The Irony

The irony is this: I no longer HAVE to blog, and here I am on a Friday morning writing. After all my moaning and resistance, I woke up mentally drafting a blog post. Yesterday I had an experience that had far more impact on me than I expected. I attended the dissertation defense of a colleague and friend.

I expected to come away with some schema of what a defense looks like. I had never attended one and had no idea. That has been the mode throughout this program. Each step is a new adventure. I don't know the lay of the land. But I did not expect to come away as inspired as I was. I knew my colleague would be well-prepared and articulate, but the scope of her study, the depth of her thinking amazed me.

I came away eager to get started on my own research. Up until now, I thought of this as something in the future, closely tied to my schedule of completion. I plan to finish in a year and a half. Eighteen months. Now, this time frame has become the structure to organize my thinking, my independent studies, my application to the coursework I have remaining. I have enough of an idea of my question that I will start today. Everything I do will focus on the end.

Eighteen months from now, I want to be doing whatever a doctoral student does when it is over. Sleeping in. Vegging out on a beach in the sunlight with an umbrella drink. Wondering what to do with all the extra time in a day. Looking out to the next adventure.

There is a quote that I don't have exactly--First you do, then you become. I had to blog before becoming a bolgger, and I will do it on my own terms. I wasn't a doctoral student until I had taken classes for a few years. We grow into what we do. I'm sure it has something to do with cognitive function--we build neuron paths that connect and help us be comfortable with a new behavior. Sometimes we resist. Sometimes it takes a push by a teacher or inspiration from a mentor. It may feel accidental in the beginning, but it becomes more intentional as time goes on.

What next?

"What next?" has been my mantra my entire life. I love the challenges and opportunities inherent in change. New people, new experiences, new things to learn. Thinking about the many positions posted helped me look past this "terminal degree," which has an awful air of finality about it, toward the phase of my career

I do have a tenure track position at MSCD when I am finished and am committed to teaching there two years. I love the teaching, the students, but the element I am least anticipating is being "tenure track". I see the stress and pressures, the political nature of working toward tenure and I simply do not want to go there. It affects the way people interact with each other in a way I never saw--or recognized--in the public schools.

So, University of Guam appealed to me for two reasons: it would be a vastly different setting AND it is a three-year position. When the time is here for me to begin to look seriously, those two factors will heavily weigh in my decisions.

So, what next? Bring me that horizon.

Savoring the Moment

I have been impressed by the level of interest and support I have received from teaching colleagues since I became a doctoral student. After being a mere full-time temporary for two years, it seems I have become "bona fide" by demonstrating my committment to higher education and my undergraduate teaching. I have become a serious member of the community, one of the club. I often have colleagues asking how my coursework is going and when I'll be done. I appreciate their interest and advice.

Today, a colleague asked how it was going. I told her I was about halfway through my program, finishing coursework this fall and just beginning serious contemplation of a dissertation topic. She told me she had her research question when she entered her program, and every course she took she used to contribute to her research and dissertation.

I know we all must approach this in our own way, but I found that a bit sad. For me, the joy of this program has been giving myself time and license to explore topics I have always been interested in without the pressure of quickly determining THE topic. It helps to have an advisor who promotes and validates this philosophy.

I am not on the fast track here, but then I don't have the time constraints many of my fellow-students have. Perhaps this perspective comes from age or the fact that I have already had a wondorous career. I remember a comment made by a seventy-year old gentleman at my "retirement" party. He said, "Your 30-year career seems like your whole life right now, but at some point you will realize it is just one phase of your life." I am discovering what my next steps-my next career might be. Life is very good.

And so, I savor the moment, all the while knowing that soon, the exploration will draw to a close, and it will be time to just do it.

By the way, I have been somewhat open (probably too open) with my blogging struggles. I had help last night when I watched the movie Julie & Julia, where this young lady gave herself one year to cook all 540 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She blogged about it the entire year, and saw both the cooking and the blogging as exercises in mental discipline. OK. That makes sense to me.

A Delicate Balance

I have noticed a trend lately in my undergraduate teacher education classes: increasing numbers of students coming in with documented disabilities that require class accomodations. Many of these are minimal, but more and more I am seeing extensive accomodations needed. I believe I have always been supportive of students at all levels of schooling and I support a student's desire to graduate from college. I also believe, however, that the teaching profession is far more complex than rocket science. Not only does a teacher need the technical knowledge of content and the skill to make those concepts understandable and accessible to the learner, but the human side of teaching requires strong communication, interpersonal skills, and decision-making abilities.

Every child deserves an expert teacher every year of their schooling. In a twenty-year career in the elementary classroom, a teacher impacts around 500 children. When I had a principal justifying to me why they were keeping a ineffective, probationary teacher that they had worked extensively with because they were "going through personal tough times for the last few years", I always had them picture those five hundred children outside their window. I had them tell those children that they knowingly decided to give them a poor teacher. We cannot just think of the teacher--it always must be about the children.

So, back to my undergraduates. The professor side of me wants to support student success. The principal side of me knows the rigors of teaching and wants to support those hundreds of unborn little human beings. I wonder sometimes how a student would react in the moment-to-moment challenges of the classroom. Not everyone has the disposition to be the decision-making teacher in the classroom.

I realize that I usually see these undergraduates in my foundations class, the first education class many students take. They have two more years of coursework at this point. I realize I am one piece of the puzzle in which this student works with many professors, cooperating teachers and student teachers. All of us have a responsibility to support and to counsel appropriately. It is a delicate balance--the rights of the prospective teachers and the rights of their future students.