Showcase
During my time in the MAED program, I have had the pleasure of taking a wide variety of courses that have added and honed what I call my working tool box. I invite you to take a look through, what I feel is some of my best work from the MAED program. I have divided the showcase into two sections that follows my career path as I worked through the MAED Program. The first section details injury care/prevention which was extremely important to me during my time as a coach. The second section deals with management, professional development, and the lifelong learning skills i bring to my job as a restaurant manager/trainer. There is a brief description or feel free to click on the image for a link to the full assignment.
Sport Injury Etiology
The purpose of this assignment was to pick an injury in a sport that you coached or had interest in. Once the injury was determined, you were to describe the injury in medical detail, and present ways in which the injury could be prevented moving forward. As a football coach there is no injury more pressing than a concussion, so I took this opportunity to gain more knowledge about a very serious issue.
Injured Not Hurt
The goal of this assignment was to write an open letter to the Editor-In-Chief at a major news source to create a new slogan to change the belief system around a sport of your choice. Again, I decided on football and the concussion injury. Too often young athletes are pressured to play through an injury and pain. This can be a slippery slope and cause them to hide an injury like a concussion. I created the slogan, "Injured NOT Hurt!" to help clarify when an athlete is dealing with pain or dealing with a serious injury.
ACL Injury Brochure
This assignment tasked the class with designing some form of brochure or learning pamphlet to educate the public on a common injury in a sport of your choosing. One of the most common injuries across all sports is a strain or tear of the ACL in the knee. It has become much more common over the years but it has also become easier to recover from. This brochure details the cause of the injury and methods that athletes can take to try and prevent it from happening in the future.
Professional Development Session Design Volume I
CEP 815 dealt with combining professional development and leadership in the modern world. This assignment challenged the class to create and plan out a professional development session for our field of choice. While I had worked on gamelans and lesson plans before, this was my first experience with creating a lesson plan for fellow professionals. This assignment details a learning session for HUDL which is a video tool that coaches use across the country.
Stamping Plant Case Study
Professional development was the main topic of discussion in EAD 863. In this assignment, the class had to view a case study and then determine the best way to move forward. For this case, a machine stamping plant needed assistance keeping their workers up to date on new training methods for rapidly changing machinery in their place of work. My game-plan for getting the information out and teaching it to the employees showcases my ability to work with a variety of different people in a wide range of work environments. I draw on Jane Vella's "12 Principles for Effective Adult Learning" to keep the group feeling engaged throughout the learning process.
Active Learning
All educators have their own beliefs on the best way for students to learn and retain information. I have always maintained the belief that active learning is an extremely useful method for knowledge retention. This assignment shows my grasp on the idea of active learning and how I implement that into my teaching. It also details my belief that active learning can be useful no matter what age the students are. I have utilized active learning as a coach, as a teacher, and now as a restaurant trainer.
Professional Development Interview
Professional development was an idea that was relatively new to me with regards to teaching other adults. I have always engaged in professional development for myself, I have not has much practice with creating development sessions on my own. For this assignment, the class was asked to interview someone who engages in professional development on a daily basis and find out their beliefs and methods for their training. I interviewed a fellow manger within the restaurant chain I work at to gain insight on his process. This assignment shows my ability to be an active learner, a lifelong learner, and someone who is not afraid to ask for help. I think it is important to always improve your teaching methods and a great way to do that is ask the people around you! The assignment also shows my ability to analyze a specific method and determine what I think works and what areas need improvement.
Professional Development Session Design Volume II
This piece of work builds on the first session design listed in this section. This comes from my time in EAD 863 which focussed primarily on the planning and implementation of Professional Development sessions. Volume I of this assignment was a simple design of a professional development session, whereas in this volume I took a deeper dive into the reattach behind the choices that I made. You will see major influences from Jane Vella who preached on the idea of a safe learning environment, something I have always felt is extremely important.