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The Relationships Found in Teaching

MATC Synthesis Paper

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Master of Arts Degree in Curriculum and Teaching
Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University

Anqi Yu
PID A49560557
Summer 2015

Introduction
As I sat facing the panel of interviewers in a medical school interview, I was confronted
with the most obvious question that they could pose to me: Why do you want to be a doctor? I
had already composed an elaborate answer consisting mainly of my eagerness to form
relationships with my future patients. I believed in the possibility of this bond leading to trust
and ultimately better and more individualized healthcare for everyone. I constructed this answer
because I thought that human interaction was something that was missing in the medical field,
especially from doctors, with whom would only meet with for perhaps five minutes once every
year, if that often. As I spewed forth my response, I was certain that the interviewers were
looking at me positively and seeing the potential in my hypothesis of building trust and
relationships. I was heartbroken when I got the response, Honey, youre in the wrong
profession.
After this interview, I delved into a lot of introspection and reflection of what I really
wanted to do with my life and why I held building relationships so highly. I firmly believed that
building relationships was an essential component to what I wanted to go into, but what I was
going to do was not outwardly clear. I have always considered teaching as a profession, but as an
Asian American, being a teacher was not an option for me growing up. I have faced many
stigmas in the careers that I can pursue as being part of the model minority. I reflect on these
stigmas in my Schooling and Cultural Autobiography paper (Artifact #1). Throughout my life,
I have been influenced by my parents, community, and culture.
Despite my upbringings, I always steered myself towards teacherly roles. I was a tutor at
Emory University for several years, even earning Finalist for Tutor of the Year, and a Teaching

Assistant for a physics professor who did his PhD work in Physics Education at the University of
Maryland. In both of these roles, I was often praised for the strong relationships I built between
me and my students. I personally saw the effects that a good relationship has on learning, and I
felt like this better suited me needs. I began breaking down the stigmas towards teaching that my
familys culture has engrained in me. To start, I sought mentorship from past teachers that I
looked up to, the physics professor I worked under, and the organizer of the tutor program. At
this point, it was clear to me that I really wanted to be a teacher.
During my search for mentorship, I came across the Woodrow Wilson Teaching
Foundation (WWTF). This program is for people who have a degree in a science, technology,
engineering, or math (STEM) field with the belief that a strong educational background in a
subject is part of the foundation for creating a strong teacher. I agreed with the premise of the
program and viewed it as something that was actually sustainable. I completed an application
and worked through the interview process over the next couple of months. In December 2012, I
had made my decision to work towards a Masters of Arts in Teaching and Curriculum at
Michigan State University going through the WWTF program quickly beginning in May 2013. I
packed up all of my belongings and drove all the way from Atlanta, Georgia, to East Lansing,
Michigan. Looking back, I now realize I had no idea what I had gotten myself into, despite all of
the mentorship, and how much this program would change my life.
The Past
Through the summer of 2013, I was joined with ten other people in my cohort to begin
the WWTF program. I took four courses focusing on what it meant to be a teacher, specifically
what it meant to teach in a high poverty area and with a diverse group of learners. Our professors

pushed us to understand our school environments, and to learn culturally relevant pedagogy over
the pedagogy of poverty. However, in order to teach with relevance, teachers must take the time
to build relationships with students, to really find out what is important to them and how to make
the curriculum fit into that. Teachers will also find that when they take the time to build
relationships with students, then the students are more willing to learn. As the summer
progressed, the cohort and I participated in a couple of activities that highlighted working in a
high-need and diverse school. I reflect on a particular instance of working with Summer High
School Scholars students in Artifact #2. This program is aimed giving students in urban school
districts supplementary education to aid them into getting into postsecondary schools that may
not have been available to them otherwise. My reflection on this activity shows that I have built
relationships with my focus group. In doing so, I learned what their needs were; in response, I
can respond to those needs as an educator.
In order to respond to these different learning needs, I had to learn many teaching styles
and tricks. During my courses, I quickly bought into the effectiveness of inquiry-based learning.
I liked how it mimicked real science, where the answer was not always apparent. Instead,
rigorous tests had to be run, patterns had to be made, and conclusions had to be drawn. It also
focused on how science was not a singular activity. It requires the collaboration of many
individuals and the consolidation and comparison of graphs, data, and patterns. This not only
builds the relationship between students and teachers, but between students themselves. In
Artifact #3, I show how I have created lesson plans that encourage collaboration through a forces
activity. This activity was framed in a real life situation of the determining who the worlds
strongest man was. From the initial evidence given, it is unclear who is the stronger man, but

