And They're OFF!

My "Aha" moment today is, well, an "Oh Boy!" one. Put another way, I feel like I'm either digging a new Grand Canyon, or maybe I'm trying to fill one in. So, how do I feel? Well, I just read Andy's entry and had to laugh -- he feels like he's being told to go into a tomato field and leave with tomato sauce. I feel sorta with ya there, Andy, my brother! This is going to be an arduous year of work. That said, I sure hope it will be a rewarding one, and I absolutely hope it will advance my understanding of and teaching of writing skills to my students. I began with looking over our Syllabus carefully -- I see "Amy's Army" will be marching far in short time with a minefield of due dates in between. (Amy's advice to keep pace, I think, is to be adhered to.) Then, I read the first two chapters of our textbook and realized that a number of things we learned in IDD came back to me. Finally, I arrived at writing my Topic Paper. My concern at the outset is that I may be trying to paint too big a picture. Writing is always a difficult skill to teach and to have students develop. That said, it is still an essential one to develop. As I begin my Capstone, I am eager to experiment with some strategies and techniques I have already developed and to evaluate these with my new students in a controlled manner. Additionally, I have several "outside-the-box" ideas I'd like to develop and implement -- even some ideas using synectics -- that I want to develop and implement. My problem is how to fit all of it INSIDE the box. And it's a problem...even as I just clicked the "Submit" button to hand in my Topic Paper. I guess even horses stumble out of the gates at times. Why can't this Capstone be as easy as our Syllabus quiz? Just saying.

Way Leads on to Way...

This August past, as the days turned colder, thoughts of fall and returning to school and the beginning of my Capstone for my MAITs degree began to press upon me -- mostly, in fact, my Capstone. It seemed others in my cohort had clearly decided what they were going to do for their Capstone, even as I wavered in uncertainty and indecision. Going into the summer vacation, my plan was to research what is referred to as "looping" in education, where a teacher keeps his or her students for more than one year of instruction. I have spent the last fifteen years -- and my only years -- teaching as a looping teacher, holding my 7th grade students as returning 8th graders. In effect, I served as their English teacher during their entire middle school experience. My district, I think, had a clear reason for adding looping when I was hired, that reason being that we had no "sister" team to which we would pass our students along. A few years later, as our district grew, another looping team was added, and we now had a "sister" team only in name, since both teams retained their own students. Last year, my district made the decision to eliminate looping from the middle school. No reason for doing so was offered other than that looping made no difference in student learning. I could not disagree more strongly. As an veteran looping teacher, I have experienced first-hand the enormous advantages to both teacher and students of retaining the same students a second year -- especially middle-school aged ones. Accordingly, the shock and disappointment of this decision was, and still is, enormous. From the moment it was announced to the time I'm writing this entry, I remain convinced this decision -- for whatever reason(s) it was made -- was wrong. To that end, I began what I thought would be the topic for my Capstone as summer began. I started to research the advantages and disadvantages of looping. What I discovered was compelling and overwhelmingly consistent: the advantages of looping, especially to middle-school aged students, far outweighs the disadvantages. In fact, each source I found was remarkably consistent with the others in endorsing the practice of looping, so much so that I was surprised that looping was not the "norm" in education today. Of course, there were disadvantages cited, too, but far fewer than the many advantages. What I also learned was that I already knew this -- all the advantages, all the disadvantages -- I was familiar with these. Indeed, I had learned them, firsthand, through fifteen years of teaching. After spending a challenging semester working through my Instructional Design and Development course, I realize now that I would probably be considered an expert in the area of looping. It's been my life blood my entire teaching career. All that said, each of my graduate professors has stressed how we must be passionate about the topic we choose for our Capstone, as we will be "living, breathing, eating, and sleeping" this topic working on it our last year. Such is why I considered the topic of looping to begin with. However, I also did not want to select a topic, spend a year working diligently on that topic, only to find a locked door at the end. Simply said, a year's worth of work to discover what in my heart and my mind I already know would be fruitless -- it is doubtful to change the decision of the administration to bring back the practice of looping. As disappointed as I am with the decision to do away with the practice of looping, I have decided not to make it the focus of my Capstone. I hope one day to return to the issue of looping as a passionate advocate of all the benefits of looping. That day, however, will come some time in the future. A by-product of my search into looping was latching onto some intriguing research into motivation and learning and performance. Perhaps best known is Daniel Pink and the surprising insights he has offered about the effects of incentives on motivation and performance. His research and those of others have led me to decide upon the topic for my Capstone for my MAITs degree: the relationship of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on student learning and performance, with a focus on the area of writing. This is a topic I will discuss and explore more in my next entry. All that said, a challenging year of work and discovery has begun!