Great Stories Begin Here: HS Digital Storytelling proposal (drafty)

http://prezi.com/zrvntus6vwsa/great-stories-begin-here-my-college-story/

Special thanks to my sister Laura--I borrowed her video blog as an example.

Pace yourself: Kellogg Week 2

Week 2 of Kellogg Institute/National Center for Development Education Summary...

I feel like a baby.  I'm overstimulated by all the new information and feel like sleeping 18 hours per day to let my mind process everything.

It seems like that--but actually, I've been trying to "pace myself," as Dr Boylan recommended during his welcome on Day 1.  Pacing myself has meant take in everything I can, let go of the things that slip by, and reach out for the things that sustain me that *aren't* related to developmental education--my own sort of contextualized learning.

So I'll start by relating some of those things.

Coffee.  I have been enjoying my morning Americano and hour of writing each weekday at a wonderful cafe called Espresso News just a few blocks from here.  Friendly atmosphere, great coffee, interesting people to watch.  They're starting to interact with me--on Friday one worked up the courage to ask me if it was ok to ask me a few questions (so formal)--are you a writer?  how old are you?:  Are you here working on a project? Yes. 40. Yes.

Music.  I brought several instruments--flute, oboe, guitar, accordion.  On Wednesday evening, we arranged a jam/sing a long for Kelloggers in the residence hall lounge--super fun.  Classic rock, 50s, 60s, 70s.  Stuff I didn't know.  Stuff I did.  Mostly it was Ken Wissmann leading the way on electric bass while I worked through the melody lines on my flute and others sang from the lyric sheet. My proudest achievement was faking my way through the organ solo in "Runaway" on flute.  I'm also teaching Christi Duque how to play the Chicken Dance on the accordion. Yeah, I got mad skills.  And we are all developmental students from time to time.

Yoga.  There is a beautiful treetop yoga studio a few blocks from here: Neighborhood Yoga.  The second floor studio has windows to the south and west.  There is an apple tree, heavy with apples, visible through the windows.  The classes are varied--Iyengar, Gentle, even Kundalini.  Plus, they organize monthly service days--Karma Krew does community outreach, and today I got to visit a local farm and pull weeds.  Saw some honeybees and a great blue heron.

Local Food. North Carolina knows how to do it.  The farm I visited today supplies vegies to the local restaurant Proper.  There are at least three awesome restaurants within walking distance of campus that source vegies from farms within the county.  The campus cafeteria sources its vegetables from local growers. It seems like it will take five years before three Alamosa restaurants will figure out how cool it is to serve delicious local vegies. When will Sodexo get vegies from the valley?

Service. F.A.R.M Cafe--Feed All Regardless of Means.  Yet another excellent restaurant which serves local food.  Also, if you serve for an hour, you get to eat.  The chef, Renee, was telling some patrons about the food insecurity that local college students experience.  This restaurant helps them and many others get a delicious healthy meal.  I love this place.  I want one in Alamosa.  My suitemate Mary Ann and I served there on Friday and are already signed up to serve next week as well.
 

Qi Gong.  Qi Gong is like yoga or tai chi, but it's also like stirring the chi/love energy of the universe around me.  One of the other Kelloggers offered to teach a Qi Gong class on Fridays after class--Qi Gong Happy Hour.  We did breathing and simple movements to pull energy into us, mix it around, and then send it out into the universe. 

So, besides all these distractions which have contextualized my learning and made it meaningful to me, I also had the pleasure of learning from Dr Barbara Bonham all week.  This week's topics included Instructional Design (yay, Universal Design!), Theories of Learning, Non-cognitive assessments, a group project based on accelerated learning models, and Classroom Assessment Techniques.  I'll be bringing some of those CATs home with me (meow!).

I managed to summarize an article I hadn't read.  Fairly well.  I think I may be ready for more grad school.

I also managed to get a computer virus.  gah.

And finally, I revised my practicum proposal to the following:  I will work with 11 students from Centennial HS in San Luis on telling their college story through digital storytelling.  Co-teaching a class with film professor Danny Ledonne, I'll have these senior HS students work through some college readiness curriculum each week and create a video blog of their experience.  I'll create a class into which the students can enroll Fall 2012, so they can receive college credit for their video projects as well as have access to our film program cameras/editing technology.  In Spring 2013, students may also take a second course which will develop their editing skills as they turn the weekly video blogs into a polished narrative of their college story--where they've been accepted, what they learned through the film project.  Since NADE (National Association for Developmental Education) is hosting its conference in Denver this spring, I will bring as many students from this project as I can to present their videos at the conference.  I will be giving a presentation of my practicum as part of my McGraw Hill scholarship.

Kellogg Institute Week 1 Summary

This summer I am attending the National Center for Developmental Education Kellogg Institute at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC for the month of July.

Week 1: Basic Skills Assessment and Placement
Monday began with a welcome by Dr Hunter Boylan, which included a succinct history of Dev Ed in higher education.  He also framed the current conversation(s) regarding research by TCCU and others critical of Dev Ed--the movement to "end" remediation.

Tuesday-Friday Dr Ed Morante explicated psychometrics, placement vs admission testing, norm-referenced vs criterion-referenced tests, standard error of measurement.