through testing, data, analysis, and communication, the students come together to create a
conclusion.
That first summer, we worked with a lot of teaching practices and techniques. I became
more confident in the theory behind the pedagogy, but I knew that there were things that could
only be learned in the classroom. I began looking forward to my internship year at Cass
Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan. In order to get the best learning experience from my
residency, I knew that I would have to take risks and reflect on the effectiveness of the lessons.
My internship at Cass Technical High School proved to be a real struggle. During my
time at Cass Tech, I started to really see the wide variety of student thinking, and how difficult it
was to teach to all students, especially when I have close to two hundred different individuals
every day. In addition, my mentor teacher described herself as a very traditional teacher,
instructing in the typical lecture style and following the textbook. She owned no physics lab
equipment, nor had access to any. This contrasted significantly with what we were learning at
Michigan State University, where we were encouraged to teach outside of the textbook, use
inquiry to model and scaffold thought, and use projects as summative assessments. I struggled in
finding ways to implement what I was learning at Michigan State into my mentors classroom
and I thought that I would have a difficult time growing as a teacher. However, I found different
ways to learn within that environment by working on my relationships with the people around
me.
One of the things I had to work on first was my relationship with my mentor teacher. At
first, I was very unhappy with my placement; I remember venting to my field advisor often. I felt
like there was no way for me to grow as a teacher because of how my mentor ran the classroom.

However, I got past this feeling. I was advised that even though I may not agree with my
mentors teaching style, there are positives to her teaching methods. With some help, I was able
to notice that my mentor was extremely good at handling administration and disciplining
students, things that I knew I would need help with. With time, my mentor teacher gave me full
control of three class periods in the second semester. Although it did not follow Michigan States
timeline for teaching interns, I still got the immersion I needed. I was able to practice inquiry
based learning with my students, as well as project based learning techniques. I took several
pedagogical risks; my mentor teacher and field advisor even applauded some of these risks
because the payoffs were so great.
During this time, I conducted many self-evaluations and reflections to grow as a teacher. I
participated in peer observations, professional developments, and other activities to continue my
learning as teacher intern. One of these activities was forming a professional learning community
with my colleagues in TE 802/804 (Artifact #4). I relied heavily on my roots back at Michigan
State for constructive feedback in addition to my mentor teachers opinions. I found these
experiences very helpful; it provided an outside view on a specific problem of practice that I was
dealing with. I learned so much from my professional learning community that I even asked
potential employers if there would be a similar opportunity for growth in their schools.
Amongst all the growth as a result of working with my mentor teacher, my field advisor,
my professors, and my peers, the greatest growth that I had the pleasure of experiencing was
from my students at Cass Tech. Cass Tech has a minority population of 97% of its student body
and 61% of the students were economically disadvantaged. This posed many challenges, but also
many opportunities for growth. I had to be creative with the material and really create lessons
that would respond to what the students were interested in. In order to do that, I had to build

relationships with them. There was one student in particular who was having a hard time with the
material because of a weaker background in math. As a result, I conducted a case study on her in
order to figure out a different method of measuring the knowledge she was retaining (Artifact
#5). Instead of asking her for mathematical proofs, I would ask her to visually represent to me
the physics she was learning through the use of a graphic organizer. I was very proud to see that
she was indeed learning; without forming that relationship, I would have never been able to see
her growth.
My experience at Cass Technical High School is irreplaceable. I have formed so many
relationships with my mentor teacher, my professors, peers, students, and my field advisor. Every
relationship has proven beneficial to me in some way towards my growth as a teacher. From
here, I was beginning to anticipate having a classroom of my own.
The Present
As I moved from my internship, I quickly filled a teaching position at Avondale High
School in Auburn Hills, Michigan, teaching Physics and Advanced Placement Physics. The
student body contrasted with the student body at Cass Technical High School: minority
enrollment was 36% and about 30% were economically disadvantaged. The school was also
suffering from a financial crisis, but I inherited a lot more lab equipment than I was ever afforded
at my internship placement. I was filled with both anticipation and nervousness as the school
year encroached on me.
This first year was filled with lots of learning. There were days where the lesson went
swimmingly and I went home extremely happy; other days, when the lesson was not as
successful, I would go home and sulk. It was important for me to realize that I was not perfect,

