ENED+690-692+Professional+Reflection

The English Teacher as Research sequence is th e culminating project for the graduate degree in English education. It is designed to engage teacher-researchers in classroom-based research and methodology utilizing qualitative data from students. This experience was, by far, the most influential of my graduate school journey. I believe that this stemmed from my work in Language in School and Society during my 690 class. I became interested in the choices and decisions that we make regarding language on a daily basis, whether they are conscious or subconscious, and if there was a way to track if, at all, student language changes depending on certain variables within a high school classroom. Based on my early work in Language in School and Society and the experiences I was having in my own classroom, I decided to use this idea of language for my 690 sequence. The work fascinated me, and I truly became engaged in obtaining a "deep knowledge" of that subject and the theories that surrounded it (**Standard 3**). However, one of the first things I was forced to do was reflect on how I would be able to utilize the idea of language in my classroom and whittle that down to workable research questions where data could be collected (**Standard 5**). When I began making plans to work on one of my main assignments for Language in School and Society, I realized that I had found a niche where I felt like I fit in. Not only did my 690 sequence allow me to stand on the shoulders of giants like Vygotsky, Bahktin, & Gee, but I got to talk about language //along with // them. By completing research like this, I can begin to call myself a teacher-researcher, and I can share these findings with other teachers in order to become a more effective teacher-leader in my school community (**Standard 1**). Because of this research, I was also able to discover how and when my teaching affects my students' ability to learn, internalize, and apply information, giving me the opportunity to ensure that I am not only creating a positive learning environment for my students, but continuing to uphold high expectations for my students (**Standard 2**) because there seems to be proof that students can utilize the language of writers. This entire research process has truly reaffirmed my love for research and scholarly writing; I hope to expand on this research in the very near future and perhaps take it with me as I consider going back to school for my PhD.