thesisthoughts

I am so happy that I didn’t just give up and accept the instruction from the Education Department to close my course down immediately.

The same afternoon that I met the inspector of professional development, I received a positive answer from her. I have to make some technical arrangements and then we can keep learning together. I won’t be getting paid as much but that doesn’t really matter here.

Now more than ever I feel that I have to prove that the course is worthwhile.

Just a thought I had while responding to the teachers in the course in the online forum…

As I read each and every teacher’s narrative and reflection, think of a significant response and pose a relevant question, I am aware that I, myself, am engaging in extremely intensive professional learning. Would this be the same for classroom teachers responding to students’ work if they would consider this as learning and not just a drag?

Yesterday, an hour before I left to teach my PL course at N., I had a phone call from the head of the centre where the course is held. She had bad news. There are not enough teachers enrolled in the course and the Head of PL in the area has decided to close down the course. Of course she explained that it has nothing to do with the content or the quality of the course, it is a purely financial decision.

My immediate reaction was anger. Why now? Where had they been for the past two months? Why didn’t they tell me before I sat all weekend preparing my lecture? And what about the teachers? They have attended four sessions and they won’t be recognised.

The answers I received were that the teachers will be able to join another course, even though they are also well into the syllabus. Is that taking the learning of the teachers seriously? Do they think these teachers are only studying to show that they are doing the compulsory 60 hours to get their salary rise?

I immediately wanted them to cancel the session, to call the teachers and tell them not to come. When I cooled down a little, I decided that that wasn’t fair and that I wanted to meet them face-to-face. I knew the teachers would be both disappointed and angry and that is how they reacted. They were angry that the learning process we have begun could be cut short. They sat down to write an email to those in charge saying that they are extremely involved in the learning process and that their students are also undergoing changes in their learning and writing as a result of the course.

I don’t know where things stand today, in the next few days I will speak to some of my peers and will try to find some more participants. Ironically, we had a new teacher join us yesterday. She remarked that she was surprised to find the group members talking in a common language and she explained that she could feel that the group had undergone significant learning together.

In spite of everything going on, we held the session. I dared doing something I haven’t done before. I asked the participants to do the writing task from last years national Meitzav literacy examination for 7-8 year olds (grade 2). Surprisingly nobody objected and the discussion afterwards was fascinating. We looked at the process each teacher underwent as she attempted the task. We discussed the differences between the texts produced and explored the teaching necessary to bring young pupils to success in similar situations.

This morning one of the teachers commented that the experience and the following discussion were very important and gave her a lot to think about. I’m happy I didn’t cancel.

As far as the future goes… who knows?

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During the recent school holidays I gave a two and a half hour presentation on my thesis to the literacy leaders of professional development, here in the north of the country. I was extremely nervous and hardly slept at all the night before. Some of my jitters were connected to the fact that this was really the first time I was presenting my own research to an audience and the rest were language related. It was a strange experience thinking and then talking my way thorough my material in Hebrew. The audience was extremely enthusiastic and I received many compliments, both on the day and by email afterwards. This was a group of 30 or so close colleagues and I felt that they were truly interested in what I have learned. The second part of the lecture dealt with blogging in general, edublogging and my own blogging experience. Many of the participants had never even seen a blog before.

This week we had a professional learning day at school. The grade six pupils taught the younger classes for four hours and the staff all met in the staff room. Apart from my lecture on blogging, two other teachers discussed their recent research. It was a fantastic day and again I had a wonderful response. Two of the teachers took the details for wordpresswhich is the most suitable site for Hebrew bloggers (as far as I can tell) and one of them has already signed up to open a blog herself.

I am constantly aware that I am very lucky to have the opportunities I do to share my learning and my conclusions with my peers. Maybe lucky isn’t the word I am looking for, maybe privileged?

This afternoon I drove two hoursto give session number 4 at K. I arrived and got myself organised and we even started on time. About two minutes after I put the title of our seminar on the screen, there was a power failure in the whole neighborhood. The next hour was spent in semi darkness. I gave the first part of the seminar as a lecture, doing quite well without my notes and my powerpoint presentation. When the teachers couldn’t see the whiteboard or their own notebooks any more I sent them home. To make up the rest of the hours they will write something reflective about the process they went through when they wrote their first narrative.

More reading and responding just around the corner…

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I have been back at school for four months now and my writing is definitely suffering from lack of time. I always have the feeling that I am doing what is urgent instead of what is important.

Last week I had my fourth meeting of my course at N. There are still few participants but I think those who are with me are happy with their learning and their feedback is definitely positive.

Over the school holiday week, most of the participants of my two courses wrote their first narratives. Many expressed difficulty with the task and some called me on the phone and asked for some encouragement. One waited for the next meeting to discuss ideas with me face to face. I was happy with the results for a first try.  Last year it took a lot longer for the first participant to post her narrative and a large percentage didn’t post at all.

In the meeting at N. I was able to bring many of the narratives as examples in my recent lecture on the writing process. This was important as again I was connecting the two levels of the course – the level of the teachers and their professional writing and the classroom level.

The combination of face to face meetings and written conversations on the course web site is perfect. The teachers are expected to write throughout the course and as they write they reflect on their writing pedagogy and on what their pupils experience in the classroom.

I was fairly disappointed in the amount of discussion between the participants so I will allow time for that in the meeting. I was also surprised that few of the participants related to the reflection questions. We will discuss them in the next face to face meeting and then I will post a similar question to allow discussion in writing.

I was happy to read that several participants have increased the time they allow for writing in their classroom. Some have even chosen to give writing with their students “another go” after not daring to deal with it in recent years.

My experience in the past three weeks has proven, yet again, that writing is extremely hard work. To read narratives from 20 or so teachers and plan and write a response to each is tiring and draining. Despite being overloaded I am very happy that I gave the task so early on in the course. The narratives really do give me a good peek into the world of each of the teachers and show me where she is in terms of teaching writing. Now I have to connect each narrative with the face of the teacher who wrote it.

It is very satisfying to hear that questions raised in the course have already triggered changes in some of the classrooms and that many of the ideas I have presented are being experimented with in the field.  We have a long way to go yet but I am enjoying my interaction with both groups.