Leah's FNED 547

I have finished my professional interviews and have been bust pulling out the common themes from those. Just in speaking with the professional I am already seeing connections between the literature I've been reading and the things they have been saying. I am excited to continue this journey because of how important to my students. Both of the ESL teachers I interviewed admitted that a very large percent of their current and former students suffered from some type of trauma. Since trauma is so prevalent in the population in which I teach, I am happy to learn more about how to best support these students.

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...