Reflection+journal

Forming teams: Last night before class I Google-chatted with my debate team. My idea was that we had already gone through forming as a team and this would give us a head start on the process of coming together cohesively as a team for the new, final project. We chatted three ways, and i found it to be a more 'leveling' venue for the three of us. Danielle and i are pretty vocal, whereas Shi is quieter, although i found her to be a strong team member in our debate preparation, so i think it may be the counterbalance of Danielle and i that gave me that perception. Well, we talked about a project idea that we all felt good about. however, when we got to class, Shi and i were still of the same mind, but Danielle wanted to include a fourth member and when we agreed and began to talk about the project Danielle was much less confident in front of Dan than she had been the night before or even prior to class when we, the three of us, spoke. I know both Shi and I were disappointed, but I could see that Danielle wanted to start with a fresh idea. I found it interesting how adding one more member changed the dynamics so dramatically, at least for one member. So, we began to brainstorm and a fifth person joined the group and proclaimed membership, not knowing what we were doing. At this point, most of the original four verbalized that five was to large of a team. i agreed to speak to the team of two in the room (the other team had four and seemed to be working constructively). The team of two wanted to do high school and online. i brought this back to the group and no one wanted to join them. So, i did. i found it interesting that, despite going around the room expressing our interests and strong points, no one was taking that into account. When the professor left the room it was almost like a barn dance where you grab a partner and go, fearing to be left out of the dance completely. I wish that we could have had a 'convener' for that period of forming teams, so that we could have brainstormed ideas as a group and gravitated into common interest sub-groups. my new team mates are Stephanie and joy. Joy is very soft-spoken and does not speak unless one of us really encourages her. Stephanie seems to have a relationship with her prior to our team, i'm not sure. But, she treats her very gently and encouragingly. We spoke briefly about a virtual high school and planned to form a common theme for our three areas of expertise. i feel a bit out of the water, since i have never taught K-12, but i have been in graduate school and now this program with teachers of k-12 so i am hoping i have gleaned enough through emersion to contribute to this aspect of the project. i have spent my teaching career in higher education, so we will see.

Team meeting;

Team meeting:

Team meeting: 11/14/11 My two team mates have put their "pieces" of the project together. They feel confident that what they have prepared (absent my pieces) is comprehensive and meets both of their standards. I attempted to suggest that we make our own outline and format instead of embracing the sample, and I attempted to introduce new elements for discussion and I was quickly cut off and told it was something I alone was interested in doing and it should be part of my individual submission.

I do not find the final copy substative or based on anything we have learned in this class. It is way too late in the process to move to another group. And I certainly don't want my grade based on a submission that is so poorly thought through and poorly written. So, I am not going to send this email today 11/17/11, but I am going to copy it into my journal. I can't tell you how disappointed and discouraged I feel. I am going to write my "parts" which are School Model, Course Offerings, and Assessment and be done with it. We have an online school and they don't even give me a chance to give them input. They wrote "day in the life" with essentially asychronous descriptions, yet the majority of what they are stereotyping as online learning environment with synchronous tools. They totally have no idea about online learning environments and despite my presence on the team they do not ask me for any input. I just get "shut down", like they just want to get this done and move on.

I attempted a discussion about the exemplar for presentation in class. Stephanie essentially said that she is preparing a math lesson with a health theme, and Joy and I can do something integrated if we want to. I briefly showed Joy a tool that we can use to teach chinese with the auditory component and integrate it with a health theme, perhaps herbal medicines. Not sure where that will go. Stephanie was not interested in engaging at all.