Ashli's Portfolio

What does the future hold?

Goal Reflection Essay
 

When I was hired for my first teaching position, the thought of continuing my education as a lifelong learner hadn’t really crossed my mind.  Once I began to establish myself as a more experienced teacher and grew upon my beliefs, I started to think about what it would take for me to go back to school.  It was after a pay decrease and a long pay freeze that I had really considered it.  To be honest, my decision to go back to school wasn’t heavily dependent on receiving any kind of pay increase; it was mostly due to an uncertainty in my lifelong goals.  After I had begun coaching and teaching within my first few years, I started to consider the amount of passion I really had for athletics.  I had found that I wanted to be more involved with athletics than just being a coach. I really found myself having thoughts about how cool it would be to be an athletic director at the recreational, high school, or college level. Therefore, when I had looked into Michigan State University’s graduate degree programs I found what I thought would be the perfect program for me.  I liked the Masters of Arts in Education (MAED) program because I could choose a specialization of Sports Leadership and Coaching, while taking electives in mathematics education to help me decide whether teaching math or being an athletic director was the better choice for me.

 

My original goal in taking this program was to help me decide where my passion really lies. Was it with becoming a better mathematics educator in the classroom? Was it being a better coach for my athletes?  Was it to possibly pursue a new career path of athletic directing?  At the start of the program I wanted to take coaching classes and math classes to help me narrow down where I saw myself in the future.  Growing up I always had the teaching personality and knew that education was the direction I wanted to go.  During my time at MSU for my undergraduate degree, I was not only a fan of MSU sports, but was also a competitive cheerleader for the school. It was my undergraduate and alumni experiences with athletics that got me really considering the change in direction.  In the past few years I have really grown fond of the job that Mark Hollis has done at Michigan State as the athletic director and could see myself following in his footsteps one day.

 

Now that my master’s program is coming to an end, I have found that for the most part my goals have not changed.  The one thing that has really changed is the amount of uncertainty that I had in what direction I wanted my future to lead.  After completing the coaching classes for my specialization I have come to realize that I do want to pursue a career that is more involved with athletics rather than staying in the teaching field forever.  The classes that I had to take for this program gave me insight in different angles of athletics.  I had to complete different assignments that focused on the role of the athletes, coaches, and athletic director.  I found myself very engage and really enjoying these classes.  My goal now is to teach for a few more years to get leadership experience and then switch career fields to an athletic director.  My goal would be to become a high school athletic director to get some experience and then work my way into a college.  As I mentioned above, I have really appreciated what Mark Hollis has done for MSU athletics and use him as my inspiration and hopes of what I could become and do for future athletic programs.