Terminal Degree as the Beginning

As I listened to Ashley Miller speak at the doctoral hooding ceremony about her fears of not graduating, of that dreaded email requiring one more course or one more draft, I realized how real my own fears had become.  The time-line of defending my dissertation at the end of March, addressing the committee's recommendations in early April, sending the revised draft to my adviser soon afterwards, submitting the final dissertation to the graduate school before April 22, and the ceremony on May 13, intensified these fears rather than relieved them.  And when I was in line to step onto the stage, I held back the urge to look inside the cardboard tube with the University of Louisville seal to see if anything was inside.

The ceremony marked the transition to "Doctor" as one to be taken with great responsibility.  Dr. Beth Boehm, vice provost for graduate affairs, assured our families that a terminal degree meant "the end"--no more coursework or dissertation drafts.  Yet, this journey is just beginning.  As doctoral students, we learned how to create new knowledge.  Through our doctoral programs, we discovered the needs within our communities.  Our new terminal degrees have positioned us as researchers, creators, and problem solvers.

Through courses in education and literacy theory, teaching writing, cognitive coaching, and qualitative research design and methods, I discovered the need for "small data."  I am prepared to analyze trends, identify learning gaps, and further disaggregate data as tiny lenses into education; yet, more exists to be seen and heard.  My dissertation research study narrated the stories of a teacher leadership team and the liaisons across the country who developed and implemented a Literacy Design Collaborative professional development workshop called Assignments Matter.  Narratives such as these show us effective ways into big data.  Teacher and student narratives help us see the faces behind the numbers.

Inspired by the speakers' encouraging words, my adviser Dr. Penny Howell's vote of confidence, and my professor Dr. Lori Norton-Meier's special congratulations, I enter the next phase of my education.  Empowered with the knowledge of how to create new knowledge, I attend to the literacy and professional development needs within education through organizations such the Illinois Writing Project.  And although I hesitated to add "Ph.D." to my C.V. until it was official, I now have a signed parchment that no one can take away from me--I'd like to see them try.

Story as a Fossil and the NCTE Proposal Title

As I struggle with the right conference proposal title, I think about the aha moment I had just an hour ago while reading Stephen King's On Writing.  I bought this book some years ago and enjoyed reading it then as I am enjoying a reread of it now.  But the section about fossils and symbolism made me pause:  "If you can go along with the concept of the story as a pre-existing thing, a fossil in the ground, then symbolism must also be pre-existing, right? Just another bone (or set of them) in your new discovery" (p. 198).  Stories, he said, are fully formed and need the proper excavation tools.  And maybe symbols and deeper meanings are much the same.

What this comes to is my narrative stance in research.  I want to study, to write about, inquire into the idea of transformation experiences in teacher development.  Why do certain professional development experiences transform some teachers and not others?  How might narrative inquiry help us know the entire story that answers that question?  It seems that there is a fossil that must be discovered, unearthed, and polished for us to understand why some teachers respond with renewed vigor for the profession and others decide that one more hoop just won't do it for them.  I suspect transformation has to do with the validation teachers finally feel as professionals when they attend learning opportunities that honor their capacity as leaders.

Recently, I learned about another kind of transformation.  By listening to interviews, reading transcripts, and focusing on the story being told, I found a thread running through many conversations between one teacher and myself.  I created a narrative research/literature review that uncovered an interesting element that could lead to the teacher's exploration of new classroom strategies.  Seeing the story of our work, the teacher realized our conversations, more than class reflections, were intelligent talk that moved learning and discovery forward. That story is still developing.  But it may be key to figuring out the transformation piece.  Perhaps the transformed teachers discovered a fossil--their mission, teaching story, or leadership ability, perhaps--and were able to polish it with renewed strength and insight with the right excavation [PD] tools.  That, too, remains to be seen.

There may be no easy formula to determine the best professional learning opportunity.  It most likely is dependent on the disposition of the attendee and his or her context.  If that is true, even the well-designed PD may fall short of delivering (or deliverance).  This inquiry goes deeper than examining professional development feedback databases or administering surveys.  The story begins at the fossil, in the classroom before the professional development experience.  Either polishing happens or it doesn't, but we have to know the fossil from the beginning.

So I am still stuck with no title for my NCTE proposal and am only a  little clearer on my narrative stance in research.