wow. The last three months have been a blur. All that I can say is that this has been the hardest school year of my life so far and it has nothing at all whatsoever to do with this dissertation. It mostly has to do with the fact that hurricane Irene flooded our building and now we are in a much less suitable space. I am really only now able to focus on writing again. I am also making music again in my new church and starting an exercise regime. Those things really help. I am taking a couple of courses to keep me going academically.

So my thoughts on the dissertation are that I want to interview two students at ECA who went to BHS. They have become pretty close to me and want to spend more time with me. I want to bring them to a focus group interview once or twice. I have to get IRB approval to do that, however. But it will really bring this whole research full circle. My next move is to contact GT, DD, and MG to arrange a few visits to observe them.

Ever onward.

A new addition

Yesterday I ended up recording a classroom session from MG and interviewing him about his personal background. I love this. it is so very intriguing. I want to do at least one more focus group may be two. Last year's were amazing and I only did two. One at the beginning of the year and one towards the end. I think with the remaining month of the summer I will listen to all I have so far and look at the genocide writings to see if I can create some focus group questions for next year. I also have to look at Henry A. Giroux, Irving Goffman and Foucault. I owe to research papers and I need to get those done before school starts. I was thinking that Morell and I need to create a library schedule so we can both succeed. We need an exercise schedule, too. I'll work on that over the next couple of weeks. I think what has been difficult for me is coming to terms with the realization that this is a dual effort. I have to figure out how to include Morell because he has really sacrificed greatly so that I can do this.

So interesting. I felt like I was meeting MG for the first time. The would-be historian who became an Earth Science teacher. His dad was a mathematician who watched the calculus problems on the Rutgers channel on Saturday mornings. So math and its acceptable cousin, science was a more acceptable pursuit. He was most influenced by his high school history teacher. I really saw that influence in his teaching when I observed him. I also saw how his teaching style was influenced by his college education in science. Good stuff.

I'm starting to understand who they are

I am listening to the interviews and I am getting an idea of who DD and GT are as people and as educators. GT wants his students to ask questions and wants to push his students to do some work outside of class. He identifies with the College Prep student who has not yet come into his or her own yet and has a fear of failure and a fear of success. He remembers sharing that identity with those students as a teenager. But seeing as how GT went on to acquire a PhD in pharmacology, he came to understand that he needed to do some work to get there. I relate his experiences with his Dad to the spark that propelled him to succeed. His father's identity influence GT greatly. And yet his is experiencing success in getting students to read and study outside of class, because he has made that his main focus. He sees that discourse is increasing because in his words"they now have something to talk about because they have done the reading.

DD on the other hand came from the working poor class. He has stated how greatly that influence him as he was growing up and what a wonderful childhood he felt he had in spite of the economic challenges. Dan relates to the lower level student and feels he has street cred because he lives on the South Side of town where many of the less wealthy students live. DD is much more aware of racial statistics in the school. Listening to his life story I found that DD was deeply influenced my MLK and the racial issues of the 50s and 60s when he was growing up. DD wants his students to be open about their thoughts and questions and to feel comfortable and enthusiastic about his class. He wants them to perceive him as an ok guy who is not so different from them. He sees his students as potential friends in the future.

What is a bit saddening is that neither DD or GT or FR thought that there was much room for true discourse in their classes due to a number of issues. The acknowledged that there was pretty much exclusively fact giving and clarification. But both GT and DD acknowledged that they allow students to go off into tangents if they will only ask questions. I need to observe them for myself to try to capture some of these tangents. They feel that very little critical thinking and synthesis takes place, but some students are thinking if they are willing to ask questions that they have come up with on their own. I am beginning to understand what is coming out of these data. But at the same time, I need to see for myself what is going on in their classrooms. Since there can be no video recording, I have to just take some days off next year and sit and observe.

Now, to rope in MG. He agreed to participate! Woo Hoo!

So what will this book look like?

I was just thinking while listening to DD's interview that I want to start from the interviews. Of course after I do the required review of literature and framework and methodology sections, I'll depart with discussions about the teachers as individuals. From there I think I will discuss their perceptions of how their identity influences their interactions with their students and their perceptions of discourse. Those interviews were so interesting, that it will immediately grab the reader's attention. After that, I will tie in some of the theories with their discussions about their perceptions of how identity influences discourse. The focus groups will be the next chapter, and again I'll start with a discussion of how they are perceiving themselves and the state of education. I'll talk about how all of this influences discourse identity. I think some of the literature we read in Alan's class will become useful at this point.

