(One Tenth of) A Legion
The picture is of eight of us after finishing Educational Psychology this Spring. We're at Orono Brewing Company, and we're all about to leave and part ways for a while (probably not for the summer, but more on that later). We're all smiling, beaming even. It's a really great image of a great moment in time.
The word cohort comes from the word representing a Roman military unit. A cohort in the Roman army would consist of six centuriae and comprise one-tenth of a legion, which itself has an interesting root (the Latin word legere, or "to choose"). Perhaps it's a fitting description of the MST group I am in: a group of people from some diverse backgrounds all working our way up (or, in some cases, into) the educational fray. Graduate school work is, at times, a fight: for understanding, for sanity, for the depth expected and required of the work. At other times, it's been about reflection and healing, about bringing each other to a higher place as a collective. Sometimes it's drudgery, and sometimes it's exhilarating and thrilling intellectual work.
Of all the things I expected to get out of graduate school, a sense of community and purpose was not one of them. I know that it is long past time to get my Master's, and I dread to see the day that my education no longer backs my place in the educational world. I also wanted to heed the warning not to get a degree "just to get it," but to instead ascend to a higher purpose through the work. My goal was to make sense of my own practice against the backdrop of academic research. What I actually got was a community of people interested in teaching at a high level right from the start.
At OBC we all crowded around a tiny table meant for four people. Ten of us, all sitting, drinking, and chatting, the conversation alternating between topics that are serious and trivial. A discussion about whether or not it is wrong to drench french fries in ketchup (spoiler: it's an awesome way to eat them) immediately would flip to a discussion of the work of schools. It was in this forum that I could process my own cumulative work over thirteen years in schools. My own experiences with kids, colleagues, administrators, professional development venues, parents, and ultimately, myself, were vivid examples of the things that we had learned in our classes, or could have embedded within them the answers to questions others had on their minds but might not have been the topic of the day.
I believe now, more than ever, that community is the most important human endeavor. That reframing of my world view changed my purpose for graduate school altogether. I could have sustained the view of singularity for the work I've done so far. I could have packed it up and went home when the discussions of what we had learned were just taking off. I could have chosen the close parking spots near the classroom halls in anticipation of a quick getaway. Perhaps that would have been an efficient, quick way to go, but it wouldn't have made me a part of the cohort. Sticking around just a bit longer made me feel invested in the success of others, and like there is more to my academic work than just my own submissions. These nine others in my cohort are not just my future colleagues, but they're my colleagues now, and their successes are mine and my successes are theirs. The purpose of my graduate work, then, is not just to hold my own practice to a standard, but to construct that standard through a learning community.
One of our professors likened us to a "Graduate Student Voltron" on the last day of his class: each with their own abilities and strengths, but a force to be reckoned with when regarded as a unit. I felt it on that last day. As we were parting ways, we talked about possible plans for the summer and a few people suggested I jump into one of the online summer courses they're taking. I need a break from classwork, definitely, but it was hard to say no.
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Ten minutes before the picture was taken, my friend Erin and I discovered through discussion that she had actually shadowed a class of mine two years prior. She remembers coming to Bapst and observing my Honors Physics class, and I remember that she had engaged a group who needed help on a force equilibrium problem and had shown them how to do it with the ease and confidence of a veteran teacher. She and I didn't put it together because I had long hair, and I didn't remember who came through my classes that day.
It is amazing how some things come full circle.
The word cohort comes from the word representing a Roman military unit. A cohort in the Roman army would consist of six centuriae and comprise one-tenth of a legion, which itself has an interesting root (the Latin word legere, or "to choose"). Perhaps it's a fitting description of the MST group I am in: a group of people from some diverse backgrounds all working our way up (or, in some cases, into) the educational fray. Graduate school work is, at times, a fight: for understanding, for sanity, for the depth expected and required of the work. At other times, it's been about reflection and healing, about bringing each other to a higher place as a collective. Sometimes it's drudgery, and sometimes it's exhilarating and thrilling intellectual work.
Of all the things I expected to get out of graduate school, a sense of community and purpose was not one of them. I know that it is long past time to get my Master's, and I dread to see the day that my education no longer backs my place in the educational world. I also wanted to heed the warning not to get a degree "just to get it," but to instead ascend to a higher purpose through the work. My goal was to make sense of my own practice against the backdrop of academic research. What I actually got was a community of people interested in teaching at a high level right from the start.
At OBC we all crowded around a tiny table meant for four people. Ten of us, all sitting, drinking, and chatting, the conversation alternating between topics that are serious and trivial. A discussion about whether or not it is wrong to drench french fries in ketchup (spoiler: it's an awesome way to eat them) immediately would flip to a discussion of the work of schools. It was in this forum that I could process my own cumulative work over thirteen years in schools. My own experiences with kids, colleagues, administrators, professional development venues, parents, and ultimately, myself, were vivid examples of the things that we had learned in our classes, or could have embedded within them the answers to questions others had on their minds but might not have been the topic of the day.
I believe now, more than ever, that community is the most important human endeavor. That reframing of my world view changed my purpose for graduate school altogether. I could have sustained the view of singularity for the work I've done so far. I could have packed it up and went home when the discussions of what we had learned were just taking off. I could have chosen the close parking spots near the classroom halls in anticipation of a quick getaway. Perhaps that would have been an efficient, quick way to go, but it wouldn't have made me a part of the cohort. Sticking around just a bit longer made me feel invested in the success of others, and like there is more to my academic work than just my own submissions. These nine others in my cohort are not just my future colleagues, but they're my colleagues now, and their successes are mine and my successes are theirs. The purpose of my graduate work, then, is not just to hold my own practice to a standard, but to construct that standard through a learning community.
One of our professors likened us to a "Graduate Student Voltron" on the last day of his class: each with their own abilities and strengths, but a force to be reckoned with when regarded as a unit. I felt it on that last day. As we were parting ways, we talked about possible plans for the summer and a few people suggested I jump into one of the online summer courses they're taking. I need a break from classwork, definitely, but it was hard to say no.
-----------------------------------
Ten minutes before the picture was taken, my friend Erin and I discovered through discussion that she had actually shadowed a class of mine two years prior. She remembers coming to Bapst and observing my Honors Physics class, and I remember that she had engaged a group who needed help on a force equilibrium problem and had shown them how to do it with the ease and confidence of a veteran teacher. She and I didn't put it together because I had long hair, and I didn't remember who came through my classes that day.
It is amazing how some things come full circle.
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