Monday, June 10, 2013

My Statement of Purpose for Vandy


Lara Heiberger
Statement of Purpose

Vanderbilt University
Learning and Instruction, M. Ed. Program
December, 2012



My students are Sincangu Lakota. They live in more than twenty remote rural communities dispersed over 1,400 square miles. They sleep in overcrowded houses where household income is below the poverty level. The parents of most of my students are separated. Most children have at least one relative in prison or struggling with alcoholism. Many have grandparents who were forced into boarding schools.

Meet Austin.

A tall, lanky 14 year-old boy, he lives with his grandparents. His first class of his first day of high school was my pre-algebra class. Unlike his peers, he met me at the door of room 206 with a smile and an uninhibited handshake. He wants to be an x-ray technician. There are no x-ray technicians on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation; most adults are not even employed. Austin wants to move away from “this place” as fast as he can.

Austin and I crossed many divides to come together in the same classroom. I grew up in Rapid City, a bustling town of approximately 70,000 people. Located 172 miles west of Rosebud, the city’s population includes a substantial group of Lakota who have moved off the state’s various reservations. I graduated from a small private Christian school where my friends perpetuated the racist attitudes that prevail in western South Dakota. I attended college in my hometown at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, an engineering and science school. Choosing a major was not easy. Although divorced, my parents both imparted an affinity for math. My mother has two masters degrees, one in business and one in statistics. My father is an electrical engineer. When I went to college, my father encouraged me to be a journalist. My mother wanted me to be anything that would guarantee a considerable income. I went the way of science, majoring in Applied and Computational Mathematics.

During college, I lived in the basement of a house on East Kansas City Street. It was walking distance to campus, had a backyard for my dog, and the rent was affordable. The neighborhood was filled with low-income college students and Native American families. The basement door had weak locks, and with the different schedules of my roommates chain-locks were not feasible. More than once I woke up to find a stranger—always a Native American—searching through my cupboards or fridge, or once using my bathroom. I began to see how stereotypes might be fostered by this behavior. “Why,” I asked myself, “do Natives in my neighborhood behave differently than I do?” I was poor too, paying for my own college and working thirty-five hours a week.

I did not want to be racist, but my experiences were reinforcing the stereotypes in my community. One day, while I was leading a college-algebra learning lab, I had an epiphany. After working with a student from a local reservation, I realized that our lives had very different trajectories. I had a good high school education. After graduating from college I would be making enough money to live a comfortable life. The American Indian student in my learning lab had not received a solid high school education, as was evident from his struggles in basic college algebra.

I began talking to my professors about the disproportionately low population of Native students attending our school, and how Native students who were enrolled often had an inadequate mastery of secondary school mathematics. During my senior year, the chair of the mathematics department told me about Teach For America.

Teaching on the remote and desolate Rosebud Indian Reservation was culturally shocking. I had previously thought of myself as someone who brought joy into a room and uplifted others, but during my first few months, I found it hard to uplift myself, let alone bring joy into the classroom. I was a novice teacher, and the students knew it. I am an outsider. With a student like Austin, I feel how much I am not a part of his world.

Austin is a bright and kind young man with a great sense of humor. Nonetheless, it was exceptionally hard to hold his attention. He wanted to “get smarter,” but acted impulsively.  Slight mental distractions caused him to disrupt lessons. In class, he drew pictures of marijuana leaves, or turkeys with marijuana-leaf tails or psychedelic mushrooms with marijuana leaves decorating their stems. If Austin wasn’t drawing one of his beautiful, yet school-inappropriate works of art, he was trying to engage his classmates in off-topic discussions. During teamwork time, Austin made brief attempts to solve problems, but would quickly give up and return to drawing.

I grew frustrated. Austin almost never redirected his attention to me upon my first request, and even when all of his classmates were on task tracking the teacher, we would often wait ten seconds or more for Austin to join. Eventually I was reminding Austin so frequently of what he should and should not be doing that the pace of the whole class slowed and other students became annoyed.

