Kimberly Rombach’s Reflective Statement
February 12, 2009
I have just completed 4 ˝
years as an assistant professor in the Department of Childhood/Early Childhood
Education at SUNY Cortland and continue to find this job to be one of the most
intellectually rewarding and yet challenging endeavors of my lifetime. This
reflective statement highlights my past two years’ accomplishments as a
teacher, researcher and educational community member.
In the past two years, I
have taught seven different courses in three different programs within our
department. The courses include topics such as undergraduate social studies
methods, undergraduate social and academic curriculum, online graduate
research, and utilizing effective Internet resources for classroom instruction.
The topics vary widely, and, as such, they have taken a considerable amount of
time to plan because resources can’t always be used for multiple course
preparations. I have continued to keep the courses rigorous in design and have
been pleased that students regularly report that they find them challenging to
complete but well worth the effort. For example, some recent students
commented, “I have never been so encouraged to work so hard for another
professor” and “I feel that Kim wants all of her students to succeed and does
everything in her power to ensure that this happens. She also expects the best
from all, which truly prepared us to become great educators.” My course teaching evaluations remain very
high across all courses with an overall mean consistently around 4.8 out of
5.0. For me, the true measure of how well I am doing with students is when they
report that I have made a difference in their own teaching. Recently, one of my
previous students emailed me to thank me for making a difference in her own
elementary students’ learning because I had helped her to become an effective
teacher. A letter such as this helps to remind me that my own teaching can have
the far-reaching impact on my students’ students that I initially hoped it
would when I first became a professor at Cortland. It is in this way that I am
most fulfilled with the outcomes of my college teaching endeavors. In January 2009, I was nominated for the campus-wide
Excellence in Teaching Award.
Last spring I had the
opportunity to teach online courses for the first time in my career. I was
excited and apprehensive about this venture because I had never taken an online
course myself and as such, was unsure of what might work best for students’
learning. Therefore, I spent some time meeting with a student who had taken
many online courses in the past to help me plan for effective course design. I
also spent some time with our SUNY Cortland technological support staff to
learn about online classrooms and online teaching tools. Planning took so much
more time than I had anticipated! However, I always believe that strong
planning helps to ensure success, so I planned everything as well as I could
prior to the courses beginning. I created discussion
directions for potential first-time online students, online discussion lessons and online assignments,
grading rubrics and grade books. The biggest surprise that came from my online
teaching was the wide range of students’ opinions about online learning. Some
students reported that they liked online courses and seemed to really open up
during online discussions and participated often in one-on-one email
conversations with me. Other students seemed to minimally participate. One of
the students frequently skipped assignment submissions and discussion posts and
subsequently failed the course. It was the only time since being at Cortland
that I had a student fail one of my courses. I believe that this was largely
due to the online modality of instruction and believe that the student’s
outcome might have been different in a typical, face-to-face course.
While reflecting on teaching
online, I soon came to realize that students must rely very heavily on reading text
to achieve their learning goals. For example, In EDU 647, I provided students
with weekly class notes (modules), PowerPoint files, supplemental Internet
websites and required student-to-student written dialogue discussions. Although
I did work to include some images, video and sound clips, those resources were
supplemental to the core teaching tools, which were text-based. Since that
time, I have been searching for tools to incorporate more of a personal feel
into the online environment. In January 2009, I began participating in a pilot
implementation of a software application called Mediasite that offers online
instructors with the opportunity to simultaneously record themselves speaking
while also recording screenshots of computer applications. While I have just
begun to use this webcasting application (click here for a sample of my work), I
realize its potential benefits and can imagine that those who may not like
online learning may feel different after being introduced to such technology. I
am always looking for and implementing new teaching innovations and I will be
studying my current (on campus) students’ perceptions of this application
throughout this semester to determine some of its potential for future
students. My goal is that I will learn how to effectively use this application
and implement it in future online classroom environments.
As the semesters have
passed, my course teaching assignments seem to be varying less, which has
tremendously helped me narrow my focus so I can concentrate more of my
attention in other areas of my professorship. For example, in the Fall 2008
semester, I was assigned to teach EDU 510: Inquiry into Teaching, Technology
and Research and EDU 379: Inquiry into Curriculum, Technology and Teaching.
These two courses may be best understood as introductory courses for our
Childhood Education initial certification programs. Although one course is an
undergraduate course and the other is a graduate course, they offer similar
inquiries for students and as such, I find that I am able to use some similar
resources and activities in both courses. Since one is an undergraduate course
and the other is a graduate course, they differ in quite a few ways, but these
courses do have overlap regarding some content and that has helped with
streamlining my planning. For the first time since working at Cortland, I have
the same course teaching assignment for a second semester. This semester, I am
finding that I am not spending as much time planning for classes as I had to do
in previous semesters. Because of that, I have found that I can utilize some of
the time that I usually spend on teaching preparation in the area of my
scholarship.
