What Graduate classes are like...

Graduate school is definitely different from undergrad. Where as my undergrad experience was a lot of projects and tests I only have one test (in total) for all my classes this semester. In my classes so far there have been mostly readings. Unlike my undergrad experience where it didn't actually matter if you read the assigned reading or not because the teacher was going to summarize the information in class anyways, in graduate school if you don't do the readings you won't learn a thing. My teachers sometimes lecture for a short portion of the class but mostly it is based around discussions. Each student is expected to draw from the reading and their experience to come up with points for discussion. Teachers here won't spoon feed you information, they may not even give you the answer to your question instead they present theories and differing sides or the same situation and ask you to decide what you think. It's refreshing to be in a learning environment like that!

So.. looking for some tips?
1. Do as many of the readings as you can. Really read them and think about what they are saying because this is why you are here.
2. Find a group of people in your class who you can form a reading group with and distribute the readings on weeks when the work load is heavy.
3. Set goals to help you regularly talk in class. Most classes have at least 10% of the grade based on participation.
4. Actively make connections between what you are learning in one class with another. Just because a reading wasn't for a certain class doesn't mean you can't bring it up in the discussion. This will make you sound even smarter because you are talking about an outside reading!

Navigating the Library System

The University of Pennsylvania has 17 different libraries! It is vitally important to learn early on how to find things in the system and tap into all the additional resources Penn can connect you with. I had to do my first literature review this week for one of my classes. In the past, I remember hating research projects because I was never able to find the articles that I needed. I would also find these awesome abstracts online but then not be able to access the full text. I have found that NOT to be the case here at Penn. On top of the millions of books and journals Penn physically owns in their libraries the university also has accounts for thousands of online journals. These can be searched through a wide range of databases on the university's website. 

Borrow Direct: This is a partnership that Penn has with several other university libraries. If there is a book that you want and Penn does not have it or their copy has already been checked out you can request the book to be sent here from one of these other libraries. I realized, a little too late unfortunately, that this is a great option for textbooks. If you have a certain book to read for a class rather than buying it you can borrow from one of these partner libraries for a few weeks. It's a great way to save a little money!

Citation management: Another excellent tool I found through the Penn libraries page is different sites which store all your references/articles in one place online. So each time you are searching for articles and you find one you like you can export and save the link in one of these citation management sites and come back to it later. This sure beats having to write it down or email the link to yourself or download everything to your computer.

The Penn libraries also have librarians dedicated to each school at Penn and they will help you find research on a certain topic if you need them.

Overall I have to give the University of Pennsylvania Libraries a 10!

Football Game

I went to the first home football game Saturday. Penn won! It sure is exciting to go to a school where the football team is actually good. This year Penn is fighting for their 4th championship in 5 years. As a student, I can get into all the football games for free. I just had to was show my ID.

Some fun facts: Franklin Field is the oldest two-tiered stadium in the country with a seating capacity of 52,598. It opened in 1895 for the first running of the Penn Relays. It has been the site of the nation's first scoreboard, the first football radio broadcast, the first football telecast, and Vince Lombardi's only NFL playoff loss. The field has also been the home of the Philadelphia Eagles.

If its your first game at Franklin Field you will notice something a bit strange. As you walk in everyone is carrying pieces of bread. I noticed one lady carried in a cardboard copy box half full of toast. Penn fans throw toast onto the field after the third quarter of every home football game. Actually a lot of people get anxious and start throwing it in the first quarter. The toast-throwing tradition was in response to the line "Here's a toast to dear old Penn" in the school song "Drink a Highball". The act of throwing toast was adopted after alcohol was banned from the stadium in the 1970s.

