Falk and Blumenreich ch. 6
The first thing that stuck out to me about this chapter is the discussion of good field notes. The description made a lot of sense to me and this week I have been trying to transfer to these style of fieldnotes for my 4 students. However, as we are supposed to write for 10 minutes every day, I don't find it useful to write every day about my students and have an entry on the weekends. I think what I am going to do is split my notes into two columns, and on the left hand side I am going to write the context during the week on the day it occurred, and then on the weekend I am going to do the analysis for the five days during the week. This way I am still writing every day but I don't feel like I am wasting my time on the weekends.
My other two data sources are going to be interviews, an interview with each student and interviews with administrators. Looking through the information on surveys and such, I didn't feel that those sources of data would be useful to me and my research questions. I think the interviews will help me get to the perspective of my students better than an survey would, and since I am only focusing on four students, a survey doesn't seem appropriate.
Jones ch. 5
I thought that Allisa Hall's presentation of using poetic inquiry to affect the life of her student Ray was very powerful. One of the most powerful passages read, " I don't simply become a better teacher by writing poems, I become a better person as well." (Jones, p. 81) I am not one for poetry, but the important thing to reflect on is the interactions we have with our students in order to determine how what we say and how we say it affects them. This is the message that I am taking with me and thinking about as I reflect on my interactions with my students.
I like your approach to the notes. I've been wondering how to best utilize my weekend entries, too, but your idea trumps anything I've come up with yet. I hope you don't mind if I try it myself.
ReplyDeleteBen,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you will let us know how your adaptation to writing in your journal goes for you. I would like to know how all the class is doing with this. Looking at the syllabus it seems that we will be doing more with these journals coming up. And I am not sure if my journal, as I have been working it, will meet the needs of what's coming. Time will tell. I didn't know if I would be able to write everyday, but something teaching related seems to come up most days even if I am not scheduled to teach. This past week I had three visits with students outside of class, two on the weekend. And yesterday's journal entry was brainstorming about a class I will sub for on this coming Saturday. Another day I wrote about working on homework for this class. So perhaps I have made a little loose with the parameters of my journal. But it does seem to help me come up with action plans or ideas for particular students or classes. Other than that I lean heavy on the description aspect. I tried the two column idea to try to gently push myself to have more analysis and interpretation, but this is the beginning of a long journey I think. Good luck with the journal!