nor was I expected to be perfect by any of the faculty, staff, students, or parents. I showed my
students that these imperfections are a normal part of life. As a result of me not being
embarrassed of my own mishaps, my students began seeing my classroom as a very safe place
where all ideas were accepted. During discrepant events or discussions to explain a certain
physics phenomena, my students were not hesitant to share ideas and opinions. My students soon
came to realize their own misconceptions; I even had a weekly write dedicated to defining and
identifying misconceptions. With every passing day and lesson, I felt like I was a researcher
conducting experiments on different methods of teaching practices and my students were my
willing test subjects.
As a researcher in my own classroom, I used formative assessments to guide my
teaching. I have been learning about formative assessments and its many uses to serve as
benchmarks for students as well as giving me feedback on which facets I need to improve on. On
the electromagnetism unit, I conducted a series of formative assessments that culminated at the
end with building an electromagnetic generator. Students typically think that electricity and
magnetism are two separate entities because of prior experience. Students see lights in the room
and magnets on the fridge, and neither of them seem to correlate with the other. I used modeling
and formative assessments to track student growth and understanding in how electricity and
magnetism correlate with each other (Artifact #6). It was very interesting to see how student
ideas shifted and changed with time and how models had to be revised when new information
was presented. This was also a valuable learning experience for me because I gained information
on student misconceptions as to how electricity and magnetism worked. With every
misconception I fronted and with every activity I did, the students respected me more and more
as a teacher, all while maintained a working relationship.

After building relationships with my students, the next step was to create a more apparent
professional identity in the school with the other faculty. I did this by collaborating with teachers
in other departments to create cross-curricular content and activities. One project that I am
particularly proud of is one that I worked on in conjunction with one of the English teachers. I
noticed that my students were struggling with scientific literacy and writing through the weekly
writes that I mentioned previously. Students were missing parts of either claim, evidence, or
reasoning; what it resulted in was a weak argument. The English teacher and I worked together
to create a highly conceptual writing prompt that required research and critical thinking to
answer thoughtfully (Artifact #7). The grading was based on forming a draft, getting it revised
from peers and from me, and showing me the growth in a final submission. The results were
overwhelming. Most of my students submitted arguments that were fully constructed using
claim, evidence, and reasoning.
As the year progressed, I created a more prominent identity in the school as a teacher. I
would not say that my first year went by perfectly, but I learned a lot from the experience. I will
use all the knowledge I have gained to constantly improve myself. There were many invaluable
memories formed, one of my fondest being invited to Avondale High Schools Top Scholars
Honors Breakfast where the top 5% of graduating seniors choose a teacher to honor with a
speech (Artifact #8). It was a tearful moment, but it reaffirmed to me that my decision to become
a teacher was what I needed in my life.

The Future

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My MATC journey has been nothing like I had expected when I entered the program two
years ago. I thought that I knew what it meant to be a teacher, and that I was ready for all of the
challenges of a classroom. Having my first year of teaching under my belt and almost completing
my MATC coursework, I find myself having grown immensely over the past two years, not only
as a teacher, but also as a person with a deeper understanding of culture and society. I have built
relationships with my fellow teachers, my colleagues, my professors, and my students. Using the
teaching theories that I have acquired in the MATC program, I am able to build innovative
lessons to better help my students learn and really challenge myself and take risks with my
material. I know that this is only the beginning of my journey as a teacher, but I will continue to
reflect on my practice, improve my strategies, and learn from each experience and relationship.