Continued Thinking about our Work Together

Hello Everyone,

I hope this note finds you all well. It is often that those of us that worked with you this past summer find ourselves thinking about and discussing the tremendous amount of work we were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. I believe this is true because of your continued commitments, both individually and collectively, to reflecting on what it means to be an effective teacher. As I reread your blog postings from your time here, I'm reminded of how this kind of purposeful thinking and reflection influences how we are constantly improving ourselves in our work with students. Thank you all for this reminder. It is part of what makes me continue to do the work that I do.

With this in mind, and now that you've had some time to return to your normal lives and process your time with us, I'd like to ask you all to take one more opportunity to reflect on the work that we did during your summer experience at Eastern Washington University. Towards the end of our program, each of you responded to prompts on this blog that asked you to specifically address the main issues that we focused on during the program. The blog prompts were titled Socio-Economic Status and Education, Disability and Education, English Language Learners and Education, Race/Ethnicity and Education, and Culture and Education. These seem like natural places to return to at this point. I'm asking that each of you revisit these prompts and your responses to them. Then, after you've reaquainted yourself with the prompt and your response, choose one that you think you might answer differently now. In the "comment" section of the prompt that you've decided to focus on, please provide some detail about how your thinking has changed or progressed since you first wrote your original response to the prompt. What would be different about your response now? What has influenced this change? Why is this reflection meaningful or important?

I truly believe that this type of continued reflection makes us stronger educators. I appreciate you taking the time to participate in this process with us. I look forward to reading your new comments to the prompts and hearing about all of the amazing work each of you are doing in your home countries and beyond.

With great affection,

Sean W. Agriss
2011 EWU Pathways Project Coordinator
sagriss@ewu.edu