Yo-Yo Ma and Award

Today I begin the post with a homage and recognition to all of you of something that I care deeply about: cello music (violoncello music as is the precise name of this beautiful instrument). As I write this post, I am in a little bit of heaven. For my birthday, I splurged on some music: Yo-Yo Ma’s 30 Years Outside the Box collection to be exact. This is a compiled set of ALL (over 90) recordings that he has made in his professional career over the past 30 or so years. This box set is music and musicianship at their finest.

He rotates his play on two cellos, my favorite being the magnificent, 275 years old, Domenico Montagnana's cello with exceptionally beautiful resonation on the low C string, which for me, makes for that great woodsy sound that stirs my soul. So, for me, listening to each of those CDs is a little bit of heaven. There are 90 in the box. I am only on CD 10. You can read more about Yo Yo Ma here and here.

People that know me, know that I am an amateur cellist. I was introduced briefly to a cello while in tenth grade in high school. Later, as an adult, I studied cello at Mankato State with Dr. Harry Dunscombe, who recently passed in January 2008. I considered myself a pretty good intermediate player. With loads of practice, I eventually auditioned for the Mankato Symphony Orchestra and won a place in their cello section. I happily played with this group for about 5 years. I have not played in many years due to a fairly significant knock on the head and subsequent sensitivity to sound. But, I have the cello out, and plan to start up again.

Next news:
I am tooting my horn here a bit. I submitted one of my papers that I presented in January for an award and guess what: I got it!! I cannot tell you how much this means to me. That paper describes what I have had my science/math methods students do in terms of researching their own teaching. This practice is what got me in the pickle around tenure: I pushed them too hard, or so they thought. Here is a bit from the letter:

Congratulations! The ASTE Awards Committee has completed its review of all submissions for Awards IV and V. It is my pleasure to inform you that the ASTE Award Committee selected your paper, Descriptive Inquiry in the Throes of Learning to Teach: Can Prospective Teachers Learn to Teach and Study their Teaching Closely? for Award IV: Innovation in Teaching Science Teachers.

Here is the abstract for this paper:
This paper will report on results from an innovative elementary science methods course where prospective teachers study closely their own teaching episodes within a framework of descriptive inquiry. During the science methods course, the preservice teachers spent 5 weeks in local elementary classrooms applying the teaching methodologies with elementary students. In addition and working in pairs, the preservice teachers applied qualitative research methods to their own teaching by collecting observational data through videotaped teaching episodes, field note documentation, and interviews to uncover phenomena, dynamics or practices that are exclusive and do not promote learning of all. In this paper, we will report on two case examples where prospective teachers’ research revealed that (1) the “average” students were overlooked in their teaching and (2) gender bias interfered with their inclusive interactions with all elementary students. These results suggest that if prospective teachers apply knowledge of subject matter methods with a close look of their teaching episodes they will gain some of the perspective of more seasoned and expert teachers.

I invited one of my former students to co-present this paper with me. As such, this award will be shared with her. She reported to me that she thinks about the work that she did in researching her teaching almost every day as a new teacher. So, it is a pleasure to share this award with her.

I know that the work I do with my students pushes them hard. They have told me this both in verbal ways and in written comments. But, I know, that this work make them better teachers, which is the point. So, receiving this award is a great validation of the work I have been doing and am so committed to doing. Isn’t our goal as teacher educators to produce the very best teachers possible?

TTFN and thanks for reading!
Michele