Juggling

I've only been in graduate school for a month but if I had to choose one word to describe my experience thus far it would be "juggling". Not only do I continually have to juggle my classes and the coursework that comes with it, but also juggling being a grad assistant, getting to know a new city and trying to create a social life. The past few days I haven't felt like I did much of anything except read. Read a few hundred pages for this class and then a few dozen for that class. Once you finish one article there are always five more waiting to be read afterwards. Then there is the juggling of the all portals and information that is continuously being thrown my way. At orientation current students continually remarked on how many amazing opportunities there are to take advantage of here at Penn. I have definitely found this to be true. There are events, conferences and happy hours happening all the time. Each time I open up one of my now 3 email addresses my inboxes are flooded with new things to read about. Then there is the facebook page to check for events with the other cohorts in my program, canvas: the site where I go to check for announcements from my professors (I didn't mention that I have two canvas sites to check because there is one for GSE and one for two of my other classes which are outside of GSE), there is the twitter page, the scope it site, and of course blogs! Learning to filter and organize all of this fantastic yet sometimes overwhelming sets of information is an adjust but one that I am learning to handle thanks to color coding, folders in my inbox and easy to click bookmarks on my internet homepage.

Where I've Come From and Why I'm Here

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a teacher. Everything about being a teacher fascinated me.  Even the prospect of having mounds and mounds of papers to grade using my red pen excited me. In college I studied Elementary Education and loved every bit of it. I loved creating thematic units and file folder games, making up songs to go with lessons and reading children’s books.

While attending university I started coming into contact with all sorts of people who had connections to Africa. I became enchanted by the mystery of this huge continent that was so vastly different from any other place I had visited. I wanted to see if this image I had in my head of Africa was at all close to reality. So, after I graduated, I hoped on a plane and moved to Africa. I spent six months living in Zambia and Botswana with an international nonprofit called Youth With A Mission (YWAM). I’ve never met a person who has visited Africa and not wanted to return immediately.  You get sucked in to the carefree, upbeat, colorful life that exists there. I left Africa sure I would return soon.

Once back in the United States, I taught for a year in a charter school in downtown Kansas City. I have never felt more out of my comfort zone. I had to walk through a metal detector to get into school each day. It was an elementary school! I did not know how to connect with these students whose lives were so different from mine. It wasn’t just the violence or heart breaking stories that challenged me as I taught in that school. I quickly realized that there were huge holes in their knowledge and skills. I once asked them to point to the United States on a map and was shocked to find out that in a group of 30 fourth graders only two were able to identify the U.S. accurately. It was teaching in this school that I was confronted with the fact that the American education system in some ways isn’t working- plain and simple. I realized, in today’s world there is more than just curriculum and teachers needed in a school. My students were dealing with things at home and in the community that I as an adult would have a difficult time processing and coping with. I spent a major part of every class dealing with the side effects of these issues: disruptive and violent behavior, lack of motivation, low self-esteem, and anger. I realized that education is not isolated, for the outside world leaves an undeniable footprint on each child that walks through the classroom door.

My love for Africa did not fade during the year and a half I lived in the U.S. and in January of 2009 I moved to Tanzania. I joined staff with the YWAM base in Kilimanjaro. I primarily taught English at the Elementary school level. At times I had the opportunity to lead professional development seminars on topics such as multiple intelligences, fostering student-teacher relationships, and creative teaching methods. I was able to propose and implement several new initiatives to foster academic growth school-wide. Some of the programs failed, and I was forced to admit they would not work in this context, but some of the programs flourished.

Each year I used to teach a unit on occupations. I would open the unit by asking each student to draw a picture of the occupation they wanted to have when they grew up. No surprise, most drew pictures of the occupations they saw around them: teachers, drivers, and shopkeepers. There was barely any variety. Then we started learning about other occupations, even ones that are not common in Tanzania like photographers, fishermen, and judges. When I asked my students to complete the assignment again at the end of the unit nearly every student picked a different occupation. This is why I love education. The more people know and discover about the world the more they are able to dream of what they want their own life and community to become.

I have come to University of Pennsylvania to study International Educational Development. My goal is to help build schools in West Africa because I want to give young people the opportunity to learn what is possible and even more how to dream of the impossible. By showing individuals at a young age the possibilities and giving them some of the basic skills I believe they will be the ones to foster development. They will foster the type of development that they want not our Western definition of development. What I learned in the five years I was teaching is that no one system will work for everyone. America’s system has gaps, and struggles to meet the needs of many. Why would I want to take that system and transfer it to another nation? I saw positive aspects of Tanzanian education that I would like to add to my “toolbox” and use in the future. This program will allow me to study other nations’ systems and in turn I hope to gain even more tools.