2011-2012+meetings

February 9, 2012
Sorry so many of you could not make the meeting today. I don't think the following will take up more than a couple of hours of your time, but I do not want us to skip the opportunity to think together to make this a more effective program for our interns.

Please respond to the three prompts below by using this page's Discussion tab. I also expect responses to each other -- but how could you resist? It's a Discussion tab!

1. What are you doing to help your interns prepare their portfolios for the end of the year? Christina and Laura, I would particularly like to hear how the portfolios are a part of the 804 seminars, as I'm hoping to gain some group understanding of how the portfolios can serve as one tool to bridge university and school.

2 . Please look at this Conference on English Education Position Statement: What Do We Know and Believe about the Roles of Methods Courses and Field Experiences in English Education? @http://www.ncte.org/cee/positions/roleofmethodsinee While I do not expect you to read every word, note the focus on coherence in Belief Statement 1 (Applebee, anyone?), skim over the next bunch (they actually make me feel pretty good about our coursework), and focus in particular on statements 13-16, which focus on fieldwork and its integration with university programs. I think this is one of the most difficult areas in running a large program like ours, and your work as field instructors really helps us hold it all together.

Considering the ideals embedded in these statements (and feel free to argue with them if you disagree with any), how do you think we are doing? What could we do to improve our interns' experiences? I see this as related to both the previous prompt and the next one.

3. I would like to present an issue that has come to my attention, and ask for your feedback. It relates to our ongoing attempts to design and re-design our curriculum to meet the needs of our interns, and the tensions involved in that endeavor.

As you are probably aware, all of the assignments for 802 and 804 are linked to students' work in their classrooms. Two of them range across the year: the portfolio and video-based response and revision, which focuses on ongoing attempts to include more dialogic instruction in their repertoire. We believe this is an important and basic set of skills for English teachers -- and we also know that learning to make room for and respond to student voices is difficult for even experienced English teachers to learn how to do. So we assign several opportunities to video-record their attempts, post short clips and contextualizing materials, respond to each others' work, and reflect on the experience. As you also probably know, Mary and I actually researched this in its first couple of years, and can report that it is quite effective, with interns using higher numbers of dialogic tools and indicators and showing higher rates of student participation than experienced teachers do, on average.

Of course, it's not perfect, and of course we fiddle with it. Our first year with VBRR, we had them videotape themselves four times, plus create a five-minute reflective essay (a mini-documentary, of sorts) on their experiences as a dialogic educator. It was way too much work, especially at the end, when they were trying to complete the fourth video post, the reflective essay, and the inquiry project. It was nuts. So then we went to three videoposts and the reflective essay, considering the reflective essay as the last of four opportunities to look at this aspect of their teaching. Last year, Betsy had them do four videoposts.

Because we had the portfolio presentation at the end of the year, the mini-documentary seemed like too much. It's much more time-consuming than a videopost. So we thought they should just do four of those, they are time consuming, but by the fourth, should be pretty routine. They can view their own and their classmates' progress over an entire year. However, some of the students are balking, saying that the fourth one, occurring late in their year, is not worth it, since it does not give them time to revise their practice in response. They wonder if they are doing it more for us than for them. Personally, I disagree with them, since they hopefully will continue to teach and to learn from their teaching -- and since they have not had to evaluate a whole class-load of videoposts, they really shouldn't assume that their teachers are having them do it for their own amusement! And there is also the wariness coming out of a few year's experience with interns resisting coursework in general as intrusive, no matter how aligned with their work as interns.

However, this does raise a couple of questions. First of all, if we promote dialogic teaching, shouldn't we be willing to negotiate what we consider valuable experiences in our own assignments? Also, they are living it, and have valuable things to say about what is useful and what is just anxiety-provoking. Who else would we listen to? What are alternative assignments that would fit their needs better? One that has been suggested involves using the first three videos together to create a reflective piece for their portfolio -- very similar to the mini-doc in spirit, but less demanding technologically. Another option might make that one of several choices that perhaps could be more targeted to an individual students' interest or context.

This is your opportunity to weigh in, and also to help us think through how the curriculum reflects our values and objectives.

thanks, all --

See you on the Discussion tab!

October 28, 10:00-11:30
Meeting focus:


 * Topic: Time management in field instruction. What are your strategies? Can video help?
 * Be specific on your parameters for visiting. When are you able to come?
 * Make appointments to see mentors before or after school. Meet with them on the phone.
 * Some post-conferences can be by phone or Skype
 * Consider who needs more of your time -- (taking their feelings of need into account) and who you can see on a set schedule.
 * Once students are picking up other class, you are not tied to their focus class. This should help with scheduling.
 * Hold meetings with two or more together - planning, video watching.
 * put boundaries around your e-mail responsiveness.
 * be flexible about the types of lessons you will observe.
 * Interns with issues:
 * be specific about suggestions.
 * ask for regular reports on progress through e-mail.
 * don't wait too long before PDP kicks in.
 * Ask for documentation from intern
 * check with mentor
 * Article on video use in 802/804:[| http://www.citejournal.org/vol10/iss2/languagearts/article2.cfm])
 * Erica Hamilton's research on uses of video in field instruction: [[file:Video-Based Field Instruction handout.docx]]
 * Some resources we have looked at, for working with video and doing observations:
 * [] (Viddler) - What Betsy used last year
 * [] - Jing is a free on-line tool for making Screencasts.
 * [] (Voicethread) - What we used for the VBRR research project.
 * Ferrer_Obs_Form.doc
 * Model_observation.doc (from Mary Juzwik)
 * write/bring any questions or issues that are emerging in your work with teacher candidates
 * Ferrer_Obs_Form.doc
 * Model_observation.doc (from Mary Juzwik)
 * write/bring any questions or issues that are emerging in your work with teacher candidates

September 30, 10:00-11:30

 * Meeting focus: //Working with assessments across the year//
 * To prepare:
 * write/bring any questions or issues that are emerging in your work with teacher candidates
 * read all assessment documents (see links above, in "Assessment Materials") - Be sure to read through the English long form