Update (I'm all out of creative titles!)

It's been too long since my last blog post. The past few weeks have been crazy! We had our first youth writing festival through the Nebraska Writing Project last weekend. 20 high school students attended the event at Elkhorn South High School. It was encouraging to see students devote a Saturday to writing. I hope to post more about the festivals after our Kearney festival is over. Because my schedule has been so packed, I don't have anything terribly insightful to share, but here are a few updates:

On Friday I took the day off to work on my thesis and address the comments my advisor sent me a few weeks ago. It took me all day, but I do believe that, in terms of content, my draft is complete. I may have a few organizational issues, and of course I still need to complete all the crazy formatting requirements that UNL expects. In the next few weeks I'll work on inserting my appendices, but after writing 36 pages and reading a small mountain of books and articles, the bulk of my research and writing should be finished! Before I celebrate too much, I'll wait to hear final word from my committee. This thesis is my first major academic accomplishment. It's been the most challenging experience so far, but it has reaffirmed my love for researching and writing.

This morning my running buddy (Kristin) and I ran 15 miles! This is the first time I've ran anything over a half-marathon distance. My feet hurt when we finished, but other than that, I'm feeling pretty good after it. The weather was beautiful and the conversation was even greater. The only glitch came when we ran into a coyote at about mile 9.5 on a desolate gravel road. It was the first time I've ever seen a coyote, and I freaked out. Kristin, who grew up in the Black Hills and has experience with coyotes, handled it like a champ. While I cowered behind her, she stomped and yelled at the coyote, scaring it off. At the time I was holding an opened energy gel. After the coyote retreated into the field from which he came, and after my legs stopped shaking, I realized I had squeezed my tiny packet so hard that gel covered my hands. It's hard to believe the marathon is only 8 weeks away! While I have a few reservations about the race, I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Thesis = Nerve-Racking

We have today off from school due to parent-teacher conferences this week; I've committed this day to writing and working on my thesis. I've got a good chunk done--22 pages to be exact--and my goal is 45 (including an appendices). I'd like to have a draft completed with citations, formatting, etc. sent to my committee by May 15th in order to have time to complete my revisions before co-facilitating a class at UNL this June.

Today I finally had time to send a paranoid email to my committee with a list of questions that have been brewing for the past few weeks, and because my thesis chair is awesome, he emailed me back with answers to my questions within an hour. He's asked that I share my draft with him now so that he can get me a response by early March...this is what I originally wanted: someone from my committee to read through my document to see if I'm on the right track early. I don't want to write 30+ pages and then be told that 25 pages suck in April leaving me only a month to fix it all. But reading my chair's request that I share my document with him makes me so nervous...I honestly feel as if I could puke right now because of nerves.

I have a lot of respect for my chair and the rest of my committee members. They're incredibly intelligent, talented, successful, and are the best instructors I've ever had. I fear they'll read it and find me incompetent as a writer. I fear they'll read it and tell me I'm taking the wrong direction, to start over. I fear they'll read it and doubt my potential as a future PhD student (should I want to pursue that route later on). This is the first major project I've ever worked on; I want so badly for this to be good...and I want to graduate in August with my husband. I know this is nothing compared to the dissertation my sister in-law just finished or that some of my colleagues are starting on, but I feel like it's the first step in that direction for me. And in some ways, it's a deciding factor on whether or not I'll even make it to that next step.

By nature I'm a pretty nervous person, but I've never been this nervous before. I know it's a selfish thing to be nervous, and it demonstrates a lack of faith...but I'm all for honesty--and honestly, I'm nervous! So today my goal is to work through some of these nerves, add a few more pages to my document, tighten a few paragraphs, add an author's note, send it to my chair...and then treat myself tonight with a run and some guitar time.

Dealing with resistance

We have one more week to finish our Social Action projects in English 9. We've examined song lyrics for societal issues, listened to 14 local activists talk about change they've made in the community, students have interviewed and written about a community member working hard to make positive change, we've studied the Civil Rights Movement and examined Dr. MLK Jr's four steps for non-violent direct action from his text Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and now students are working on their own change projects. Students were instructed to tap into their passions, find a need in the community, and then do something about it. Not only do they have to take action, but they have to gather research about the issue to prove their project is legitimate, compile a vocabulary journal of words learned along the way, and then compile this all into a presentation of some sort to chronicle their journey and show at our English 9 Project Night on February 20th. They've composed professional business letters inviting people to attend our project night---so now they simply have to finish up their projects.

