November 30, 2010

The area I want to work on before the meeting, and at the meeting is...
I hope to finish compiling the second round of surveys I collected from my students. I also hope to start building a theoretical framework for my inquiry. I think that Pedro Noguera's The Trouble with Black Boys will help me gain perspective on the work that I have been doing. I am looking at individual experiences, but I don't want to loose sight of the larger issue of institutional racism and I want to contextualize the data with this in mind.

What I am thinking right now about this aspect of my inquiry is...
I feel deeply passionate about the work that I am engaged in. Once I compare the second round of survey answers to the first sample I hope to uncover more about how students feel discipline is dealt with at my site. I think that the next step will have to be asking my students about some of what I uncover to see how I can turn the focus onto student outcomes.

What I am thinking right now...

Although the surveys require a lot of time and dedication, they are an extremely rich source of data. After teaching for 5 years there are certain strategies that become instinctive- like breathing. These are things that I do because I have learned to anticipate when and why my students will be confused. For the most part, these strategies have been born from roadblocks I encounter over and over. Examples are: I make explanations as short as possible, each time I ask a student to read to the class I ask him or her to read in a loud voice so the whole class can hear, I finish my lesson and explain the homework ten minutes before the bell, I ask students to sit forward with both knees under the desk.

Students responses on the survey shows me that there are roadblocks I have been encountering, but I did not know were there. I must develop new strategies that become just as instinctive and will make student more open to the learning.  At first these roadblocks don't seem to be specifically about the learning, but they affect learning.

1. At this moment in time my question has become: how can I make students who are alienated from school due to a feeling of injustice take ownership of their education and relationship to learning and develop resiliency.

2. Being as specific as I can be right now, what I want students to be able to learn is name/identify the process they encounter that makes them feel alienated as well as their strategy for coping/surviving/resisting.

3. I would know my students are accomplishing these goals if I saw them or heard them correctly identifying racism/oppression and responding effectively to it.

4. I can collect information about them doing these things through interviews, surveys, academic progress, discipline data, teacher reflections.