Throughout the past two
years since my last reappointment, I have written or co-written five papers
that were presented at regional and national conferences and authored or
co-authored two publications with an additional one in press and another
currently in review. My papers include topics of inclusive education, diversity
awareness and technology applications. I am most proud of my paper titled,
“Learning from Parents of Students with Disabilities: Informing Teacher
Preparation” that is currently in review because it is a paper that has
undergone numerous rewrites and in it’s most recent revision, I framed the
findings in current inclusive educational policy, which is a significant shift
from its original form. As I reflect on my scholarship, it has helped me to
recall a conversation I had with another colleague who once told me “it’s the
re-writes that are important when writing. It’s the rewrites that make the
difference.” Rewriting takes so much uninterrupted concentration and I now
realize that it can take me a few years to turn an initial conference
presentation into a publication.
I have been awarded three
internal grants and two external grants since my last reappointment. The
internal grants included an award for (1) creating an online course; (2) purchasing
and implementing handheld technology devices with preservice teachers and
elementary students; and (3) collaborating with other colleagues to develop and
implement a professional development school initiative called the Unified
Teaching and Learning Initiative. The two external grant awards provide me with
the opportunity to serve as a co-liaison for the New York’s Mid-State Regional
Taskforce for Quality Inclusive Schooling. I am so proud of this accomplishment
because it exemplifies the aspects of teaching that I find most important,
compelling and challenging. The external grant unifies colleagues in our
mid-state region so I have been able to widen my professional community and now
regularly meet with professors from LeMoyne College, Syracuse University,
Binghamton University and with many New York State Department of Education
staff members. In our meetings, we discuss ways that inclusive education
practices are currently being implemented in public K-12 schools and discuss
ways that higher education preservice teacher preparation programs can be
better designed to meet the needs of all students in today’s classrooms. Last
summer, the grant supported a Summer Symposium to highlight inclusive practices
that show promise for positively impacting students with disabilities in
general classrooms. Participants included regional classroom teachers, support
staff and administrators. This year, we have planned for the Summer Symposium
to be implemented in late Spring 2009 so our college students can attend it as
well. The external grant was initially awarded in Fall 2007 and renewed in Fall
2008. As a result of my external grant activity, I was awarded with an
all-college Excellence In Research, Scholarship and Outreach Award in Spring
2008.
In early February 2009, I
submitted an application for the Nuala McGann Drescher leave award. The
application required a carefully planned project to be developed and
implemented during the one semester’s leave from the college. My proposal
titled, IMPACT2: Inclusive Models: Promoting Aligned Collaboration Through
Technology”, combines my internal and external grant activity into a larger
project aimed at studying the collaborative efforts of general and special
educators who work alongside each other in inclusive classrooms. If awarded, I
plan to create video case studies of meaningful planning conversations to
highlight the necessary collaboration inherent to successful inclusive
practices. The video case studies will then be published online so I can use
them with my preservice teachers and have them available as a resource for
other interested instructors and/or classroom teachers.
I continue to serve on many
different committees at the department, school and college level. At the
department level, I continue to serve as our Master of Science in Teaching
(MST) in Childhood Education Program coordinator. I have currently begun to
have conversations with other colleagues who are interested in revising some of
our current graduate programs to either begin to offer some courses online or
as hybrids and to create opportunities for potential students to earn degrees
and be certified in more than one teaching area. With today’s increasingly
diverse public schools, it is so important that we provide every means possible
for making our graduates as strong and as qualified as they can be. As I
reflect on this area of service, I realize that it is because I have become
experienced as a coordinator that I can now reconsider and reconceptualize
graduate school curricula.
At the department level, I
continue to serve on the Research and Technology committee. We continue to
sponsor Scholarly Socials and this past December 2008, held a meeting
highlighting many of our faculty members’ research endeavors. It was a
meaningful and worthwhile event because we were able to learn about each
other’s research and identify ways that some of us are connected in our work.
Also at the department level, I am currently serving on the Personnel
Committee. In this role, I am learning more about college policies and
practices including reappointment, promotion and tenure.
I also serve on the Long
Range Planning Committee, the Faculty Development Committee and the
College-wide Scholarship Committee as well as numerous other college
committees. I enjoy the service work that I do because it provides me with
opportunities to get to know other faculty members who share similar interests
goals.
My work as a professor at
SUNY Cortland continues to be a very professionally rewarding time of my life.
I continue to be 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