I have officially graduated with my master's degree!

Last fall, I was sharing with a friend that I was almost done with my master's degree and she asked if there was going to be a party to celebrate? At the time, I had not made any plans for a party. 

A few months later, my friend, Katrina shared a desire to host a small graduation ceremony for not just myself but two other colleages and friends who also have graduated with their master's degree this past school year. 

We were asked whom we would like to invite and showed up prepared to officially graduate! Ellen even wore an official (Harry Potter?) robe! 

The ceremonies opened with the BFA grad processional music of Pomp and Circumstance as we walked the two steps to our stools and sat down. 

Rachel, who has been teaching at CSK (Christian School Kandern) and is now a new mom, gave our commencement address. She also worked to achieve her master's degree several years ago and shared the pros and cons of completing a master's degree overseas. 

Pros: We have so many opportunities to share what we have learned in the classroom, we can work on our classes online and have quite a bit of freedom with getting tasks done, when our peers in the US had a timeline of midnight, that stretched to early morning the next day for us (in case we desired to pull an all-nighter), our international school environment gave great insight in what we were learning, ...

Cons: Some things we learned did not apply to our current teaching situation, it was a struggle to coordinate time zones with online meetings and group projects, ...

Here is our Commencement Address if you want to hear the rest of the pros and cons! 

After Rachel shared a fun commencement address, Katrina shared a passage from Philippians 2:1-11 that she has been meditating on for the past few weeks. 

"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind amoung yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Katrina opened a time of prayer and she along with a few others, sweetly prayed over us. This was my favorite part! She then called our names so we could come forward (again, two steps) to receive our diplomas, I mean cards! 

We then partied it up with some delicious chocolate cupcakes! Vegan as two of us our gluten free and one is also dairy free. They were delicious! As we sat around and eat our cupcakes, we were asked where we received our degree (which institution), what is our degree and what was our favorite class and why was it our favorite? 

My degree is through University of Colorado Denver (UCD) and is in teaching mathematics. My favorite class was a media class I took a few years ago where we had mini-projects, medium projects and a large group project. My favorite mini-project was creating a short clip of 'Bringing up Baby' with some friends. I filmed the 2 minute clip while Ivy, Harrison, Sarah, Rocky (big dog) and Messerschmitt (small cat) acted out the scenes. I worked so hard (about 4 hours) to edit and match the actions of my friends to the actual sound from the movie. 

My favorite medium project was an ethnography that was paired with photos sharing the life of my grandpa, Arthur Ramse. I interviewed my dad and his two brothers, Ben and David then matched the stories they shared with corresponding photos. I uploaded the video to YouTube and about a year later, received a message from a gentleman sharing how my grandparents, Arthur and Elmyra impacted the lives of his parents. They had shared the gospel and prayed with this man's parents. He found the obituary of my grandpa online and then the video that I created. 

The class itself along with the group project introduced me to different media platforms and creative ways to use them in the classroom. From what I was learning, I created a small lesson with Genial.ly then inspired my students to work together in small groups and each group created an online lesson with Genial.ly. Then, each group completed each other's lesson. This was so much fun! 

This class was memorable as I got to play with my love of old movies along with Ivy (old movie expert!), share the gospel that my grandparents lived out each day and hear how their impact made a difference in someone else's life and learned how to grow as a teacher by gaining more confidence with technology and finding creative ways to implement different media platforms in the classroom with my students.