All week I've been meeting with students, helping them brainstorm, problem-solve, and plan. It's been exhausting for a few reasons. First--more students than usual still don't have project topics or ideas. However, this doesn't surprise me. This year has been a challenging year due to the group of students I have. I have several high-needs students who come to my class with lots of baggage. For a few, attendance is sometimes poor. It's been tedious work to inspire these kids to do this project, and I've had to get very creative (many of these students haven't completed too many assignments for my class or their other classes this year). Secondly, I've met resistance from a few colleagues regarding this project. Of course this resistance has never been directed to me, but has instead come in the form of snarky comments, eye rolls, and shoulder shrugs towards the kids' projects. I feel like apathy is the worst form of resistance because I just don't know how to address it. Yesterday I reached a breaking point when I found out another teacher in my building posted a rude comment on someone's Facebook regarding the legitimacy of this unit (just another reason why my life is Facebook free at the moment...). Of course I was pissed, but more than that---I just was awestruck that this teacher can't see the benefits of this project. This unit aligns with more of the state Language Arts standards than most of the other units we teach; it's grounded in sound research (so far I have 20 pages of my thesis and a shelf full of books to prove it); students are learning valuable skills that will transfer beyond the classroom, etc. etc. As I packed up to leave my classroom yesterday, my mind was spinning with thoughts. I passed by poster above of quotes hanging in the front of my room, and I keyed in on one that I've used as a journal prompt and point of discussion with my students:

  "The first resistance to social change is to say it's not necessary." --Gloria Steinem

This project IS necessary for so many reasons. I won't convince all of my students, all of the parents, or all of my colleagues of its importance. But after four years of research, I'm convinced this project is good for kids---so in the words of Joe Dirt, I'll keep on keepin' on doing what's best for kids.

The Changing Face of Small Towns

For the majority of my life, I grew up in a small town in southeastern Nebraska. Our town had about 5,000 people; it's home to a small, liberal arts college, and before Wal-Mart set up shop, it had a thriving downtown typical of most small towns: a video store, restaurants, sports bars, a pharmacy, a library, a few clothing stores, a consignment shop, a hardware store, etc. It had all we needed. My family lived a block from the city pool where my brother and I spent our summers. We were close enough to walk to our small Catholic elementary school, but far enough for us to complain that we had to walk so far. Our neighborhood was peppered with kids our age, and evening baseball games took place in our backyard and were played often times into the glow of lightening bugs. When our neighbor's house started on fire in the dead of winter, they came to stay with us; it's what neighbors did for one another in that small town. My brother and I couldn't get away with much in that small town. Once I found myself sitting on the curb at recess, the typical punishment for telling a classmate his mom was so fat that we could use her bra for a slingshot. My teacher didn't bother to call home to report the incident; she probably figured my parents would find out somehow. And they did...I think a family friend drove by and saw me, dejected, alone, and banished to the curb. Naturally, my parents asked why I, a sociable child, was sitting on the curb during recess. I don't remember if I told them the truth right away; it's likely I didn't since I was a creative child who regularly came up with my own stories. But somehow they found out about my "yo momma" joke. That's what happens in small towns...word travels fast. And though this can be a thorn in the sides of some, I can see how it would be helpful in child rearing.

Some of my best childhood memories are from that small, southeastern Nebraska town. Now I find myself back in a small town similar to the one I grew up in, but on the opposite end of the state. And maybe it's because I'm older and have the ability to be more critical, but I've noticed that small towns are changing. The town I grew up in has experienced major changes in the last fifteen years: many downtown businesses have either closed or have been converted to Mexican grocery markets due in part to the changing industry and the introduction of a Wal-Mart and the presence of gangs has increased. At one point I looked at applying for a teaching job in that community and was interested in moving back but was discouraged by several colleagues and adults due to the "problems" in the town and the local high school. Similarly, when my husband and I moved to a small town four years ago, I had these romantic visions of teaching kids who valued hard work and whose parents valued education. And while I have been blessed to have many hard-working students whose families really do care about education, it seems that each year the number of these students decline along with our enrollment. In my small town teaching job, I deal with big city issues: drug use, poverty, homelessness, abusive parents, early run-ins with the law...I could go on and on. My job as a small town teacher is not at all what I expected. It's undeniable that small towns are changing.

Many of these once-valued small towns across the Heartland are shrinking at a rapid pace and are experiencing a "hollowing out"--a brain drain due to what seems like a mass exodus of youth (Carr and Kefalas). Urban dwellers might ask, so why does it matter if small towns die off? Not only can small towns provide a way of life and a quality of life that simply can't be replicated in metropolitan areas, this dilemma matters because "[...] the Heartland is the place where our food comes from, it is the place that helps elect our presidents [...] and it is the place that sends more than its fair share of young men and women to fight for this country. The future of the many towns that give the Heartland its shape and its sinews is of vital importance, and we believe that ignoring their hollowing out will be detrimental in the short and long terms" (Carr and Kefalas ix). Without small towns, the face of America would change greatly and not for the better.

