Leah's FNED 547

Version 2: Why is my topic important to my participants My topic focuses on supporting students who have experienced trauma. My participants who are 3 students enrolled in my ELL English class have all experienced some type of trauma. Benny* is from Port -au-Prince, Haiti and witnessed his teacher crushed to death during the 2010 earthquake. Muhammed* is from Raqqa, Syria, has witnessed public executions by the hands of ISIS. Abdul is from Aleppo, Syria and spent three years in a Turkish refugee camp. During those three years he spent 14 hours a day working in a Turkish sweatshop in order to save money for a life saving surgery for his younger sister.

Memo October 14 I have been taking field notes the last few weeks, but I finally feel now that I am focusing on my question. With my more focus my field notes will be much more helpful in my research. I am researching different ways to support our students who have interrupted schooling and traumatic experiences. I have been able to keep a focus on my field notes and for the past week I have been keeping notes on the three students I have chosen to include in my research project. These three young adults have three unique personality, backgrounds and bring different strengths to the classroom community. This process of keeping a daily log of my observations is a great way to reflect of the day. As a teacher I feel like it is part of my job to reflect and many times I focus on the lesson of the day and/or the class as a whole. While I still do my personal reflections in my head, I rarely write them down. It has been surprisingly nice to take a few minutes a day a focus so...

This week’s readings have really helped calm some of my nerves about how I am going to decide on a question. I’m glad that the process is a more an organic one rather and a scientific procedure. Knowing that it is ‘okay’ to change the wording of my essential question as I learn more about the topic is reassuring. I was a bit afraid that I would not be able find anything valuable from my first classroom research because of a potentially poor question. The whole idea of switching or adjusting the language of your research questions makes sense. I liked the example of Michelle in  the Falk and Blumenreich reading, her question started off as, “How do I deal with parents who are in denial of the children's’ special needs?” (27). The question admittedly comes from a place of frustration, after reading and researching more about she decided to change her question and perspective. The new reshaped question was, “How can I work together with parents of special needs children to support the...

I could really relate to the quote about how the department chairs and teachers, "believe that their role was to prepare students for the world of work and build responsibility was an important educational objective"(5). I remember getting "preparedness grades" during my middle school years. Besides receiving grades on what we learned, our teachers would check to see if we all had our notebooks, textbooks (properly covered of course), #2 pencils, blue or black pens (no gel pens), etc. Even if we weren't going to use our textbooks that day we were still required to bring it with us to class and if we happened to misplace our pencils we would receive a zero for the day and be reprimanded in front of the class, followed by the now cringe-worthy question, "Does anyone have an extra pencil that Leah could borrow? She is unprepared for class." I hated the attention brought upon me, not because I left my 30 cent pencil somewhere, but because I always did my...

Some of the questions I had coming into this course are beginning to be answered.... I obviously knew that a course titled "Introduction to Classroom Research" would have a focus on research, but what kind? I had similar anxious feelings when I took a undergrad course that required me to do an I-Search research assignment. I think I get anxious about these kind of self-driven research assignments because it is opposite of the kind of research I have be conditioned to do since a young age. Stock reminded me that growing up I answered many "external questions" (1), the kind of questions that do not make for deeper understanding or connection to self, but helped me complete my homework assignment on time. I didn't care about the answers I cared about filling in the blank. Self created questions or "personal questions" allow for discovery, creation, and realization about things I actually care about. I care about my students and I what them to get the ...