Journal 2

In the 6 months or so since I began, I've encountered a wide variety of resources and materials related to Holocaust history and the Civil Rights Movement. I have had the pleasure of meeting a number of teachers from the area and attending a number of events and seminars. I have been given the task of leading a number of initiatives beyond follow-up and facilitation, such as the Polk Dialogue, The TLT, and One Book One Chicago. It has been a roller coaster ride in terms of my acclimation to a new working environment. As mentioned before, I am working to find a balance in terms of getting tasks done (ritual engagement) and feeling like I've made a significant contribution to the work (authentic engagement). I'm not really intrinsically motivated by the work and I continue to hope that this will change over time as my newness and lack of exposure wears off.

On Seminars

I've spent much of the last few months in preparation for Choices in Little Rock seminar in February. Much time and energy has been put into recruitment - a long, arduous task. In December, I sat in on sessions by Dunreith, Steve and Denise which were helpful. I hope to find a stronger sense of accomplishment upon completion of the seminar at the end of next week. My concern now, though, is that I have virtually had little to no feedback from my teachers that took the December seminar. It could very well be that I've only heard from the few teachers I have heard from because they are beginning their units in January or February. I don't know for sure. The whole thing just creates anxiety for me because my job performance is directly tied to what these teachers do and how well they do it. As a teacher, you are judged by how well your students do, but as a teacher you have a little more control of your pupils...this is not the case here. I have offered to deliver copies of Warriors as a way to get in for a site visit.

On Teacher Follow-up
I've worked with teachers in the following ways:
1. As part of the requirements of the Polk Dialogue and as follow-up to the summer R&M seminar in July 2008, I am working with 2 teachers from Chicago area high schools around the issue of The Great Migration and Chicago neighborhood histories. The teachers are great and expect to have a good group of students, but I can't help to feel a sense of anxiety at the fact that evaluation of my work is contingent upon the degree of success these teachers have with their students and the degree of satisfaction felt by the funders. This pushes me to put a lot of time and energy into the project and into insuring that the culminating student pieces are as dynamic as possible. We have had several conference calls, a string of emails and a meeting to establish an events timeline, a discussion forum, a guest speaker for the kick off event and working to gain service learning hours for the students that complete the project. I hope to get them hooked up with a multimedia group to allow them to incorporate tech and video.

2. The CHI TLT has taken a dynamic twist this year and formed 2 focus groups - MS and HS. As a former member of the TLT, I often left the meetings feeling guilty because I hadn't contributed more to the work that FH was doing. I felt that I was taking more than I was giving and therefore, suggested the formation of focus group in order to allow our teacher leaders to assist our work in the way of mentoring new CLR teachers, critiquing & analyzing the HHB ERG draft, submitting sample Choices lessons and developing Choices assessments(for vetting and ultimately, sharing). The ideas of these teachers has been invaluable.

3. I've had some good, regular follow up with a handful of schools, one of which is the school I taught at prior to joining FH and the other, a school of a fellow TLT-er. I hope to gain more access to teachers and their classrooms before year's end.