My Attempt to Plug The Rural Brain Drain

As mentioned in a previous post, for a little over a week I've been reading Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas's book Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brian Drain and What It Means for America, hoping to find inspiration for my thesis. And guess what? I found it today...at about 1:00 this afternoon when I finished the book.

My guiding question for my thesis has emerged as: How does social action develop deeper connections to community for rural students? I'm aware that to most, this is dreary material. As I've grown to kind of like living and teaching in a small town (shhh....don't tell!) though, this question has become increasingly important to me. Until this year, I've basically treated activism and place consciousness as two separate units within my curriculum. Last year I listened to kids (particularly my seniors) lament about our town wishing they lived somewhere more exciting making declarations that they will probably never come back to Ogallala because A) it's boring and B) there are no jobs here for them. While I believe these claims are due in part to the natural longing to experience the world, when I prodded them about their civic involvement, I discovered that these experiences were few and far between. My seniors really didn't have a clue as to how decisions about the community were made and lacked involvement with the community. Many of these students were bright and involved heavily in extracurricular activities and most would likely fit into Carr and Kefalas's category of Achievers (students bound for college, destined to move away and never come back). So I began to wonder: would more civic involvement help students consider the possibilities of eventually returning to our small town?

Over the past four years, enrollment at our high school has dropped, and we've gone from a class B school to a class C school. My music teacher husband and I have sat on edge as discussions of RIFfing swirled around the district resulting in just a few (luckily) positions eliminated. Each year when contracts are issued I grow a little nervous thinking about the possibility that either me or my husband could be issued the dreaded pink slip due to declining numbers in enrollment. I haven't done any deep census studies, but from listening to locals chat, I hear worry and concern in voices as they talk about how Ogallala once was compared to its state now. And as I listen to my students' state that Ogallala is fine to grow up in, but not fine to move back to--my concern for the town's well-being is growing.

So, this year I've decided to merge activism and place consciousness in my curriculum; I guess it's my own little attempt to plug the rural brain drain....

In my next post I'll include some of Carr and Kefalas's findings and ideas that support what I'm doing in my own classroom...bear with me as I work through research and try to navigate my way back on track for my thesis. I promise to try and post something this weekend that is non-thesis related :)

The Dilemmas Facing Rural Teachers and Students: Retaining Ambitious Teachers

The next few posts will likely be scattered and maybe even a bit fragmented. I'm working through an intense amount of writer's block on my thesis and am following a reader's advice about continuing the search (thanks for the tips, Stu!). So I started another book last night and will be recording my responses as I read. Tonight's post is more introductory in nature; I'll delve into thoughts about the book in the next coming weeks.

I'm aware of the predicament in which rural schools often find themselves. In my neck of the woods--southwest Nebraska--it's hard to attract young, motivated, critical teachers and it's even harder to get them to stay. My career is a testament to this predicament. I was hired to teach in a small, consolidated district before I had even completed my student teaching experience simply because the district was faced with a retiring teacher and no applicants....other than me: an overly ambitious college student handing out resumes to any principals who'd take them. They really had no choice but to hire me. The district is solid, the kids (for the most part) are hard-working, and the administration is fairly supportive, but it only took me a a few months to realize I didn't have the stamina or experience to maintain the schedule handed to me by the district: 8 preps in an 8 period day is practically homicide for a novice teacher. A few years later I find myself teaching in a larger school twenty miles down the road---a class C school with a rapidly declining student population in a town where the majority seems to shrug its shoulders at problems the district faces. Either the massive work loads or the lack of community investment in its most precious commodity, education, push many young and ambitious teachers out (especially those with no roots in the region). Who can blame them? I'm interested in how we can retain these teachers because ultimately, the students are losing out the most. Research proves that students do not learn as much from a first-year teacher as they do from a more experienced teacher. It's not rocket science. From my experience, the first three years of teaching are pretty much trial and error and survival. So when jobs become "revolving door" positions, what are students gaining?

