When I Grow Up, I Want To Be….
When I applied to college, one of the essay questions was Why do you really want to go to Northwestern? In other words, what would you really do with a Northwestern degree? I found the answer quite simple: I want to go to Northwestern because I want to be a Muppet. Really, can you think of a more noble, more exciting career than educating and entertaining the children of the world while impersonating a furry monster? (That’s not what you thought I would write, was it!)
Well, they believed me at NU, and accepted me. In my 4 years there, I changed majors a few times, but eventually graduated with a degree in Communications Studies (yes, I do use my degree every day), and concentration degrees in French (no, I don’t use that one), and Creative Writing for the Media (what do you think?). I also had minors in sailing and fundraising. Between the fall of 1994 and the spring of 1998, I sailed in Iowa, Ohio, California, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Indiana, Oregon, Minnesota, and probably a few other states I don’t remember right now. All of that sailing included 9 National Championships and a Good Will Regatta. I also danced 120 hours and raised close to $60,000 for Dance Marathon. Let’s just say that I multi-task well.
After college, I sailed some more. Went to Antarctica. Coached sailing. Taught 9th grade English. Substituted in a Catholic high school. Went to grad school and got my master’s degree from Harvard. Worked for the Navy as a lot of things. Yes, I was a knowledge manager, an instructional designer, and a human systems integration specialist. In other words, I did a lot of research and built a ton of PowerPoint briefs. After that, I came back to K-12 and spent 6 years as the Director of Academic Technology at St. Michael’s Country Day School in Newport. In July 2011, I joined EdTechTeacher, and in the fall of 2015 started working on my doctorate at Johns Hopkins in the Entrepreneurial Leadership in Education specialty.
So, to bring you to present day, years after graduating from NU, I am neither a puppeteer nor wearing a fuzzy costume. I lead professional development workshops in schools across the country, write for a number of publications including EdTech Researcher at EducationWeek and Edutopia, present at conferences, and do a LOT of homework.
Yep, definitely muppet-like!
Beth Holland 