I also met with my advisor, Dr Boylan, to discuss my project. Keeping in mind my "global learner" tendencies, it was important to draw a box around what would and would not be in this project.  Of course I'm still doing the 'big' project (HS outreach, mentoring, pre-remediation of high school students so more of them are college-ready when they graduate, working with HS and MS faculty to improve communication and support for students/share professional development resources/data, increase students' availing themselves of summer programs), but my Kellogg project will focus on supporting the PARENTS of first generation college students (FGCS) --giving them some resources for how to be a parent of a college student.

I started a preliminary list of references.

Preliminary Bibliography for Kellogg project

I'm preparing some resources to share with parents of high schoolers (targeting first generation college students) to support them as parents of college students.  Here are some articles I'm targeting for my references:

"Desafios y Bendiciones": A Multiperspective Examination of the Educational Experiences and Coping Responses of First-Generation College Latina Students. By: Gloria, Alberta M.; Castellanos, Jeanett. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, v11 n1 p82-99 Jan 2012. (EJ964599)


Expectations of Parents of First-Year Students regarding Collegiate Teaching and Caring at a Public University. By: Spearman, Christina J.. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, East Carolina University. 2010 189 pp. (ED516517)

First-Generation Latina Graduate Students: Balancing Professional Identity Development with Traditional Family Roles. By: Leyva, Valerie Lester. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, n127 p21-31 Fall 2011. (EJ957396)

"Mi'ja, You Should Be a Writer": Latino Parental Support of Their First-Generation Children. By: Early, Jessica Singer. Bilingual Research Journal, v33 n3 p277-291 2010. (EJ907096)

Negotiating Identity: Elite Institutions, Low-Income First Generation College Students, and Their Parents. By: Rondini, Ashley C.. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Brandeis University. 2010 257 pp. (ED516896) 

Negotiating Multiple Identities within Multiple Frames: An Analysis of First-Generation College Students. By: Orbe, Mark P.. Communication Education, v53 n2 p131-149 Apr 2004. (EJ681531)

Parental Involvement in Higher Education: Understanding the Relationship among Students, Parents, and the Institution. ASHE Higher Education Report, Volume 33, Number 6. By: Wartman, Katherine Lynk; Savage, Marjorie. ASHE Higher Education Report, v33 n6 p1-125 2008. (EJ793853)


Parent Support and Stress among First-Generation and Continuing-Generation Female Students during the Transition to College. By: Sy, Susan R.; Fong, Kristen; Carter, Rebecca. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, v13 n3 p383-398 2011-2012. (EJ945740)

The Webster County Blues: An Exploration of the Educational Attitudes of a Poor Appalachian Community. By: Snyder, Todd D.. Community Literacy Journal, v2 n1 p91-106 2007. (EJ899384)

Mosquito video links

Bee Girl Video

AlaMosquito promo: speciesist 

AlaMosquito promo: larvakiller

Getting stung

Thursday night I moved some beehives and got ten simultaneous bee stings from one particularly aggressive hive.  I don't like being stung at all, and that was the biggest dose of venom I'd experienced.  I was a bit worried about anaphylaxis, about losing consciousness, about swelling.  But one of the things about beekeeping is you mostly have to finish what you start--you can't just leave a bunch of equipment in disarray or risk an innocent person getting stung by bees you riled up.  So, I kept working, packed them into my truck and headed down the dark road.

I was discombobulated.  The bees were still all over me, so I left my veil on, while driving.  I didn't secure my seat belt in the rush to get away from the beeyard.  My mind was darting from thought to thought, changing plans mid-move, as I careened down the dirt road, aching in multiple body parts and spazzily swatting at attackers.  A small quiet part of my mind suggested that it would be an excellent idea to put that seat belt on--if ever there was a slightly higher risk of getting in an accident....

After a few miles, I started to calm down and endorphins or something kicked in so I didn't feel the pain as much.  I started to think about killing that mean hive.  I spend quite a bit of my time rescuing bees, diminishing pesticide use, and here I was plotting murder.

Why do bees sting?  They sting out of defense.  Good, smart bees fight for the survival of their hive, fight off intruders. 

Another part of me, the imaginative writer who develops my BeeGirl superhero, tries to interpret how these stings, this venom, helps me.  I felt sick for the past several days as the venom worked through my system, and it caused me to have less patience than usual. In BeeGirl's origin myth, bee venom gives her special powers to unite her community, to communicate, to help large groups make good decisions the way bees do in the hive. 

Since Thursday (and while in this daze of ache), I found myself in my different 'hives', community group meetings where we're working toward consensus, setting good policy as we move into the future.Our local foods coalition met Friday morning, and the Mosquito Control District met Friday evening. Tomorrow I meet with the state remedial education policy review committee.  In all of these meetings, we are setting policy, we are planning a course of action that will impact many people.  We come from different perspectives, bring different sources of information, bring our biases.

Maybe I needed that dose of venom to balance out my congeniality, to give me a little more of an edge to fight.

College Readiness Faculty to Faculty meeting at Alamosa High School

Here is a word cloud (thank you wordle.net) from a meeting I had this week which included faculty from Adams State College, Trinidad State Junior College, Alamosa High School and Ortega Middle School to discuss the challenges our students face to be "College Ready."

I don't have all the answers, but I'm grateful to be in the conversation.  I'll be attending the monthly Colorado Remedial Education Policy Review task force meeting May 25th and will bring the comments with me.  I'll also bring these ideas with me to the Kellogg Institute (a month-long fellowship to work on our near-peer mentoring project and/or other interventions to support students).