For the past three years I've been studying Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas's work dealing with The Rural Brain Drain phenomenon. Students in my English 12 class read, discuss, and write about their article, "The Rural Brain Drain," that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. These conversations with students have been fruitful and encouraging for me, causing me to invest more in examining the dilemmas rural students face. So looking for inspiration for my thesis, last night I picked up Carr and Kefalas's book Hollowing Out The Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America. Not only does the book scientifically examine this phenomenon, it also blends in rich profiles of rural people and the dilemmas they face. The writers' descriptions are vivid and prove that writing about research can result in a compelling read that is anything but dry. I'm really hoping this book will provide me with some direction in which to direct my thesis. However, I'm also looking forward to examining this brain drain more deeply and am hoping it will invigorate my teaching at a time when I'm feeling tired and overworked.

Thesis Update: Meh.

In two hours, Christmas break is officially over. Tomorrow is an inservice day for teachers, and kids return on Wednesday. From Wednesday to Sunday I'll be grading freshmen essays like a maniac in order to post my semester grades by 8 AM on Monday. This break has flown by me. We spent six days on the road in Columbus, Grand Island, and Denver. I spent two or three days (they've all sort of ran into one another) cleaning, organizing, and pitching stuff from the house. Three days were spent here at home working on the youth writing festivals to be held this spring and on lining up speakers for my English 9 classes and working on last minute details as we enter into my favorite unit of the year: our Social Action unit. I've only spent approximately ten hours on my thesis....not near the amount of time I intended........

Each time I've sat down to sift thorough data and write has been a chore. I feel lost with no clear direction of where to go or what do; most everything I'm writing is pure crap. I knew writing a thesis would be challenging, but I never thought it would be this difficult. I am so afraid of failing with this major endeavor. I started my Master's program a few weeks after earning my Bachelor's Degree and haven't rested since. I've invested thousands of dollars and three (almost four) long years of coursework...what if I never finish this? What if everything I write is worthless causing my committee to lose complete faith in my prospects as a potential PhD candidate in UNL's Composition and Rhetoric program? It's overwhelming and is holding me back from being productive. For those of you who have been in my shoes, any advice on working through this?

Swallowed in Thesis Land

Tonight I read through UNL's Theses Guidebook and added deadlines to my calendar....and the gray hairs are now sprouting like crazy. I'm not sure I've ever felt this overwhelmed before. In addition to my thesis, I'm helping to plan two youth writing festivals, training for a marathon (WTF was I thinking?!?), planning for a course I'll be co-facilitating at UNL this June, teaching (duh), and still praying for an adoption placement.........I feel swallowed.....

Here's a basic outline for my thesis (modeled after the National Writing Project's Monograph Series):

I. Problem

a. Research surrounding the problem

b. The problem in my own classroom

II. Solutions

a. Research surrounding the solution

b. What I did to address the problem

III. Student work/community feedback

By the time I go back to school after Christmas break, I need to have the three highlighted sections finished. Which means my Fridays-Sundays and probably all of my holiday break will be filled with reading and writing. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. My class project and data collection will take place from January-March. Because the preliminary copy of my thesis is due to my committee the first week of June, I'll devote March-May to more writing. My oral exams will be during the last week of June then it's revising and filling out paperwork until July.

I am excited to write, research, and dive into academic work again (I do actually like doing this work...it's just the juggle of everything that's overwhelming) but am afraid of failing....and of the emotional meltdowns that are sure to come along the way.

So for now, it's to the books for me...

Merging Place Consciousness with Social Action

Note: As promised, here's another post about my thesis :) This is a brief, scattered overview of the project my English 9 students will be engaging in after Christmas...another post will follow about my intentions/goals for the project.

This morning I watched an amazing Ted Talks video (see below) where Natalie Warne, a 20 year old, shares her journey of catching the activism bug at the age of 17 which caused her to devote the next few years of her life working as an intern for the organization Invisible Children. Natalie refers to the people she worked with along the way as " Anonymous Extraordinaries," people who work to make a difference without want of recognition for their actions. I've decided to start my unit with this video clip. After discussing the concept of activism, I'll allow students to brainstorm local people and agencies who are "Local Anonymous Extraordinaries." Students may struggle with this, especially if they or their families are not connected to the community. So, I'll have to come up with my own list as a way to spark discussion. Once we've generated a pretty good list, I'd like for students then to interview these people who are quietly, yet passionately making a difference right here in our own community and then create a journalistic style piece of writing featuring said activist. My plan is to model this off a few different projects. The first is the Foxfire Project, popular in the 60s and 70s in Appalachia in which students recorded stories told by their elders. The second is from Central City native, Wright Morris, who used photography and writing to capture the essence of local places. So in addition to writing, students will candidly photograph these people and/or their work. If all goes as planned, I'll set up a class blog for students to post their pictures and compositions so we have a giant collection of "Local Anonymous Extraordinaries." I'd like the blog to be linked to our school's webpage and the city's webpage as a way to promote the good work our citizens do.

