Countdown to M.Ed. -- 2 courses.

One of them is a research class. Action research. Sounds all superhero-y doesn’t it?

Action research is the kind done to directly affect current practice (in my case, teaching practice), so it’s supposed to have something to do with what I’m doing in my classroom currently. I’m not doing anything relative to my current teaching, though. Instead, I’m doing research on teaching practices in schools and programs that work primarily with foster/adopted children, in preparation to start the Community School. More on that in a later post.

I have things about my current teaching I could explore, but I’ve been so thoroughly disgusted with my teaching this year that examining it objectively would just be too irritating.

I’ll admit it. It was a tough year. Being gone the first two months of the year, then trying to make up for that lost time while still trying to figure out which way is up with graduate school kicking back in and No Child Left Behind rearing its useless, ugly head.

I feel like my students didn’t learn a god. damn. thing.

Worse than that is the nagging, gnawing feeling I have that I didn’t teach them anything. They went through this whole year and got nothing worthwhile from me, and when I look back at why, there is so little that I can honestly say I could have done differently. I don’t have any problem taking responsibility for my teaching, and I’ll own up to the fact that I made decisions that meant my teaching was less inspired because I had other things to do, but it happened the way it had to. I’m not happy with it, though, and I’m carrying a little resentment at having to make decisions that don’t support the part of my life that really nourishes my soul.

Maybe that’s what I should have researched: The effect of real-world bullshit on veteran World Language teachers. I could call my thesis paper “Conneries and Sandeces”*

* The words for “bullshit” in French and Spanish, respectively.