Kimberly Rombach’s Reflective Statement
Date: February 16, 2007
I
have just completed eighteen months as an Assistant Professor in the Department
of Childhood/Early Childhood Education at SUNY Cortland and continue to be inspired,
challenged and motivated to do the best job that I can do in this capacity.
Throughout the time that I have been a faculty member at Cortland, I have grown
in ways that I had not predicted for myself and am pleased to have an
opportunity to share the highlights of my teaching, service and scholarship
that I’ve accomplished since my initial reappointment review in Fall 2005.
Throughout
this past year, I have taught four different courses in three different teacher
education programs including an undergraduate course titled, Teaching
Elementary Social Studies (EDU 375), a graduate course titled, Inquiry into
Teaching, Technology and Research (EDU 510), a graduate course titled, Social
Education in the Digital Age (EDU 647) and another graduate course titled,
Elementary School Practicum and Research Seminar (EDU 657). I have worked
diligently to maintain high standards for my students by identifying rigorous
yet attainable student outcomes for independent and small group assignments. My
overall adjusted mean Course Teaching Evaluation results is a 4.8.
I
have worked to strengthen the course Teaching Elementary Social Studies in a
few ways throughout this past year. For example, I have continued to work with
some partner teachers at Barry Elementary School to better learn about their
second and third grade social studies and math content implementation sequence
and have worked to have my undergraduate students create interdisciplinary
social studies and math learning centers. A highlight of the Fall 2006
semester’s class was to have my undergraduate students take their learning
centers to Barry Elementary School for a weekday afternoon so second and third
grade classes could participate at them. In this way, I have found that it is
essential that I continue to strengthen the connections between our university
setting and local schools because we can work together to find ways to best
meet the needs of our preservice teachers and elementary students in our local
community.
Last
year, I began to formulate a thematic methods block for the undergraduate Block
1 courses titled Educating for Social Transformation (e4st). Throughout that
time, I made a conscientious effort to try to create interdisciplinary
activities to facilitate undergraduates’ knowledge of social justice
education. E4st was written as a
thematic block to encourage college students’ reflection on previously held
assumptions regarding human differences and to reconceptualize any negative stereotypes
or overgeneralizations that they might have with groups of people different
than themselves. After such self-reflection, e4st was designed to provide
undergraduate students with experiences working with a wide heterogeneous
population. Due to a lack of resources for transportation to larger
metropolitan areas for observation and working in elementary classrooms, the
e4st thematic block has temporarily been taken off-line to further investigate
and locate necessary resources for this endeavor. I am hopeful that we can
bring e4st back online within the next year. I have currently begun
conversations with a MidState regional liaison for the Higher Education Support
Center for Systems Change and the Task Force on Quality Inclusive Schooling to
learn about grants that they offer that may support my work with our SUNY
Cortland students in this area.
Currently,
I am working with a group of faculty who has already established a thematic
methods block titled Threading Technology Throughout the Curriculum (t3c). As a
previous public school teacher, I led many district-wide staff development
initiatives in this area and am enthusiastic about the opportunities to share
and build on my past experiences. When preparing for this thematic block, I
have worked to find opportunities to align my efforts to the college mission
statement that offers, “All students
have opportunities to develop and utilize technology in their studies while
also assessing the impact of technology on individuals and society”. In my
current role in this capacity, I believe that it is essential that I strengthen
students’ learning by (a) modeling the use of technology as a teaching tool;
(b) facilitating the use of technology specific to social studies education;
and (c) integrating social studies and technology concepts into projects that
can be applied with elementary students.
In addition, I believe that it is critical for my students to understand
the impact that technology is having on individuals and communities near and
far. For example, I have guided undergraduate students in Teaching Elementary
Social Studies (EDU 375) to create online Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) and this
semester my students will align their VFT content to local sixth grade social
studies curriculum and have them implement their VFTs into sixth grade social studies
classrooms. While my colleagues and I continue to work to strengthen the t3c
thematic methods block, we recently wrote and submitted a paper to The Society
for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) that will be published
in their annual meeting proceedings.
In
the Spring 2006 semester I taught Social Education in the Digital Age (EDU 647)
for the second time. This course is in the MSED program and is a required
course for students with a social studies concentration. I have recently written
a grant proposal to redesign this as an online course to be offered either
during the summer or winter sessions. I am hopeful that I will receive this
grant because it will be the first time that I will plan and teach an online
course. The content of this course seems as though it would fit perfectly as it
relies heavily on information and communication technology (ICT) already.
I
have taught Inquiry into Teaching, Technology and Research (EDU 510) each
semester that I have been at Cortland. Throughout this past year, I have
changed this course by adding more information regarding special education law
and ways that students can differentiate instruction, assignments and
assessments to meet the needs of all learners in elementary classrooms. As my teaching
has become well established, I have had time to read and understand how the
curricula have been written throughout the MST Program. One of the gaps that I
found in the program is that this initial certification program does not have a
special education course for students to learn about ways to effectively teach
students with disabilities in the general education classroom. Therefore, I
have embedded this information within the course content and am satisfied with
the result. Students overwhelmingly state that they are glad to know how to
differentiate instruction to best meet the needs of their future students.
As
I mentioned in my previous reflective statement, I have also worked to have
students in EDU 510 develop portfolios to exemplify their accomplishments.
