Reflection

This year, I am beginning my third semester as a doctoral student, and it is frightening! Last year, I dappled in scholarly journals and worked very hard, but reality hadn’t quite set in yet. This year, I enrolled in a dissertation proposal course which is phenomenal. The professor excellently scaffolds and organizes the proposal in manageable chunks—she warns us that we would be making difficult decisions, but this will push our limits. The organization of the class has been very helpful to me, but I realize I have an immense amount of work ahead of me this year. Fortunately, I have an incredibly supportive husband, family, best friend, blog partner, and most important—advisor. I discussed my concerns with each of them, and they all expressed their strong support and confidence in me. Their encouragement pushed me to realize I can do this.

This Sunday in particular, my husband took my (adorable, gleeful, accident-prone, and giggly) son to visit extended family, and I worked. I kept my caffeine and snacks at the ready, and I didn’t leave my chair for five hours (okay, I did take a few bathroom breaks). It was joyful to get straight, uninterrupted hours to study—my mother-in-law, mother, and aunt have been helping with this too. The problem with reviewing literature in a field? I found excellent articles about my topic, and then, as I read these intriguing articles, they cited other articles, so I found those. As I looked through those articles, I found more that were equally important. As my list of “Articles I Need” kept growing and growing, I became worried. I began to wonder if I would ever possible feel done reading all of the research in the field.  My advisor assured me that reading every single article in a field (particularly with new journal issues being published each month) is impossible, but with my obsessive, Type-A personality, I want to read each and every article! I want to be sure I have read every possible study and article about the subject, but the problem is, there are branches upon branches of articles about other subjects that run parallel to my research. Each time I find a new, parallel subject, I think, “Oooooh! Neat!” and then I get lost searching for and reading articles about that subject matter that, while it aligns with my research, is not truly necessary. In research terms, they call this, “beyond the scope” of my research. Because I am very passionate about my topic, I can’t help but want to read it all.

I am grateful for all of the support from my family and friends for helping me find this very fascinating work. I have always loved to learn—and I used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t be a lifelong student (and still pay the bills). I learned so much from my students when I was teaching, but it was different from taking classes and conducting research with fancy IRB approval. As I was reflecting this weekend, I realized that by doing research, I will be a lifelong student as I learn from the participants in my study, and while I regret that I can’t read every article that is “beyond the scope” of the research subject of my dissertation, I am not locked into this particular study forever. If I want, I can really go rogue and research something drastically different! The next study I design can be in that forbidden “beyond the scope” zone of what I am researching today. And these possibilities make me strangely giddy with excitement.

If you are a middle or high school English language arts teacher (or know any of these folks), I would truly appreciate your help distributing the message below for my dissertation study! Thank you!!!

I am seeking middle/high school English teachers for a brief research survey. For more information, click: https://uconn.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_7U0gerNF8XslNpH. I would greatly appreciate it if you shared this post with other teachers!

As we begin our second year, we have spent time reflecting and setting goals.  We are extremely proud of our accomplishments in this first year, but we hope to grow even more over this next year. Here are some of our plans:

1. Review more professional books and middle grade novels

We did a survey a couple of months ago asking what our readers would like to see more of, and both professional texts and middle grade were at the top of the list. We take your feedback seriously, and we will work on this over the next year.

2. More teaching posts

We also learned from the survey that our teacher reflection posts are appreciated by our viewers. We plan to post more of these in the future.

3. Update About Us

Our lives have changed tremendously over the last year, so we definitely need to get into our “About Us” page and update the information.

4. Update and add to our “Navigating Literary Elements” page

We have recommendations for setting, characterization, and language under our literary elements page, but have plans to add conflict, voice, and imagery. Based on the books we read this year, we will adjust a few of our recommendations to keep the titles new and fresh!

5. Best For…. List

We are often asked about the BEST books for each grade level, so want to compile grade-specific lists to help teachers build and adjust their curricula.

Cheers to a new year!

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As we wrap up our first year as blog partners, we can’t help but reflect on all of the lessons we’ve learned—both as a team and as bloggers. Sharing a blog requires a strong friendship, and while we were friends before the blog, our bond has grown much stronger from working closely together. We’ve learned:

Google Drive is a lifesaver.

We have a complex shared calendar. If an outsider opened the file, it would be like entering the Twilight Zone. There are sticky notes all over the place and a lot of jargon, but it makes sense to us. Having a shared file that updates automatically has saved us a lot of time and energy, so thank you, Google Drive.

Emails are not always the best form of communication.

Kellee and I exchange a few hundred emails a day. We have realized that, often, just picking up the phone and calling each other is much more effective when we have important questions.

We share the same taste in books but not in art.

You would think this wouldn’t be a big deal, but when it comes to designing the blog and posts like, “Top Ten Covers We’d Frame as Pieces of Art,” not sharing the same taste in art becomes very apparent. Luckily, we manage to compromise, and we think the end products (e.g. the new blog design) are a perfect blend of our styles.

Regrettably, we can’t take every book that is offered to us.

This lesson has been very difficult for us to accept (and we still struggle with it!). We are often contacted by authors and marketing companies with book review requests. We love to help spread the word about these great books, but we receive more requests than there are days in the year.

Babies do not make good blog partners.

As we both entered motherhood this year, we realized that our blogging habits would never be the same. Now, we both jump on the blog in those brief napping hours or after the babies go to bed. It is too tricky to blog with a baby in a sling.

Friends do make good blog partners.

Even with the stress that comes with co-blogging, having a friend there to do it with you makes it 100% easier and more fun.

What have you learned by blogging? Teaching? Living?

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