Reflecting on Discoveries Made

These past 16 weeks have been a brisk walk through a very dense forest for me.  It was unfamiliar and the way ahead had so much content that it was difficult to see through, but so refreshing.

It was really nice revisiting the anti-bias textbook (Derman-Sparks & Olsen Edwards,  2010).  I really felt that, narrating it for the class to help out, really helped me to hear what I was reading.  I really benefited from that activity as well as the book alone.  It was funny to realize the copy that would come for this course was the same I had used in previous coursework.  I bought it thinking it was an updated version.

When we first began our course project, I was very frustrated that we were to chose something other than what we would want to do for the doctoral dissertation.  I really felt this was the underbrush and I was going to burn.  How was I going to manage all my responsibilities when this demands I split to a completely new subject.  I am so glad we did.

 

Where there’s a will, there’s a way!

The topic I selected was exploring the perceptions about English Language Learners.  I was so surprised the issues ELLs face are so prominent in my own back yard.  I found a few articles written in the Cedar rapids Gazette that informed me of this truth.  Not only that, but to the enormous growth of ELL population my community has seen over the past 16 years.

I think the greatest resources during this course was the people.  The practice study we had done required us to interview people.  This, I think, was the most informative.  It breathed life into  the research I was reading and gave it a tangible pulse that supported their findings.

I would like to investigate the resiliency of ELLs further and find out if there are predictive factors of resiliency.  The study conducted over these past 16 weeks helped me to understand the unique perceptions towards ELLs and ideas of what is and is not equitable currently.  This study included a brisk walk through the available research on resiliency; however, I would like to go deeper.  There’s an entire forest of research out there and I’ve only just seen the tree.

It is my sincerest hope that the brief study done will help guide and direct future research.  Gaining an insight from families, students, and professionals reinforced the core themes of perceptions.  All perceived there were services for ELLs and both family members, professionals, and scholars recognized that those services were not accessible to all.  The assumption that ELLs are literate in their native language at least was confirmed by all as well.  I hope to prepare this for submission into an academic journal so as to make it available for future researchers to consider.