The next chapter will be about the classroom sessions. What I am realizing is that I want to sit in and observe the teachers myself. Not even so much to code the sessions, but just to see if there is evidence of how their beliefs match up with what they are saying int he focus groups and individual interviews.

I'll end with analysis and conclusions. I had the idea the other day to contact Jeff to see if he wants to come to ECA and talk to me about how to use those data and also about how to code and analyze the other data I have. That might be a really good idea. I'll get in touch with him towards the end of August.

Listening to the Interviews and Writing Grants

I have officially begun spending time with these interviews. I have listened to a couple of focus groups and the beginning of Dan's one on one interview. I really tackled some difficult matters. I am very proud of myself. I have to give Matt his recorder first thing on Monday. I really want to observe him. I can do that during my prep. I need to observe Dan and Gary as well. I will arrange to do that in the fall. And I would like to have one more focus group with Dan, Gary and Matt.

My school district does not seem to be committed to providing the materials I need so I have to apply for as many grants as possible. Luckily I had a pep talk during the ASM camp. I think I am really ready to start going for it. I need the experience. I have applied for one already this summer. It was for Biotechnology equipment and we did not get it, but this time I will give myself more time and really put thought into the goals and budget.

I have the goal this weekend of listening to Dan and Gary's personal interviews and finishing memos on the focus groups for this school year. I think it is doable. I was thinking that I am not that interested in using transana for video since I can't video record the classroom sessions. The video recordings of the focus groups are almost unnecessary, the audio is really sufficient. It would be the classroom recordings that I am most interested in. I need permission to video tape. And I think I can get that permission at ECA. As I suspected, the epilogue might end up being much more interesting than the rest of the dissertation. If that is the case I have to start working on that and contact IRB with the materials they requested as soon as possible.

In any case. I just have to chip, chip, chip away at all of this. One day at a time. Today I listen to interviews. Today I work on a grant a little bit. Today I build that model rocket.

NOYCE and the beginning of coding

KJ and MT are teaching full time now. MT will be tenured next year. I also have the opportunity to present at a NOYCE regional conference. I should take a look at the data I collected from them way back and interview them again in the Fall. It would be interesting to discuss their views on discourse identity. It would be very cool to see how they have changed over the years or if their teaching experience has influenced their thinking in any way.

I listened to my last focus group interview and there were so many interesting ideas. I only got through 30 minutes out of two hours, but it was pretty amazing. According to my proposal defense, I need to finish identifying what is analytically interesting according to my research questions and write memos about what is interesting about those ideas.

Off we go!

Next week should be interesting at work. I get to do some teacher training on using graphing calculators for data collection on a physiology of zebra fish experiment. I also have great ideas for rocket science for the consortium students. I am brushing up on exponential and logarithmic functions. I need to brush up on my trigonometric functions as well. Looking forward to it! Kepler's Laws here I come!

Listening and Crafting the Vision

SO what is the goal here anyway? I think the goal is to finish by May so that I can either apply to a University or apply for a job as an assistant principal. Is alternative education now a focus? If so, where in the process do I want to be? School administration? Post-doc and researching many schools? Teaching teachers?

Here's what I think. I think I want to work with practicing teachers. I think I want to receive grants to provide teachers with experiences that inspire. I think I want to increase the quality of STEM education in alternative schools and detention centers. I think I want to train teachers to educate themselves about jobs and opportunities for job training for their students. I think maybe if I were a principal who was effective at creating a STEM - focused school, that would be very fulfilling. I think If I were a professor who obtained grants for research experiences for teachers, that would be even better. Courses for pre-service, newly inducted, and practicing teachers in which they bring the research experience into the classroom and take the students out of the classroom on a regular basis to conduct investigations. I think I would like to teach a course on discourse analysis for teachers. I think I would like to teach a course on developing research and publication skills in high school students. I think I would like to offer college courses to high school students in alternative school environments.

That may be the vision.