Back to School, To Become a Master

This year I am heading back to school. In addition to teaching at the junior high level, I will also become a student once more as I pursue my Masters Degree in Educational Foundations in Leadership and Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. It's been six years since I was last a student in university so heading back to school in this type of role is a flashback for me at times.

The first course is a mandatory course in our cohort programme called Focus on Research Literacies or GEDU 6170 if you're into course numbering. The course focuses on the kinds of reading one employs and develops in the process of doing scholarly research. This basically means taking a look at the way we research, why we research, and the various frameworks and approaches that are available in research. Sounds really dry doesn't it? Although, to many , it may not sound like a very stimulating area of study and at times it's not, discussions do often evolve into those that help teachers contemplate our teaching practices and truly begin to think about how we structure our professional practice.

One of the assignments for the course is to maintain a research Log or Research Journal throughout the course in which we can reflect on and respond to readings, activities, or anything else related to inquiry or research. This may involve things we hear on the radio, see on television, read in a newspaper, or any other brainwave that we may wish to reflect on. We submitted our first brief excerpt for this journal a couple of weeks ago. The second installment is due in the coming weeks. Being somewhat of a technology-driven person, rather than creating a personal log that only myself and the professor will see, I will open it up to the world a bit on the Bloggopotamus. Someone out there may find some of this content interesting enough to comment on. Over the next couple of days, I will attempt to back log some of my previous pen and paper entries on the Bloggopotamus and then continue with online entries for the remainder of the course and possibly beyond.