Pamela Richardson :: Blog

Dear folks in EPSE 306 classes,

By the end of the term you should have 8 blog posts and replies. Five of these should be based directly on chapter readings and the rest should be focused around developing your practicum "problem-scenario" and linking it to theory/research.

It isn't really about logging the precise number of posts in the right order though, it is about using the ELGG tool in a meaningful way and sharing your thoughts and perspectives towards greater understanding.  Now that you have a number of blogs done, how you go about finishing the term is somewhat up to you- if you want to post on a chapter directly this week that is fine. If you have enough posts by now and want to move on to discussing your practicum scenario- then fine. If you want to focus on chap 9 (for example) and this relates to your practicum issue that you would like to explore...then super-duper! I ask that you still post weekly and that by the end you have at least 8 posts; that you continue to explore issues that are relevant to you in a thoughtful manner.  Over the next three weeks the goal is to find links between the text and an issue from your practicum that you would like to explore more in-depth. This can be something problematic or something positive- essentially you are saying- this is something interesting that I saw and I would like to understand more about what is going on. I would like to know how to handle or work with this issue in the future. What does the research and theory related to adolescent development, teaching and learning have to say about it? It will be easier to do this in groups of two or three because then someone else is exploring the same situation as you, and you can discuss the relevant texts together.

We will be spending several hours of class time working this through- so do NOT PANIC. You are doing very good work on your blogs so far and will do fine with this as well.

Enjoy the rain!

Pamela

I hope that you all had a fulfilling practicum, that you feel good about the work that you accomplished and are coming back to class inspired. I look forward to hearing about your experiences.

During the next week please take a look at your blog rubric and consider it in light of the posts that you have been writing. Here is what I want to know:

Does this rubric describe the work that you have been doing in these blogs?

Does anything need to be added? Taken away?

If you would like to submit a modified version of the rubric please do so by Nov 16/17. This will be the version that I will use to evaluate your blogs. 

Thanks!

Pamela

So sorry about the inconvenience!

I am a Ph.D. student in Special Education at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. This blog is mainly a way to mind my thoughts, feelings, creative and learning process as I work towards my dissertation within the UBC community. A retired professor friend told me that to do a Ph.D. you have to be a bit like Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom (or is it The Last Crusade?)... there is a scene apparently where he steps into a void and a bridge appears under his feet. So this blog is just my little bridge, unfolding as I go. I would love to share knowledge and resources with others, as I make my way.

I have just finished my first year. I work as a research and teaching assistant within the Faculty of Education, with Dr. Marion Porath. Other VIPs (very important professors) in my world include Dr. Carl Leggo and Dr. Jennifer Vadeboncoeur. 

This summer I had the pleasure of teaching a course entitled: "Teaching High Ability Learners." I have also taught: "Education in the Adolescent Years" to pre-service teachers within the FSL cohort, and will do so again in the Fall. I have been experimenting with problem-based learning and highly student-centered ways of organizing curricula. I enjoy the freedom that teaching within a university setting enables. 

I am mostly interested in narrative, critical and arts-based (poetry and fiction) methods of examining lived experiences of exceptionality within schools, particularly "affordances and constraints" to relationships, knowledge development and identity formation. What does it mean to be labelled as a *special* learner? Within Special Education I focus primarily on the learning and development of young people identified as highly gifted, and their social and emotional well-being.

My understanding of "gifted" aligns pretty well with the idea of "asynschronous development"    This is a view of development that focuses less on achievement and outcomes and more on the internal reality and qualitative expenrience of being.

My methodological leanings respond to this conception by highlighting subjectivity, introspection, embodied knowing, heightened sensitivity to one's world, situated and contextual perspectives, and atypical and disruptive experiences of reality, as well as, the construction of these experiences within classrooms and learning environments. 

 

My 2005 M.A. thesis examined the experiences of eight adolescent girls who attended a radically accelerated high school. This was a phenomenological study which employed Carol Gilligan's "Listening Guide" to evoke the "quieter voices" at play in girls' experience of school and self. Part of the study involved the creation of "I poems," drawn from the girls' interview texts. I was awarded the 2005 Hollingworth Award by the National Association for Gifted Children in the US for my thesis proposal, and presented findings from this study in a paper at the 2006 Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Emerging and abiding interests that are clammoring for love and attention...half-baked ideas that i am currently exploring...some new, some old...

- Ethical development in children and young people, particularly highly ethical action and identity formation. Writing stories with and for young people that explore ethical tensions and behaviour. The process of identification with ethical characters in fiction, and learning "right action" through identification.

- Mindfulness meditation. Am inspired recently by Goldie Hawn's work and the Bright Light Foundation. Come to think of it, I have been a fan of Goldie Hawn's since seeing Private Benjamin as an impressionable pre-teen...but that is another story.... I have a regular meditation practice of about 4 years but have never merged this explicitely with my academic or teaching work. I would like to take part in some of the work that is being done to bring mindfulness into schools. 

- Reading "Coming to your Senses" by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and some of Ellen Lerner's work, a social psychologist from Harvard. She has a different definition of mindfulness than Kabat-Zinn, and is too careful not to align herself with any Eastern philosophy, interestingly though she did an experiment that showed that individuals who are identified as different from the norm and set apart in some way, are more mindful than those who are regarded as mainstream. As an educator involved in Special Ed. I think about the applications to school populations... 

- Kabat-Zinn, who has more Buddhist leanings, has an amazing few pages that talk about mindfulness and poetry. Much to talk about in a later post...

- I have developed a project known as the Peer Mentorship project. This is about identity, relationship and community building amongst highly gifted adolescents who are early entrants to UBC. Basically we asked them to pay attention to their experiences, lives and relationships, and to share their knowledge of early entrance to university with other younger than average students at UBC. Have been working with a group of young people for the past year who are graduates of the University Transition Program, a radically accelerated high school and early entrance program at UBC. We have a tight group that is going strong. Avraham Cohen, another doctoral student in the Faculty of Education has been helping me with this project. 

- Sharing the story of Mileva Maric Einstein- talking about love, relationships and the "private" lives of eminant scientists and mathematicians within science and math classrooms. I started working on a piece of "fiction" about Mileva, and have shared her story with a senior high school physics classroom. interesting dialogue emerged that was unusual for this setting.

- Have just formed a writing group this summer and there are 10 of us at this point, lots of poets and some fiction writers. I am looking into some classes and workshops to support my creative writing. I have a lot to learn, am enjoying the process.