thesisthoughts

Yesterday afternoon I set off for my long drive to Z. I was very excited to meet my new group, and hoped that we would get off to a good start. There were supposed to be 28 in the group but only 22 turned up for the first session.

The staff at the centre were waiting for me and the room and the technology were all fine. As soon as I had my computer set up, teachers started arriving.

This group is different from others I have worked with in that 90% of the teachers are from a very religious backgrounds and they teach in very religious schools. It will be interesting to see how they bring their school experiences to the sessions and to learn from them about their environment. I must ask them about their Internet access – often these families have limited Internet experience and facilities.

The room was set up with tables and chairs all facing the front in a horseshoe and I didn’t move them yesterday. I will definitely set them up differently next time, in order to promote small group discussion. As a result, the first meeting was more lecture style than I would have liked.

One of the conclusions I reached after last year was that I have to be more direct in explaining to the teachers what hey can take to the classroom and what my expectations are of them between sessions. Last year I encouraged them to take as much of their learning as possible to the classroom, but not all of the teachers understood the links. Those that did understand and tried the big and the little strategies and tools in the classroom, got a lot more from the learning experience. Yesterday I was very specific: “This is an important question to ask your students”, “Did you notice that I gave you all very small pieces of paper? This is so… In the classroom…”, “In the next two weeks, until we meet again, fill in this table which will help you examine what is happening in your classroom…”.

I am extremely frustrated that the Department of Education decided to cut all courses down from the compulsory 60 hours from last year to 30 hours this year. Instead of all teachers learning one 60 hour course, they are required to choose two different 30 hour courses. What can you do and learn in 30 hours? It isn’t enough to form any kind of learning community, especially when there are 25-30 teachers in the group. In my mind I have made a decision: rather than complain about it all the time, I will see this course as part A in a series. If it’s good they’ll come back for more.

It is frustrating that the desicion makers ”up above” don’t listen to the teachers’ feedback (which said that the 60 hours facilitates deeper, more relevant learning) or current research on professional learning (sustained, ongoing…)

I suppose I shouldn’t complain, I believe that in the US, 16 hours is considered a long course.

Next week I will do the same program with another new group, they are located at K.

When I see that my last post is from the end of August I feel that time is running away from me. We went back to school on the first of September and since then I have been on the run. I have been trying to get up at 4:00 am every morning in order to sit and work on my doctorate. I can’t say that it happens every day and there are days when I do get up but have some urgent assessment or planning to do for school and I do that. Most days I manage to take a few baby steps forward.  

I am working on three different things at once. My ethics application is being read by GP and I already know that there will be many changes made to it. I wanted to get the application in and authorized before starting this years’ courses but I understand now that that was unrealistic. Once I have the forms in, I need to send similar documents to the Israeli Department of Education, to get their approval too.

In the meanwhile, I have started working on the literature review, according to the recommendations in Destination Dissertation by Foss and Waters. I feel as though I am progressing and am enjoying the work so far.

In addition, I started teaching the first of my four professional learning groups yesterday. As part of my big effort to write a lot about my experiences with the groups, I returned to blogging this morning.

http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=266493

The clock is ticking all the time and I must write a new post, the one I got up to write, about my session yesterday.