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Jessica Roberts will complete her M.A.T.L. in 2018. She is currently a second grade teacher. Jessica was initially drawn to the ������ƵCollege M.A.T.L. program because she she had always pursued leadership roles. Her 17 years of classroom teaching experience have all been in charter schools that have allowed her to wear many different hats along with classroom teaching: Teacher coach and mentor, chair of curriculum and school improvement committees, staff meeting facilitator, and facilitator of professional learning. The masters program for teacher leadership at ������Ƶwas a perfect fit. She loved the cohort structure and that the program was designed for working classroom teachers.

For Jessica, the most valuable aspect of the M.A.T.L. program so far has been the deep learning of herself as a leader, her strengths, and how to leverage strengths in others. She has learned about who she is as a leader and what kinds of people she needs to put on her team to compliment areas where she is not as strong. She has learned about the power of active listening and supporting and celebrating others in leadership. Also, getting to collaborate with accomplished educators from all over has been one of the best things about this program for Jessica. She has made some lifelong friends and learned so much from her amazing cohort.

Of her ability to balance the demands of being a teacher and a graduate student, Jessica says, “This program is designed for working teachers. This allows for a lot of flexibility. I designated a block of time each week to work on coursework and projects. All in all it has been pretty doable.”

Jessica describes how her professional role has changed as a result of the M.A.T.L. program: “I see myself as a teacher leader. I am confident in my leadership skills and strengths and know what opportunities to pursue and say yes to and which ones to pass on. I am more willing to put myself out there and be vulnerable and transparent about what I don't know.”

After completing her M.A.T.L., Jessica wants to work with and support preservice and beginning teachers. She would like to look for opportunities to partner with universities and schools to collaborate in offering professional learning and hands-on classroom experiences for education students and beginning teachers.

For her Capstone project, Jessica is creating a virtual toolkit for universities to use to offer opportunities for education professors to partner with accomplished classroom teachers to offer pre-service teachers a chance to engage in the process of planning, teaching, and assessing lessons in a real-life classroom setting. It’s easy and free to implement and can be added to any methods education course as a experiential component. Jessica chose this project because I chose this because she wants to advocate for the education profession by helping to recruit and retain high quality educators. Jessica’s coach is Melody Arabo, a US Department of Education teaching fellow.