thesisthoughts

I can’t believe that it is almost a month since I wrote last. Things have been terribly hectic at school and I finished teaching both of my courses. At home things are also heating up as end of year concerts, parties  and ballet performances get closer. I am trying to organize an extra day off for study next year – otherwise there is no way that I will be able to keep up with all my commitments.

So what’s up?

School:

As every one who works in education knows, the end of the school year is a difficult period. There is a lot of tension in the air for many reasons: pressure to get everything done, not easy working with tired children who are dreaming about the swimming pool or their next party, the teachers still don’t know what they will be doing next year and they are nervous about it… I feel as though I am organizing hundreds of things at once and nothing gets done 100% properly and certainly not from A to B without interruptions.

Courses:

I finished teaching both my courses and received interesting feedback from both groups. I will write a separate post on that.

For the last meeting I showed the teachers the movie “The Freedom Writers” about the Freedom Writers Diary. It was a nice way to end the course and the movie touches many of the issues discussed during our learning. There was a great atmosphere in both groups and the movie and popcorn added a lot. There is nothing like sitting together and sniffling over a great movie.

I must quickly reread the written feedback I received and make some kind of report out of it. I must inform the Teachers’ Centers where the courses were held, and I want to get the school principals involved in what the teachers experienced. In addition I must start thinking about next year and how I will improve on this year’s programs.

I received an invitation to go to Tel Aviv to a meeting with those in charge of Language and literacy in the Education Department. They are interested in working with teachers and writing more next year and wanted to hear more about my courses. They are planning a series of filmed lectures on teaching writing which will be used in inservice teacher learning all over the country. The Centre for Educational Technology is producing them. They liked my ideas and I am already going to do one filmed lecture in the next month, before I go to Australia. It sounds like something new and exciting, but a bit scary too. Lecturing in front of a camera will be a totally new experience – I am used to developing a topic together with the teachers listening and participating.

Conference:

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t leave my paper to the last minute. This week this will be one item at the top of my list. My paper is on the last day of the conference and I probably will have a very small audience. I am quite happy about that as my main aim here is just gaining experience. The problem is that I was hoping to get it over and done with early in order to enjoy the conference.

PhD:

No progress here. I think in a way I am waiting to get to Australia to sit down face to face with my supervisors in order to get myself going. On the other hand, all I did and am doing with my courses is the ground work for this enormous project. What worries me here is the less you DO, the less self confidence you have. When I am busy reading and writing and discussing ideas I feel I can achieve this task, when I’m not involved, it looks impossible.

Good news:

GP wrote to congratulate me that my article for English in Australia is out, that he actually read it. I can’t wait to see it – exciting news.

I’m off to make huge lists of things to do. I WILL keep writing here!

Today’s workshop at N will be based entirely on materials brought by the teachers. We have an assessment  workshop  with written texts straight from the classrooms and then will have a workshop for peer evaluation of our new teacher narratives and  a rubric produced by one of the teachers. I am happy that the teachers feel comfortable bringing their materials to the group and that there are many pieces to choose from.

One message which is being communicated by the participants is that they are constantly surprised that they are now going back to classroom activities and teaching strategies from the past. They are realizing that it is legitimate to use “forbidden” activities from the Whole Language days.

I’ll write more after the session.