This fall I have been finding my bearings in a new context - a one year sabbatical replacement position teaching undergraduate teacher education courses. I have many of the same students in the three courses that I am teaching because of the cohort model at our university. I really enjoy the close-knit community of learners since for the past three years I have been in an educational context that valued the sense of collaboration and community in a k-8 setting.
I co-presented at my first national conference along with two of my colleagues, sharing research on recruiting and retaining teachers in rural areas with implications for administrators and teacher preparation programs. A nice bonus was that the conference was held on the coast of South Carolina, being able to intermix conference sessions with walking along the beach reflecting (and experiencing the wonder and joy of learning about something new - horseshoe crabs).
I have also been attending classes for my doctoral degree - one on large scale literacy assessments and another on quantitative research, along with working on the preliminary stages of my dissertation. Considering the Common Core and the implications it has for teaching has also been on my mind a lot lately as well.
Needless to say, I have been thinking and reflecting a lot this fall. I have missed blogging, but I am also working through what to blog about. For so long I have been blogging about teaching reading and writing, areas that I am still passionate about, but this fall my work has had a different focus. I am looking forward to winter term when I will be teaching some literacy courses, such as Children's Lit and Emergent Literacy.
As educators, it is interesting to consider how our identities are shaped over time by our contexts and experiences. I hope to blog on more consistently once again in the upcoming months.
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