Welcoming the Spring Semester

Welcome 2018!  

This new year and new semester prompted me to consider what I want to be and do in 2018.  Determined to be more and better in this year than I was in 2017, I began January 1 with reading, reflecting, and enjoying family time.  Each day is an opportunity to shape who I am and want to be.  My new and improved routine did not begin on January 2.  Some weeks into 2018 and the first week of spring classes, I'm still figuring out how to get up in time to stretch or have coffee, wake up children, read a news blog, make lunch, get ready for the day, and leave the house to drop off the high schooler before work.  After a few days of saying, "I think I need to start my day earlier," I reset my alarm.  Baby steps.

Many things stay the same when you work within an academic calendar.  I have ongoing projects with accreditation, research, and writing that stretch along the August-July continuum rather than the calendar year.  Yet, new classes in the spring semester revitalize me with opportunities for curricular revision.  And this semester, two pathways to enhance my understanding of students and partnerships have presented themselves in very different settings.  One is within my freshman composition course; the other is in my secondary English methods course.

The second semester Writing Studies delves into discourse communities, and in my particular learning community cohort the focus is civic engagement.  I began planning for this course in November while attending the National Writing Project Annual Meeting.  At that time, I was introduced to the PBS documentary American Creed and worked with instructors who had previewed the film and developed resources.  It was with even more good fortune that I learned the director of freshman composition at my university had received a grant for including service learning in the Writing Studies courses.  My course will analyze historical discourse, which will unfold as an exploration of today's discourse and the needs in our local communities.

My affiliation with the Illinois Writing Project and my participation with the National Writing Project College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) placed tools in my hands that will deepen this exploration of discourses in the composition class.  These argument-writing resources provide a framework for putting texts in conversation with one another and a foothold for students to engage in these conversations with each other.  Being present, being open, and being responsive allowed me to make the connections necessary to plan this semester.  I hope that what the freshmen experience within the class is as meaningful as planning for them has been.

In my secondary English methods course, five teacher candidates are continuing their program that began last fall.  We weathered some obstacles in the fall course, including my attempt to add writing and research layers to an already packed schedule.  We tried writing personal pieces with little time to develop them.  We recorded teaching episodes but did not fully take advantage of the feedback feature that was available in the technology platform.  After experimentation that resulted in marginal (if any) success, I should have been hesitant to try anything new this spring.  However, I want to enrich the candidates' experiences in the program, and have prepared myself for the setbacks that might occur. 

It has been a dream of mine to recreate my graduate research assistant experience of assisting a middle grades methods course taught in a middle school, often utilizing technology for backchannel discussions about classroom observations.  At the least, I hoped for my candidates to observe in a school together at the same time so that we could unpack the observations in our weekly class sessions.  Though possibly more than I should have hoped for, I also wanted a classroom space within a high school.  I am thrilled that our new partnership with a local high school opens doors for that dream to become a reality.  We meet in our high school classroom next week.  As we discuss candidates' observations and unpack the assigned readings, it will feel different from our university campus space.  I want it to feel different.  High school is where they have chosen to be, and it is my responsibility to prepare them.  Surrounding ourselves with the high school culture is only the first step.

Baby steps.