What is your question today? This is more than just an assignment for a grade; this is all about you as a professional, your professional thinking, habits of mind and practice as you make transparent in writing, visually, metaphorically, symbolically your teaching and learning with your students. This is authentic learning at it's professional best. It will become the research story of your classroom.
Welcome to the journey that will transform you this year. I am happy to travel alongside you as your colleague and guide.
Week 1
Session I:
1. Writing Prompt (see below)
Graduate Matters: POS, Letters of Intent, Letter to yourself
2. Intellectual History of your Question: Teacher Practitioner Sarah Capitelli
3. Intellectual History of 2011 Cohort
4. SEPTA Map Metaphor
5. Post Card: Questions
EDUC 513 Seminar: Writing PromptI am a teacher. I write about my work, about teaching, and about researching my teaching through my journal. I enjoy writing, but teaching must be at the center of any other work that I do; my research and writing must directly feed my teaching. Keeping a journal has been a realistic way for me to learn about, inquire into, collect data about, and enhance my practice as well as to learn about and plan for the children. Although writing in my journal each day takes time, it is economical and is the genre most compatible with my style of writing, my way of teaching, and my way of thinking.
I continue to keep a journal for a variety of reasons. First and most important, it helps me with my teaching. When used in certain ways, the journal allows me to look closely at curriculum. As I teach, I wonder how my thinking and my students’ thinking evolve over time. I wonder what I have valued and what the children are interested in and value. Lesson plans don’t tell me this, but my journal does. My journal is a place for planning, for raising questions, for figuring things out, and for thinking. Did I stick to my plans? What did the children do with what I tried to teach? What did the children work on? What do they contribute to the life of the classroom each day? Did I do what I wanted to do that day? Have I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish over time? What are the possible extensions of what we are currently doing? I want to know these things—and many more—and the way I can discover them is by describing what happened each day and by reading and reflecting on it. The journal provides completion and closure at the end of the day….
Interestingly, going back over my journal and rereading it and reflecting on it have never been as important to me as writing it. Perhaps that’s because as long as I have the written record—because I have documented what happened—I know that there’s always the possibility of going back to it at a later time, by myself or with colleagues, to learn what I can about my teaching from my teaching.
Streib, L.Y. (1993). Journal: Visiting and revisiting the trees. In Marilyn Cochran-Smith & Susan Lytle. [Eds.]., pp. 123-124.
Week 2 (See Emerging Photography quotes above)
Read: Living the Questions Chapter 1 Discuss
Read: Streib's Visiting and Revisiting the Trees-write reflections
Map out your 4 reflections
POS & Letter of Intent
Create Google sites
Intellectual History & Question? (SEPTA map)
Oral Exam video excerpts
Article Discussion-Steib, Brown
Anatomy of Article & Annotations
Week 3, Sept. 6:
Beginning your question journey
Anatomy of a research article, APA Style?