I hesitated to give Austin typical consequences. I observed that Austin was not acting improperly due to lack of respect. Instead, he lacked the character skills to stay focused on challenging tasks. My responsibility was to help him become invested in mathematics by showing him why it mattered in his life.

I felt I was failing Austin. I thought, “If only I could make this classroom a learning space, not just a learning place!” I wanted a more interactive classroom. I have two walls covered by chalkboards, so we began doing a few problems on the board every day. All kids were out of their seats and working in pairs on the board together, which was an improvement. However, it did not make the content any more meaningful. Standing at a chalkboard did not increase Austin’s intuitive understanding of mathematical concepts. He learned computational skills because he was up and actually attempting his work, but he never learned why he was doing the things he did.

Austin does not need more hands-on manipulatives. Yes, they help him visualize concepts that might otherwise be abstract, but they are not enough to help him stay focused or to connect him personally with the material. Austin needs to be physically and mentally immersed, to use his whole body and his senses as instruments to deeply internalize the connections between the mathematics he is mastering and events in the world around him. Nature is defined by “if this, then that” relationships, and while children do not need to be linear thinkers, they do must be able to think scientifically and observe that for every action there is a logical reaction or flow of events.

When this last semester ended, I did not advance Austin to Algebra 1. He will retake pre-algebra with me in the upcoming semester. For both of us to be successful, I must implement diverse instructional strategies and classroom structures to facilitate his interaction with mathematics. I cannot give last semester back to Austin, but I can search for new tools to make learning more feasible for him.

I can appreciate why Austin wants to leave Rosebud. He can see his future on the reservation, and it looks small to him. To realize the change our reservations need, the children must be given the tools they need to succeed—like a strong understanding of mathematics—and they have to be empowered to use them. They need committed teachers who believe that together, working with the community, they can change the trajectory for students like Austin.

I am not a perfect teacher. After I earn my diploma from Vanderbilt, I still will not be a perfect teacher. I do hope to learn how children learn, and thus how to broaden opportunities for my students so they can attain the deep person-to-content connections that construct true understanding. I hope to learn the pedagogical skills necessary to construct the cognitive structure in students that will allow them to learn from any interesting observation and every curiosity.

When I think of Austin, I am convinced that there is a better way. After thoroughly examining the Learning and Instruction program at Vanderbilt and the research interests of professors such as Dr. Rogers Hall and Dr. Richard Lehrer, I believe that Vanderbilt will provide me with the research opportunities, mindsets, and skillsets necessary to meet my needs as a developing instructor of a diverse group of learners.

I do not expect to be finished learning after I receive my diploma; life is abundant with experiences that deepen and enrich our understanding of what can be taught in theory. I do believe that I will be well equipped to help transform mathematics instruction on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.  For me, Vanderbilt offers an opportunity to grow, contribute, and work with like-minded people to make the world a more equitable and interesting place.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

It's my birthday

So, today is my birthday. I'm turning 25 today. It feels odd... Normally, on birthdays, I feel the same as any other day, but today I feel like something inside me is changing. Like, after 25, you are a full fledged adult. I know it is a little late for me to realize that I am an adult now, but hey, better late than never.

The world is kind of heavy at 25. I am moving to Tennessee within a month or two to start earning my masters degree at Vanderbilt. Aspen is coming with me, but other than that I will be starting a brand new life. I will have my own apartment, which feels very grown up, and I will be responsible not just for taking care of myself but for taking care of Aspen, too. I bought myself a new computer last weekend... first time I have ever done that for myself. I kinda like being grown up, I just really don't want to fuck up-financially, academically, or emotionally.

I have learned somethings in my 25th year of life. Break-ups are so so hard, but when relationships end it is almost always for the best, and I don't have to be in control of whether or not someone wants to stay in a relationship with me. That's a hard one to grasp. At least for me. I've learned that it is okay to be selfish sometimes. I've learned that money in the bank doesn't mean money that I can spend. I've learned that making time to spend with my friends is important for my happiness and my friends' happiness. I've learned that exercising really does make me happier and that eating healthier makes me feel more comfortable. I've learned that loving people the way that they are is much more valuable than trying to help them change.

