Talking_the_Walk

Running head: Talking the Walk: Pursuing a Master OF ARTs Degree Talking the Walk: Pursuing a Master of Arts Degree Stephen Brown University of Phoenix Talking the Walk: Pursuing a Master of Arts Degree Do people succeed by natural talent and ability or by hard work and determination' Are leaders born or do they rise to the occasion' I believe it is both. The people who reach the top of their professions work hard and are determined to develop and polish their raw skills and abilities. My primary motive for pursuing a Master of Arts Degree in Education is to validate and formalize my hard work and determination. My natural abilities and passion have carried me from a successful and gratifying career as an instructor to the director of curriculum for a global software company. But I have not peaked. To advance my personal development I need to formalize what comes to me naturally. To advance my career I need the validation of an advanced degree. Teaching has always come naturally to me. Perhaps it is genetic. My mother was a teacher. Her mother, while never certified in any capacity, taught Sunday school at her church. I never questioned my ability to break a task down and explain it step by step. You may not even recognize your main strengths. You may think, "Everyone can do that," and not see your talents. Or, you may simply be blind to your strengths (Rath, 2007). My first experience as a teacher came in my last year of college. On the path to becoming a television director, I was selected for a project that required me to create a video using unskilled high school students. The project required the high school students to be the on air talent, videographers, sound and lighting crew. At the time I didn’t really think of myself as a teacher, I simply imparted the necessary skills the best way I knew how. Hard Work Can Make a Difference' My first career as a television director and producer can only be described as educational if you stretch the concept of transferable skills. I created commercials. The purpose was to sell products and services. But I frequently did my research and learned as much as I could about how the product or service could benefit the consumer. I followed a strategy that an educated and informed consumer was a more valuable consumer who would spend more money. It was hard work; sometimes like panning for gold in silver mine, but the hard work paid off. Leveraging Skills to Open Doors A new opportunity opened up for me to create an instructional video. I was convinced, and convinced my client, that my ability to visualize an idea could translate to training employees. Skills are your gifts, talents and things you like and do best. Transferable skills are those gifts and talents that can be transferred to another career regardless of where you picked them up, or how long you used them in another field (Bush, 2006). The Transition Fast forward ten years and I am conducting training classes for a running and fitness company. When I stepped in front of my first class, it was almost as natural as breathing. Teaching led to rewriting the training materials and shaping them to my teaching methods. More practice and experience helped me learn about learning styles. Now I am a Curriculum Manager for the fifth largest software company in the world. But my natural skills have taken me as far as I can go. My manager talks about Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains and Cognitive Objectives. Innately these concepts make sense to me. I lead a team that builds effective courseware but I cannot scale my innate abilities and articulate ideas into learning strategies that inspire executives to trust me with the education of their workforce. I want to earn my Master of Arts in Education to talk my walk. References | | | | | Bush, C. (2006, June 11). Just ‘mind’ your own business. The Arizona Republic, p. ec1. Rath, T. (2007, May). Find your strengths. Personal excellence, p.5