I just wanted to throw a quick picture of my academic life out here on the blog since it is the reason that I am here in Glasgow - my progress through studies in the hope of obtaining a master's in education (everyone knew that little bit, right?). Scheduling is a wee bit different here - I only regularly attend classes this semester on Monday and Thursday afternoons/evenings at two hours each. Yep, that's only 4 hours in class each week, folks. One might think, "sweet!", but that load of free time that I have been "enjoying" since my arrival had become quite burdensome quite quickly for someone who has a need to be "doin' stuff" to feel like a productive human being.
With that being said, my prayers for more to occupy my time were over-answered with an intensive one-week "elective" course on inclusion in education. Sounds riveting, no? Actually, it really is - I've very much enjoyed the discourse that has taken place in this class thus far and the individuals whom I have met - they are anyone (though mostly of the female variety) from special education and mainstream Scottish teachers to graduate students from Kenya, Ghana, China and, of course, the US. We all have very diverse backgrounds in the realm of education, too, so there has been a lot of insight, exploration and graduate level thinking and discussions going on from both the practitioner and researcher perspectives. Again, very riveting, if you are a dork like me :) Sadly it all ends on Friday, and then I have to pump out a 4,000 word analytical paper in a month for this class alone. I think I will go with policies and practices of inclusion - past and present - for students with ADHD/ADD for £800, Alex.
(You did get that jeopardy reference, right? Sometimes I fear things get lost in translation after I've been here for so long speaking this strange foreign language in this strange foreign culture....).
My regular or "core" classes are quite different from the above described class and each other. One is an introduction to research methods (snoozer in content, but the profs are engaging). For this class, I have to churn out three smaller written assignments, I believe, and do a presentation. It's all for the sake of making the student start to think about, if not do parts of, the dissertation (what we call a thesis in the States - don't freak out and think I'm doing any PhD level stuff yet - one step at a time, people) required for this degree within a year's time. My other core class is a seminar class - again, to be used as part of our dissertation work, if we so choose (and frankly, who wouldn't?). We each have to do individual research (i.e. lots of reading) on a specific topic of our choice and give a 15 minute presentation of six bold statements about the topic followed by 30 minutes of discussion as a class. Mine is November 18th. On the days that I'm not presenting, I'm required to be engaged in observation and discussion as part of others' presentations. Then - oh yes they did! - I have to write a 2500 word literature review - every graduate students' favourite part (insert lots of sarcasm). Oh well, at least that part of my dissertation will already be done by Christmas, I suppose....
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