This coming year is going to be a year where I work on saying things that are hard to say, when they need to be said, instead of avoiding them. It is going to be a year of financial responsibility. It is going to be a year of exploration and of new friendships and of independence.

I'm so looking forward to this next year of life. Bring it on.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

You may notice that I have "unpublished" a few posts

I have decided I am only going to be posting positive things for a while. Life is getting its light back. And I don't want to focus on the negative. And I don't want to whine.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

My Dad, a hardworking man, who will leave a legacy of respect and love

Dad, because you are good at this, I always undoubtedly know that I AM LOVED by you. I want a man who cherishes his time with me like you do. Thank you for showing me how to love others and  for helping me believe that I deserve to be loved and cherished, and for giving me the experience know without a doubt what that feels like when it's for real.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Questions from TFA



Your Childhood and Youth

What’s an activity you spent hours doing as a child? What were your favorite subjects?

I played house... a lot. I was always the dad though! Weird. 


Who were your childhood heroes? 

My dad was my hero. So was my Uncle Todd, even before he died. I used to name all of my teddy bears Mark and Todd :P.


What did you want to be when you grew up and why?

I wanted to be an astronaut because the movie "Apollo 13" made it seem so special. I knew that I didn't want to be a veterinarian or a teacher. It wasn't even because everyone else wanted to be those things, it was just because they seemed like boring jobs to me. I remember thinking about that on the playground at Saint Elizabeth Seton Elementary School. I eventually gave up on my dream of being an astronaut because my little sister would cry and be super upset/scared every time I talked about it. (This was in, like, middle school...lol).


What undergraduate classes interested you most and came naturally to you? 

I loved biology, and it came pretty easily to me. I majored in applied and computational mathematics. Of those core courses, I really loved complex analysis because it was so intuitive, but yet abstract. That class made it fun to think. I also loved my philosophy classes and literature classes, even though they were stupidly easy (humanity classes at a technical school...not exactly challenging). It was a nice brain break to think about humanity. 


What undergraduate classes (if any) were not naturally interesting to you and did not come easily?

Sadly, my art history class was pretty uninteresting to me. I think that is just because I was overwhelmed with my other classes. Or, maybe it was because it was a lot of memorizing dates and locations, and less about historical context. 


Your Corps Experience

What drew you to join the corps? 

Well, I just finished my time in the TFA corps, and so now it is easier to say what good happened while I was in the corps rather than why I joined, but I joined because I wanted to do something that had meaning and affected the lives of others for the better in a real way. 


What part of the corps experience inspired you?

Ummmm, the teaching part. Duh!!! My students are the shit and I have learned so much from them. 


Which parts of your Teach For America experience made you feel alive when you were in the classroom?

Okay, these are confusing questions. "Teach For America experience"? Wha? Getting to know my students made me feel alive in the classroom. Before I took the time to get to know them I kinda dreaded going to school in the mornings, and couldn't wait to go home at the end of the day. Now I wake up happy each morning, love staying after school, and am currently teaching summer school.


Which parts of your corps experience (if any) were you less excited about carrying out while you were in the classroom or were not your strengths?



What have you learned from your corps experience which might inform your choice of leadership path and career?


Your Interests and Passions

What kinds of books and magazines do you gravitate toward when you are browsing in the bookstore? 


What social or political issues are you passionate about?

What would your friends and relatives say are your greatest strengths (if you’re not sure, ask them)? 


What are some things you wish you could do more often? Might they relate to future careers?

If you won the lottery, what would you do (after your initial celebration)?


If you could trade places with anyone in the world for a day, who would it be and why?


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Your Natural Inclinations and Growth Areas

What you are doing when you feel the most alive and like yourself? 

What kinds of work give you energy and are so interesting to you that you can become engrossed in it for hours on end?