After this portion of the project is completed, students will launch into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" and our study of the Civil Rights Movement in order to introduce them to Dr. King's four steps for non-violent direct action (which are awesome, practical steps to follow when trying to spark change). Then, my favorite part of the unit: students will choose a local issue to research and support. Students will be required to act on an issue that is important them. In the end, students will create a visual presentation that includes background information about their cause, an overview of what they did to help and photos to prove it, vocabulary they learned along the way, and they'll end with what they learned in this journey. These will be presented to community members during our Social Action Project Night that students organize.

Here's the Ted Talks video I referred to earlier:

Theis Update

Note: The next few posts will be devoted to my thesis. I'm in the process of "working out" the beginning part of the class project I'm using to write about in my thesis. I'll break the posts up so people aren't overwhelmed by the nerd wavelengths radiating from my writing :) I'm posting my thoughts here because I'd love feedback on how to make this project or my thesis more effective.

On Friday I met with my amazing thesis committee on campus at UNL. There are three faculty members helping me with this huge project, and they have been nothing but a healthy balance of encouraging and critical. I admit, I'm still nervous about this undertaking. I don't feel like I have anything to add to the intellectual conversation surrounding place consciousness and social action as a way for students to invest in their communities and hopefully appreciate the place they come from a little more. I feel comfortable researching and utilizing these concepts in my teaching, but writing about it in a coherent way and sharing it with three of the smartest people I've ever met is a different story.

Nonetheless, on Friday night I utilized some free time at The Mill to throw myself headlong into researching. Place consciousness and social action are topics I've studied throughout my Master's program, so fortunately I have an adequate grasp on the concepts and have read many of the major pieces written about the topics. But tonight I began Gregory Smith and David Sobel's book Place-And Community-Based Education in Schools. I confess--I'm a total geek and love reading books about pedagogy. I'm two chapters in and have already begun to scribble down ideas. Since school started I've been grappling with how to merge place consciousness with social action. I've treated the two as separate two entities for the past two years. In an attempt to make my social action unit more effective, I want to merge the two. So the next post will outline my idea (it's tentative, and I need feedback on if this is really getting students to think locally and appreciate the local before they move to make change)......

My Thesis: Buried in Apprehensions

Last week I officially finished my last course for my Master's Degree in English with a concentration in Teaching. I earned my undergraduate degree in December of 2008 and registered for my first graduate class that next month. I've slowly been plugging away ever since, taking classes during the school year and the summer. I'm on track to graduate sometime next summer---so now that I'm done with my coursework, the next step is my thesis. Yikes.

I met with my advisor a few weeks ago, and he helped me create a clear cut to-do list for the next four weeks: finalize my committee, fill out a few forms, get IRB approval, and write my initial proposal. I planned on starting this last week. So far I've only finalized my committee. I have plenty of time on my hands, but the thought of actually starting on this giant project freaks. me. out. Here's why:

• I am a terrible decision maker. I'm wishy-washy. I have so many teaching interests, that I don't even know how to begin to narrow them down and pick just one.
  
• I fear feeling stupid. The most terrifying (and the most beneficial) comment I've ever heard a professor utter is, "What are you adding to the overall conversation on this issue?" This terrifies me; I'm only 25, I've only been teaching for three years---what do I have to add to any intellectual conversation? I feel like I haven't been around long enough to add to anything. I want to add something crazy insightful to my field--so insightful that someone will want to publish it. But I fear falling short of this goal. I fear that I won't add anything to my field because I'm simply not intelligent or critical enough. A teacher and PhD student I know wrote in a post on GradHacker, "Eventually, I will run out of stupid ideas and be left with something that will work" (Zellner). I can only hope for this.
  
• This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out: I fear that our adoption will go through while I'm working on my thesis. There is nothing that I want more than to become a mom, but part of me fears that if this happens while I'm working on my thesis that I'll never finish. I've come so far in my program, and I really want to finish and move on to the next step, but I've wanted to be a mom for so long that I also fear (I'm not sure that's the right word to convey what I really feel...) I will want to just quit my job and spend all my time being a mom. I want to be the world's best mom AND I want to be the best in my field. Can I do both? I'm not sure....
  

Whew. As much as I feel buried in all of these apprehensions, a portion of me is excited for this experience. I'm psyched to see what I'll discover along the way, and how I'll grow as a teacher, researcher, and writer. So, if you have tips for starting my thesis---feel free to leave them. If you have Twix bars, dark roast coffee, and New Belgium beer that you'd like to share to help push me through this next year---I'll accept those, too.