Catching Up

So there has been a few months of lag time since the last entry, who cares?! Since Emma's birthday the Pfefferkorn household has been studying for the GRE (again). The net result was no improvement with lots of studying so either I am naturally brilliant, or no amount of studying can help me at this point. The GRE was in preparation for my application to Stanford's PhD program in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education. Here is the summary of what I want to do.

Since graduating from the CTE MA program, I have been working at the Stanford sponsored elementary charter school as a full-time teacher coach. My responsibilities have allowed me to impact our school’s growth through policies and Professional Development. I will have had three years of putting educational theories to test grounded in reality. I want to further my education and apply it to the ongoing work of the elementary charter school.

At EPAA, we have put a lot of faith into mentoring as a means toward building capacity in our staff and in creating a school climate that supports quality education for teachers and students leading to high student academic achievement. There is no easy formula to apply in the design of a professional development plan that will seamlessly move us from a startup with a turbulent reality into a fully functioning Professional Development School. Mentoring may be a key to our success, but the effectiveness of mentoring on student achievement is yet untested.

I want to help document our experience, as an insider, as well as study our journey with a bit more objectivity. I have been intimately involved in many of the planning discussions and the implementation of our efforts to move our school culture toward a true professional learning community. I would like to remove myself from the daily mix to have more focused attention on the process of how we better accomplish what we have set out to do.

I'll know if Stanford will have me come April. We have welcomed several new babies into our realm. Andres' brother has little Heidi born Sept. 13th. Our good friends Juan and Jenna welcomed Catalina on Nov. 17th. Former exchange student to Roosevelt along with Andres, Daniela, and her husband Todd welcomed Isabella on Nov. 10th. Andres' friend from childhood that now lives with his wife and newborn son in San Jose, welcomed Isaac in October. We have plenty of friends and family awaiting the arrival of their little ones - for some their first and for others an additional second or third blessing.

Halloween briefly stopped over at our house although we didn't get around to carving a pumpkin. The girls went trick-or-treating for the first time.

I got a root canal and crown that took 4 separate appointments. We traveled to New Orleans for Thanksgiving with the Munns and had a really nice break from normal. Molly and Bobby put us up in their spacious apartment. We hope to see them selling their artwork at an artfair real soon. We benefited from a few of Bobby's beautiful photos of N.O. local fare. Next week I head to Sweden for a week of work, part of a grant between our school and a Swedish and a New Zealand school. And we're counting down the days to our trip to Austin to see Sofia, Beket, Jenny, Arik, Heather - and meet Heather's boyfriend, Mike, for the first time. 20 Days to go!