Gabriel Metzger's Portfolio

Credits-I was able to get units transferred from my year of study to get my multiple credential license in California for primary grade teachers

-I had a year of Educational study and leadership studies from California State of Monterey during my year back in the states.  I saw how diverse the classrooms were and what types of students and what were challenges that might come to the forefront in teaching with such a diverse student population.  I was a student teacher and leader at times and I enjoyed this a great deal.  This helped with my classroom discipline and my skills set in working with students with disabilities and how students may face obstacles in a class with such a diverse race and cultural variety.  The teacher was caucasian American and most of the class wasn't.  I worked and studied and included and lessons for all learners, even students with ADHD and other disorders that may require parents to medicate children.

Ed 870, Capstone Course, Professor Koehler, Spring 2016

-This course taught me how to write about myself in a professional way so others could explore different facets of myself.

Welcome to my transcript live on a URL.

EAD 822, Engaging Diverse Students and Families, Fall 2014, Professor Dunbar

-This course helped me get into situations where teachers could make a difference in how they could affect families of all race and creeds.  Professor Dunbar helped bring out the inequalities of education specifically in the United States.  I got to learn about double standards in terms of race regarding discipline in schools and testing in the "poorer performing schools," and how African-Americans were published in harsher ways than there "white" counterparts.

EAD 860, Concept of a Learning Society, Fall 2014, Professor Weiland

This was a nice e-mail from me chatting with Prof. Weiland about the course and the idea that learning could take place during the entire span of your life.  "Hello Graham and Prof. Weiland:  I enjoyed the Piano lessons book very much. Did I do ok with my second writing assignment that I posted on the dropbox?  I taught myself how to play the drums and congas take care when I was in college-Gabriel"  

I'm an older student than most and life long learning did not ever come to my mind before taking this course.  This course was about seeing the reality of education and how reliant it was on the Internet and the good points of this and the pitfalls like computer literacy with English.  This is always a worry of mine since then. Do people really read anymore via the Internet?

EAD 850, Multicultural Education Issues and Strategies, Professor Shahjahan, Spring 2015

-This class was difficult for me because I had to see the way I looked at education from a power relationship and look at terms like social power as a form of money.  An example, wealthy parents go to their school to make changes to what their son might be learning, their social "capital" could get them what they needed.  Their status in their community and the amount of respect is garnered by money and race and other factors.  This course changed the way I see the issues facing America and here in Asia regarding primary education.  If I care about the quality of education, all students must be in my mindset and must be treated the same.

EAD 800, Concepts Educational Inquiry, Professor Weiland, Spring 2015

-This course was also run by Professor Weiland.  This course brought up the idea of reform and changes to education and how to approach these kinds of changes. This was very interesting for me.  I never felt I could make any change to learning like Dewey did.  I also learned about knowledge and the good and bad points of having knowledge especially hearing about Oppenheimer's life after he created the atomic bomb.

CEP 820, Teaching Students Online, Professor Heintz, Summer 2015 

-This was probably a class that inspired me the most.  I was able to think about being an online teacher and my mentor was Ms. Trixi, and she was amazing with her guideance and feedback on creating my own creative writing course online. The updates and changes I made had a purpose and I loved how she graded me and the rubrics the teachers used.  They were fair and outstanding in what they assessed.  This is also when I used Google Docs a great deal and fell in love with collaborative work.

CEP 866, Psychoeducational Interventions for Children & Youth, Professor Klein, Summer 2015

-This was a course that was run in six weeks and was too short for the amount of material. I love school psychology and I wish that much of the study and focus was more than what works in schools now with troubled youth.  We never explored new methods of treatmeant.  This made the class a bit dull.  It was a very empiracal class with the focus on how to treat youth as a group or individually but this was course focused on only what had worked and the language was too techinical.  This course is run through the psychology department.

CEP 818, Creativity Teaching and Learning, Professor Richardson, summer 2015

-Another great course and probably one of my favorites.  We had to re-think teaching and look at a particular subject and think about all the angles a student might get interested in it.  This course was all about getting students to allow their creativity to shine forth.  We looked at perceiving topics, abstracting topics and different ways of thinking.  Professor Richardson challenged me because I had to come up with teaching unit to re-think.  I love the sciences so I decided to pick up recycling.  I looked at the actual process of recycling at many many ways and I loved the best text in the MAED program, "Sparks of Genius," and the book challenged teachers to re-imagine teaching any topic in a new and exciting way so the student will be interested in it.  This was a great course because I could think about all types of learners and who might get bored with a topic and who might not.

CEP 815, Technology and Leadership, Professor Yadav, summer of 2015

-This course was lousy and dull.  The leadership models came from Harvard Business school and did not apply enough to being and online teacher or a Technology Leader for education.  The types of leaders we studied were interesting enough but as a technology leader it didn't work.  The professor or TA never gave me a real life Technology Leader in a school or in a story or on a YouTube video.  I almost lost my interest in being a technology leader.