When you have held a job or done an activity that was not a “fit”, how did you realize this did not fit you? 

Which career would you avoid at all costs? Why?

What aspects of your work style could you improve upon? 

What kinds of jobs or professional development opportunities might challenge you to grow in this way?


Your Ideal Work Environment

How do you do your best work? 

What kind of environment is conducive to your success?

Based on past experience, which kinds of cultures and organizations are the best fit for you?

Is there an element you have been missing in previous jobs that you’d like to find in the next position that you hold? If so, what is it and why do you think that matters to you?


Your Big Wins and Best Memories

Think about the last time you were really excited about life and what you were doing and how you felt. What made this moment so exciting? Are there careers that could help you experience this excitement more often?


Think of a “defining moment” in your life, a turning point that shaped who you are, or a decision that you made that shaped who you are today. How did it affect you? Did it tell you anything about possible leadership paths for you?

What have been your greatest accomplishments? What key skills did you leverage to achieve your goals? 

What has been the most gratifying thing you have ever done? What do you think made that gratifying?


Thinking Boldly About Your Next Steps

What is the greatest joy in your life?

What would your ideal job description be? As you answer this, don’t worry about whether the job exists – you can create it.

What are your greatest professional curiosities?

What are big ideas or dreams that you’ve never shared with anyone?

What jobs would you pursue if you had three lifetimes to pursue them and financial obligations or the opinions of others didn’t matter? Why?

What leadership path would you pursue if you knew you could not fail? What draws you to this path? 

How could you uniquely contribute to your community, country, or the world? 

Picking a Path: Questions I ask Myself

This site gives me direction.

Truth is, I don't want to wander aimlessly through life. Sure, I want to have tons of adventures and be spontaneous, but is there a certain place in life that I would like to be when I am 30, 40, 50, 60, 80? Do I want kids? What kind of life do I want to provide for them?

What lifestyle do I want?
In what way do I want to make an impact? Policy changes? creating awareness? changes in the lives of individuals with whom I work closely? what is more important to me, great changes in the lives of few, or smaller but more widespread changes in the lives of many?

What do you want for my community?

What do I want to be able to contribute to my community? What do I want from my community?


A ROUUUUGH DRAFT:
When I am 30 I want
to have my undergraduate loans paid off
to be running 3 miles at least 3 times a week
to have a masters degree
to have 2 or 3 stamps on my passport
to have a garden and can my own vegetables
to mentor/befriend younger women or girls through an organization
to have a job that has good benefits and hours
to have a dog that I have trained well
to have a nest egg of 15 or 20 grand
to have a group of girlfriends I spend time with on a weekly basis

When I am 40 I want
to have a best friend and life partner
to have (already) at least 1 child
to attend all my kid's functions
to still have my own functions to attend
to have a nest egg of 50 grand
to be an active participant in community meetings

When I am 50 I want
to have my graduate loans paid off
to still be hiking and biking
to organize community activities

When I am 60 I want
to have a house in the hills
to brew my own beer
to have a dog, and not a tiny one either

When I am 70 I want 
to be retired and volunteering
to still be kind
to have lots of good stories
to still ride my bike or go on walks or swim
to have a tree that I planted years ago be really big

Hilarious
"To age with someone is to bond with them. It's cool."

Friday, August 3, 2012

Today's To-Do List

Check to see if I can make divisions in my savings account for things like "emergency fund," "Christmas fund," and "car fund."
Make Diagnostic Exams for Pre-Alg and Alg 1
Write a reflection of what I have learned over the summer and how that has led to who I now envision my students to be after they have taken my class.
Use my reflection to create a list of behaviors I identify as evidence that my students have become the students that I expect them to be, and also identify behaviors that lead to those behaviors so that I can reward them.
Set up my classroom a little more.
Call Dad.
Call Brooke.
Call Bekah.

Go to Sundance?

I know all of this isn't possible in one day. I'll just rollover the stuff I don't get done today into tomorrow's to-do list :).