MARY RIGAN
special education teacher
Showcase
Thank you for visiting my showcase! Here you will find work that I am especially proud of that paints a good picture of important topics that I explored throughout my Masters in Education. The first part of my program was focused on Special Education and instructional practices and took place mostly during my internship year. The second part of my program was focused more on P-12 School Leadership and topics ranged from curriculum to multicultural education and where I really started focusing on social justice issues in education. Please, enjoy the websites, essays, and reflections below as I've made my way through this journey!
Curriculum and Instructional Practices
While this website is by no means perfect, it was a way for me to illustrate what I believe a positive, inclusive, learning community looks and feels like. I wanted this mock school to prioritize child development, special education, and social justice education. I thought through various curriculums, activities and clubs, job descriptions, and staff lists to build what (I thought) would be a great community for learning and growth. I really love this site and it serves as a good reminder for me to continue working for what I believe in.
I created this website during a (long!) exploration of animals with the first grade class I student taught with. What started out as a "mini inquiry unit" around writing turned into a gigantic research and writing project for our students. The kids loved their work and final products and it was really an adventure seeing where the project went. We were very proud of all that they did. This was also a great opportunity and example of how my mentor teacher and I reflected on teaching and learning and collaborated throughout the project. A link to my final paper regarding this topic is also on the website.
In this essay I reflected on the book "The Girl with the Brown Crayon" by Vivian Paley. Paley wrote about her kindergarten class and the daily conversations, experiences, and insights that they shared. She held a deep respect and love for her students that I found to be inspiring. Additionally, she exemplifies the importance and relevence of teaching as inquiry and teacher research. I also was moved by her ability to constantly reflect on, question, and modify her teaching practices.
This paper would be a good example of overlap between multicultural education and instructional practices... which makes sense. This paper analyzes issues of racism and oppression in a non-school setting (the movie "Rabbit Proof Fence") but I tied it all back to show how oppression is historical and normalized and what that looks like in schools today. This also made me think about our role as educators, especially as white educators, and recognizing our privilege and place in oppressive systems.
Multicultural Education and Social Justice Education
This paper was one of the first that I wrote in reaction to exposure and discussion regarding issues of privilege and oppression and how it relates to schools. I am so grateful for the course readings and discussions that led to this paper (and the course itself) because of its explicit focus on issues of power and schools. I can honestly say this was a huge turning point for me as a white, female, educator to identify my own role in issues of power and privilege and to begin working towards dismantling structural inequalities.
This was the final essay I wrote for a course that focused in depth on the "Achievement Gap" and the various causes and results. This essay summarizes why the language of "achievement" is problematic; it shifts the focus away from the historical, economic, political, and environmental causes that have led to this "gap." I agree with other educational researchers and writers who prefer the terms "Opportunity Gap" and "Education Debt" as more accurate representations of why certain students are "performing" lower than others. I also pose a few research-based solutions that I believe could lessen the "gap."
This presentation was a collaborative effort between myself and two other classmates for our Multicultural Education course. Despite never meeting face to face, we worked as a cohesive group to analyze an education policy in New South Wales. We focused on analyzing their approach to multicultural education and whether the policy was an authentic attempt to include and work with various language and culture groups or if the policy was focused more on globalization and competition. We focused on three themes: English Language education, a neoliberal agenda, and civic multiculturalism. Finally, we ended with recommendations for the policy. This project was an opportunity to analyze and critique a real policy on a global scale. We went very in depth to the policy, and it helped us all to realize while something may look and sound good, it is important to thoroughly understand and analyze policies. This also emphasized how important policies are in regards to progress towards true multicultural education.
Again, this was a collaborative group project with three students in total. We started by reading "The Political Economy of Urban Education" by Pauline Lipman and analyzing the text. We then created a visual representation, using Prezi, along with text, to summarize what Lipman articulates as the issues and the possible solutions to neoliberal reforms, privatization, gentrification, and a host of other factors that impact education. This was one of the first texts that I read regarding neoliberalism. While we spend a lot of time analyzing what schools need, this project helped me understand the connections and relationship between education and other social issues, such as housing, and the impact that has on urban communities.