I joined a teacher research cohort this year, and we had our second meeting this afternoon. The facilitator is a teacher at a different school, but I’ve gotten to know her over the years through the English department. Our group is an eclectic little mix: the facilitator and fellow reading teacher, an assistant principal, our IB coordinator, an ASL interpreter, a design tech teacher, and me.
At our first meeting, we each crafted a research question we will focus on this year and spent the hour giving each other feedback, asking questions, recommending books, and discussing directions in which we could take our research. We were settling into the group last week, and by the time the hour was up, we were all ready to pack up and say goodbye.
Today was a different story. For the first 10 minutes, we wrote about how our research questions may have changed over the last month and what new questions we’ve stumbled upon and paths we want to explore.
When the 10 minutes were up, we each took turns sharing an overview of what we wrote while the rest listened, put notes in a Google doc for each other, and then discussed. Well, nearly an hour and half later, we were still going. We had so much to ask each other, connections to make, suggestions on how to approach our research, and philosophical discussions on grading and student motivation.
I think I’m going to enjoy this little group of ours. I won’t have the pressure to write a full paper, but I expect to learn and keep improving with age.
My Corner of the Village 