Midterm LLSS 501
Frances Vitali
Our practitioner research focus this semester has taken on a new updated focus as we continue to refine the master’s capstone experience in Teacher Education Department.Talking with TED colleagues Elementary Education Department Chairs and advisors Drs. Tom Keyes and Marjori Krebs and Secondary Education Chair Dr. Lyn Oshima has helped enable me to understand our meaning and intent so I may relay and interpret it for you, our teacher practitioners.
Creating our Research Corner blog is a way of helping to reflect on and be transparent about my understanding of the process to share with you.
The course syllabus has been designed to facilitate a practical approach to guiding your journey as you reflect on where you have been, what and who has influenced your learning, how has your classroom learning environments been changing and what will become the focus of your inquiry project. The inquiry project takes a secondary role in your narrative since your trajectory of you as a teacher and learner are emphasized. What is important for your comprehension is that this is not an assignment. This is a reflection of you, your professional life, teaching and learning and your interaction with your students. This project is a creative process and has all the qualities associated with ideas, uncertainty, ambiguity, trusting yourself and intuition, reading voraciously about your topic and becoming informed and synthesizing what you are reading as it relates to you and your inquiry.
The first phase was reflecting on you as a Teacher –who you are, your philosophy, your teaching, your students, you as a teacher researcher and your research question. During the second half of our semester you will workshop these narratives in your writing groups refining and editing them for your final writing in EDUC 590 next semester.
The second phase is the research stage where you are building your research base supporting your research question. Your credibility will be bolstered when you document who you have been reading, talking to and corresponding with and synthesizing those voices and perspectives in a conversation within your text. This confirms for the reader of your narrative that you are informed, curious to know about your topic and determined and courageous enough to find it. Database searching with SJC Reference Librarian Joseph Owen was a helpful step in becoming more comfortable with navigating your research with databases. You also have the UNM elibrary resources available to you. On November 5, UNM Zimmerman Reference Librarian Chris Desai will also guide you through the services and database searching in the UNM collection.
Our course webpage is intended as a resource reserve for you of National Writing Project practitioner research and other relevant information, such as APA Style. I communicate each week through email to confirm with updates our plans for the next week. Communication is important to me and I hope that I have nurtured your reassurance and your trust in me for you to be able to communicate honestly and sincerely with me.
Our November 5, wherever you are in your inquiry proposal, will be a time to stop along the way and receive feedback in a collegial dialogue. Your TED advisors and faculty will become a sounding board committee for you to articulate your inchoate or formalized research ideas and plans. The Charrette Procedure will serve as our guiding protocol to help facilitate this creative process. Each of you will become a recorder during the Charrette for each other. This way you can concentrate on the conversation without worrying about writing things down and listening at the same time.
During the second half of the semester, we will invite teacher practitioners to talk about the process with you from their experiences.
My goal is that of a facilitator, editor, cheerleader, (devil’s) advocate, advisor and supporter. I look forward to learning about your question with equal enthusiasm as you. I will visit your classrooms to see your projects and meet your students.
I try to model what researchers do. For example postings to our course blog They try to capture the story of what is going on and document it in different ways-through photographs, writing, quotes, artifacts and make connections to what you are finding. Curiosity is equivalent to teacher practitioner research and it is guided by your senses of wanting to know, to teach your students better, to become better and to tell their story and the story of your classroom to the best of your storytelling ability. And only YOU can do it! You are at the point of no return in your journey. I trust and honor the work you do and please know I am beside you on your journey, rooting and cheering you on. I am your biggest FAN!
Please let me know how I can best help you along the way. I will take my leads from you. Now on with the rest of your show!
Thank you, Frances