroom, etc. During my first year of teaching, I felt like I was primarily in survival mode. I was so overwhelmed with all of the moving parts that compose a classroom that I was unable to take the time to think individually about each of these aspects of the classroom, and how they contribute to the classroom environment. Taking time over the summer to reflect upon the good and the bad of my first year allowed me to develop a comprehensive classroom management plan that I planned to implement for the upcoming school year. My management plan included a plan for each of the individual aspects mentioned above that all contribute to classroom climate and management. I have been able to apply them this year, and I have found that even from last year I am exhibiting a great deal of growth. My classes are more organized, transitions are faster and smoother, and running laboratories is a better learning experience for the students, and a less stressful experience for me! I still feel that classroom management is an area that I need to continue to work on, but I also recognized that one can take all of the classes in the world and read all of the literature that exists on classroom management, but ultimately it is the years of practice of applying and adjusting those strategies that truly builds a teacher’s classroom management efficacy. Throughout this program I have had the opportunity to reflect upon and adjust my teaching practices. As I learn and absorb new information and strategies from course work, colleagues and students themselves, I am able to make daily adjustments to my planning and execution of lessons in order to create a more effective learning experience. I will continue to reflect upon my practices and look for ways to grow through professional development and collaboration with other individuals in the field of education. This program has allowed me to see that I am a highly motivated learner who is determined to seek improvement over the course of my teaching career. The banner pages on my portfolio all have a consistent theme of plants or flowers and sunlight. This a constant reminder that even after a bad lesson or a bad day at school, there is always tomorrow to make it right, and there is always a new year to look forward to making improvements and growing as an educator.