Twelve Weeks and Counting!

Arcy modelling the newest indoor accessory: Fresh Marigold Garlands (Marigolds from Sheila's garden).

In 12 weeks, I will be finished with my required courses for my doctorate. It seems rather insane, right now, to have taken on the five classes plus everything else, but the end result will be worth it. Having to say goodbye to Georgia took the wind out of my sails for a few weeks. I feel like I'm starting to rally back, now. Ber's soundness is steadily improving, Gio's eyes are on the mend, and Arcy has adjusted to being a single dog very well. Strange thing is, she has taken on some of Georgia's characteristics. If I'm stressed or feeling bad, she comes over to be petted, and her head is hot. When we go for walks, she has Georgia's jaunty head carriage, and likes to dart suddenly to the side of the trail to smell something, nearly pulling me off my feet. And she loves to be all snuggled up in blankets now, way more than she used to, and wears her coat all the time. Did I mention it has been freezing at night?

Oh, check out the hay delivery! Quite a bit different than December of 2008... Nice to know the horses are set.

Sept. 09

Dec. 08

Please know that if I am out of touch, or don't check in, I'm just keeping my nose to the grindstone and doing what's on my voluminous list. Though I may not reach out and connect with you, if you get in touch with me I will definitely respond. Come December 15, I will come up for air and rejoin the world. lol. Arcy says as long as she has a cozy place to sleep, she's fine. Oh, and lots of walks. And good food. And a new sweater to wear in the house....

For those who are interested, here are my classes and the rest of what I'm working on:

School Improvement Fieldwork. I am spending 80 hours working at a charter school that has an Expeditionary Learning focus. Helping them with their special education program. My end goal is to start up an expeditionary learning type school in a economically disadvantaged area. Expeditionary learning grew out of the Outward Bound program. The motto is "We are crew, not passengers." Active learning, out in the community, real projects, deep, meaningful, engaging.

Curriculum and Instruction. History of curriculum organization, assessing programs, designing curriculum... Getting some good tools out of the class, reading some important works that I had never been exposed to. Doing a curriculum research project on a school. We get to go on an overnight field trip October 18-19 to Jerome, Idaho to do research on a school. Pretty cool. My brother Stuart is coming to stay with the animals. Thank you, Stuart! (He's coming to visit anyway, but timed his visit for this.)

Qualitative Methods. How to conduct research, how to evaluate research. Qualitative methods include interviewing, observations, field notes, analyzing documents.... The Jerome project from the class above also is a project in this class, since the methods we are using are qualitative. Nice. I am also working on designing my pilot study for my dissertation as the final project for this class. I absolutely LOVE this course, the readings, the work. Really meaningful for me. Absolutely tons of reading for this class.

Quantitative Methods. How to conduct research, how to evaluate research. Quantitative methods include surveys, tests, and other numerical measurements of things. Statistics are used to evaluate results. The typical cause and effect kind of studies, as well as correlation. It is good information, but hard to relate to my dissertation. Our big project is designing a study, so I'm designing a project on academic self-efficacy of CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program) students during their first year of college. Academic self-efficacy is a fairly good predictor of academic success in college, migrant/agricultural workers tend to have fairly low academic self-efficacy, yet students who participate in CAMP have the highest graduation rate at Boise State. So, I want to see what's going on with their academic self-efficacy. This study will be conducted next year, because I need to test students at the beginning of their first year.

Pedagogical Practices in Education. Basically, how are teachers taught to teach, how do teachers develop over their careers, what kind of professional development works, etc. Interesting class. Will be more relevant when/if I teach at the college level, so I'll ferret the information away. We need to do research project for this class. I am investigating RTI (Response to Intervention) as an alternative to special education referral. This is a project I am doing for the charter school, so it's nice to have it count for this class, too. Tons of reading for this class!!

But wait, there's more.

I am applying for a highly competitive PEO scholarship. The application is due on Halloween! Incredibly rigorous application, but it is really pushing me to think about what I am doing here, and why, which is really good. Wish me luck. It is based on academic excellence and performance and having worthy goals. This scholarship would allow me to work on my dissertation without having to have an outside job or work as a graduate assistant.

For my graduate assistantship, I help teach a Foundations in Education class, I am working on the second McNair paper, and I am designing the CAMP study (which also counts for Quantitative class, woohoo), among other miscellaneous things. The first McNair paper has been sent off for publication review.

For my dissertation, I am designing a pilot study, working on IRB paperwork (basically presenting my dissertation idea and explaining how I won't hurt any of my human subjects during the study), and researching/working on literature review.

I think that's it.