My journey through Graduate School to earn a Masters of Art in Education. I was on track to become a teacher, but now everything has changed, and I'm on the job hunt with a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts and a Master's in Education with no teaching certificate.

 
I've got too many papers to write and I have no idea what I'm going to write on. I have a presentation for a conference this Friday and I don't have a clue how I'm going to pull that off. I have three weeks left in one class and a five page paper due in seven days that will require at least two interviews, and an eight-page paper is due for the same class. What I need is some inspiration.
posted by Josh English at 2/24/2004 09:09:00 AM

 
Last night we went through an exercize to illustrate how the politics of post-secondary education works, and we used proposals to diversify the curriculum to do it. Watching the role-playing was spooky, but several people (including the instructor) pointed it out to be very accurate. The administrators listen to all sides and basically do what they want anyway while trying to convince each side that they really have won.

What got me thinking, though, was diversity itself. How do we measure diversity? Do we simply say that any population with over 34% "minority" (read 'non-white') is diverse? What if that 34% is all from the same ethnic background. That's not multicultural, that's bi-cultural. How should we measure diversity in the population?

How should we measure diversity in the curriculum? What standards can we use? One of the arguments against diversification came from the science courses. I can see the value of reading a balanced set of works from great writers from all across history and the world, but will Biology or Math really change much?

Being a math person anyway, I know that the subject matter won't change. There is no 'black' way to solve quadratic equations, but different cultures have different 'number senses' and we can certainly point out more biographical details of the scientists and mathematicians that have made a difference. They aren't all white men.
posted by Josh English at 2/17/2004 08:15:00 AM

 
It's been a bad week. It's actually been a bad term. It seems like my classes aren't doing my any good. My CIPE class is getting more confusing. I missed Monday's class because I had a fever of 102.3, and I have a presentation to do next Monday with some class-mates. I'm trying to catch up with them.

I am still very confused about what kind of job to look for. Someone suggested that I should look into academic advising, since I am described as being "approachable." It sounds good, but I'll have to think about it.

In Personal and Professional Development I had to do an interest presentation. I was going to talk about everything I suck at, then I decided to talk about my ray-tracing work, and at the last minute I decided to read part of a story I wrote back in 1991. Fortunately I had an old version of the story on my web site and was able to print it out and refresh my memory. I haven't looked at the story in a while.

I have also started my research paper. I've changed subjects entirely and now I'm doing a quantitative review of teachers expectations and opinions about using the internet in the math class. I've had one interview and it went very well. I have to arrange for a few more.

I have been very dissatisfied with the level of work I'm doing. I don't feel that I'm doing proper graduate school level work. I am capable of it, but I think I'm slacking off. Back to the grindstone they say.
posted by Josh English at 2/13/2004 09:45:00 AM