Perhaps more importantly, the portfolios provide a modality for students to
self-identify ways that they have met the Association of Childhood Education
International (ACEI) standards for their own education. Guiding students
through the process of creating online portfolios is certainly an arduous task
for myself; it takes many out-of-class hours to work with students who come to
the program with little to no background knowledge in web authoring. However, I
believe that it is a crucial skill for the students to learn and I feel
strongly about teaching them how to display their accomplishments in this way.
Near the end of each semester, I hold a Portfolio Review and invite local host
teachers, host administrators, and other faculty members to review and evaluate
the students’ portfolios. Last year, I received a call from a graduate from the
MST program who mentioned that he believes that he obtained his current
teaching position because of his online portfolio that he presented during a
job interview. While I realize that this is not an experience common to all MST
students, I am hopeful that all of my students will find value in sharing their
portfolios in a similar way.
I
have served on many different committees at the department, school and college
level. Perhaps most important to this review of my service activity is my shift
into leadership roles throughout this past year. Last year, I served as Chair
of my department’s Research and Technology Committee. In that role, I worked to
establish monthly Scholarly Socials for our faculty to discuss their
scholarship endeavors. Although Scholarly Socials’ attendance was often
irregular with four to ten faculty members, conversations seemed to be valuable
to those present and I was proud of our accomplishments highlighting
colleagues’ scholarly work and our subsequent conversations within our
department.
I
am currently serving as Chair of our social studies search committee. This is
the first opportunity I have had to serve as Chair of a search and I am finding
it both challenging and rewarding. Accommodating and working with different
faculty members’ schedules to find available meeting times has been a challenge
but it has been very rewarding to have conversations with the candidates. I am
looking forward to the search coming to a close as we are reaching the end of
our established timeline.
One
of my most significant accomplishments this past year is becoming the
Coordinator of the Master of Science in Teaching (MST) Program in Childhood
Education. I have worked to develop a strong orientation meeting each semester;
I invite faculty, staff and administrators to the meeting to welcome our new
students to campus and to the program. I enjoy talking with potential students
and discussing our program with them. I am working to strengthen the program
more by holding strong to GPA admission requirements and holding students to
high standards throughout their coursework and field experiences. I am
currently working to try to redesign Elementary School Practicum and Research
Seminar (EDU 657) to have local elementary school classroom teachers join the
preservice teachers in class to better understand action research and its
potential applications to their elementary students’ outcomes.
This
past year, I have served faculty across campus by presenting my ideas regarding
professional online portfolio development through a workshop offered through
the Faculty Development Center. As a member of the Faculty Development
Committee, I find it important to facilitate faculty development when possible.
My presentation, “Electronic Portfolios for Reappointment and Tenure:
Questions, Concerns and Considerations” was very well attended with both junior
and senior faculty members.
Also this past year, I was invited to serve on two different panels sponsored by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs to present my insight and successful experience with internal grant writing. One of my presentations, “Achieving Scholarly Goals: Implementing a Five Year Plan” identified ways that junior faculty could begin to establish a plan for their professional scholarship. In addition, junior and senior faculty well attended one of my recent presentations, “Writing Successful Internal Grant and Fellowship Proposals”. My Faculty Research Program (FRP) and my Summer Research Fellowship (SRF) applications were distributed by the ORSP to the audience for their own future reference. I was proud to serve as an invited speaker and believe that my service in this area will help to contribute to other faculty members’ scholarly success.
Throughout
this past year, I have written or co-written six papers that were accepted for
presentation at national conferences. My paper topics focus in the areas of inclusive
education, technology and professional development. I am excited about
presenting one of my papers at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education (AACTE) because I have not attended this conference before and would
like to make connections with other teacher education professors who will be in
attendance. I am also looking forward to presenting a paper at the American
Education Research Association (AERA) as it is a conference that I’ve attended
nearly annually throughout the past five years and find the meeting to be an
important component to my professional development.
I
have written and been awarded four internal grants throughout this past year
and a half. Most important to my own scholarship were the Faculty Research
Program (FRP) grant (mentioned in my initial reappointment letter) and the
Summer Research Fellowship (SRF) that I was awarded. I wrote both of these
proposals as complementary pilot studies so their findings could inform my
future external grant writing endeavors. I have written about both of these
studies’ findings in papers that I will present at annual conferences this year
(AACTE and AERA) and have begun to search for external grant funding so I can
realize my large-scale goal of creating a Social Justice Teaching, Research and
Service Center at SUNY Cortland. I find it challenging and exciting to work
toward this purpose.
I
have two papers that are currently in review for publication; I have carefully
and conscientiously searched for journals that have a very specific readership
that I would like to benefit from my research findings. As such, I am eagerly
waiting a decision from the reviewers of the International Journal for
Inclusive Education (IJEI) and Teacher Education and Practice (TEP).
My work as a professor at SUNY Cortland
continues to be my most professionally rewarding time of my life. I am very
proud to be part of the SUNY Cortland faculty and am hopeful that my portfolio
will provide the reviewers with evidence of my teaching, scholarship and service
that supports a decision for my reappointment as assistant professor in the
Department of Childhood/Early Childhood Education.
Thank you in advance for your careful review of my work.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Rombach