Kimberly Rombach’s Reflective Statement
Date: September 29, 2005

I have just finished my first year as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Childhood/Early Childhood at SUNY Cortland and consider this past year one of the most intellectually challenging and stimulating times in my life. Since August 2004, I have grown in many ways as a teacher, scholar and community member.

Throughout this past year, I have taught five different courses in three different teacher education programs at SUNY Cortland. The courses have ranged from topics including undergraduate social studies methods courses to graduate courses on technology and research methods. I have worked to design each course to be rigorous with requirements and desired student outcomes, yet practical enough to allow students to easily make connections from assigned readings and in-class discussions to field experiences. To view all of the syllabi for courses that I've taught at Cortland throughout this past year, please click on the following links: EDU 375 syllabus, EDU 510 syllabus, EDU 514 syllabus, EDU 647 syllabus and EDU 657 syllabus.

I believe that it is important to form partnerships with area elementary classrooms and have begun to do so with teachers at a local elementary school in Cortland. This experience has provided me with a way to observe students in my class working with elementary school aged students. I’ve found that observing my students interacting with and teaching children helps me to gain insight into ways that I can better design future assignments that require this interaction to facilitate students' development as teachers.

The undergraduate social studies course that I teach is linked to other undergraduate courses in a block of required methods courses. When I came to Cortland, I quickly learned about other professors, Beth Klein and Andrea Lachance, who were innovative by identifying a central theme that stretched across all of their methods courses’ content and connected their courses and team-teaching initiatives through that strand. I studied their approach by reading their previously published work, viewing on-line materials and talking with them about their program. I then initiated conversations with colleagues teaching in my own undergraduate methods block to begin to think about ways that we might create a thematic strand that could stretch throughout our courses’ content. At that time, I also familiarized myself with the college’s mission statement and Cortland’s commitment to having students understand and affirm diversity. I began conversations with other colleagues, Susan Stratton and Sheila Cohen, by suggesting that we develop a social justice theme but through our conversations, we realized that we wanted to have something that was more ‘in-action’ than that phrase suggested. Through on-going conversations, we decided on the term social transformation and our thematic methods block began. Educating for Social Transformation (e4st) is still in its early emergent stages of development as we work together to find ways to meaningfully incorporate conversations about differences and ways to teach about many aspects of justice within each of our classes. I am working with Susan Stratton to try to develop a partnership with an urban school, hoping to find a place to contribute to in-service teachers’ and their students’ learning while simultaneously facilitating our own students’ growth in understanding the multifaceted ways that they need to be prepared to teach the diverse students who will be in their future classrooms. I am excited about this work and am eager to continue to develop e4st. E4st is one way that my research interests on social justice topics are beginning to merge with my teaching practices.

I have taught four different courses in the graduate teacher preparation program and my teaching has primarily focused in the areas of research and technology. I have worked to develop course syllabi and assignments for each of these courses. In addition, I have worked to have the Master’s of Science in Teaching students develop on-line portfolios for their during their Inquiry into Teaching, Technology and Research course that they maintain throughout their MST program. While most students enter their MST program not knowing much about website design or web authoring, this has proven to be a large challenge for them. One of the long-range goals that I have for MST students is to have them become as marketable as possible as they begin to look for future jobs in education. Helping them to become proficient with educational technology is one way that they may be able to contribute to a future school where they may someday work. I am committed to facilitating their understanding and use of information and communication technology and work to have them feel comfortable with using technology as an effective teaching tool. One of the projects I have begun to work on is to create a MST Portfolio Review where graduate students, professors, host teachers, and area principals come to listen and observe the MST students present their portfolios in formal small group formats so MST students celebrate the end of their program while local educational professionals learn about graduates who could fill future vacancies in their schools.

At the beginning of each semester, I begin my first classes by telling students that I am dedicated to helping them to develop into the best teacher that they can become in the time that I have to work with them. Semesters are only fifteen weeks long; therefore, I have a small window of opportunity to truly make a difference in their lives so I give my goal a considerable amount of my attention. I spend much time planning how to implement effective pedagogical practices in my instruction so I don’t waste valuable instruction time. When I plan my courses, I think about the course content and superimpose a plan for my pedagogy onto this so I am sure to model particular teaching practices that prior research has found to be effective. My students often mention how worthwhile they find my courses because they learn so much about teaching in addition to the subject/content that they're learning. I have found that it is best to set very high standards for my students and be available to support them when they need me. This often requires that I spend much out-of-class time talking with students in the library, in computer labs, on the phone and through email to help them reach the goals I’ve set. What has inspired me most is that they often exceed my expectations. A student once wrote a teacher evaluation of me that said, “Tough grader but cares like no other.” When I reflect on my teaching, I believe that’s a very accurate description of me. I care deeply about all of my students and am passionately committed to them becoming the best teachers that they can be. I take my job as a teacher educator very seriously. My student evaluations provided me with evidence of students’ satisfaction with my teaching.

One of my most satisfying experiences of this past year has been my scholarly activity. I have been working with four other faculty members in the Childhood/Early Childhood Department to create a Collaborative Research Group (CRG) where we share scholarly ideas, writing, and goals with each other. I’ve always considered myself a team-player and this small group atmosphere has provided me with the support I’ve wanted as I work to strengthen myself as a researcher and writer. Junior and senior faculty are members of this CRG including Cindy Benton, Beth Klein, Andrea Lachance and Susan Stratton. We meet about once every three weeks and engage in social and professional conversations. We have shared rough drafts for grants, professional presentations and future papers and have received and provided feedback to and from each other. I believe that we are creating a strong professional development model that has the potential to make a large impact in our department and on our campus. Our small CRG is currently contemplating ways to expand our research initiative.  

One of the scholarly achievements that I made this past year was that my paper titled, Learning from General Elementary Educators' Experiences in Inclusive Classrooms, was accepted and chosen as a Divisional Highlight for the Teaching and Teacher Education Division (Division K) of the American Educational Research Association's 2005 Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec. Outside of my own graduate work, this was the first time that I had submitted a paper to AERA and I was thrilled to have my work be noted in the Division K newsletter. After the AERA Annual Meeting, I used the suggestions from those listening to my presentation to edit my paper into a final manuscript that I submitted to the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) and it is currently under review. In addition, I have submitted two additional manuscripts to journals for possible publication throughout this past year. One is titled, Clarifying research synthesis on inclusion: Using the inclusion definition instrument (IDI) and I submitted it to Remedial and Special Education journal. This paper introduces researchers to a tool to operationally define the term inclusion when conducting and reporting studies on inclusive education. My intentions for this instrument is to complete a comprehensive review of literature on general educators' perceptions of inclusion in the near future. This paper was accepted to present at the Hawaii International Conference on Education and I will be presenting that work in January 2006 in Honolulu. Another manuscript that I submitted for possible publication is titled, Educating in Sameness, USA: A Teacher's Plea for Change. This is a commentary article which tells a true story about a student-to-teacher interaction that I had with a child who I taught in a suburban kindergarten classroom. This article describes why and how I began to include conversations about racial diversity with kindergarteners who had not had many exposures to differences. At the end of the article, I urge teachers to begin to have conversations about diversity in all elementary classrooms. This article was my first attempt at writing a commentary; most of my other scholarly writing has focused on reporting findings from studies. I submitted this commentary to Phi Delta Kappan because I wanted it to have a lot of visibility. The Kappan is a journal read by many people interested in a wide range of topics on general education. This paper is currently being reviewed by the editors. Another one of my papers that I wrote this past year is titled, Learning from Parents of Students with Disabilities: Informing the Preparation of Teachers for Inclusive Contexts, and is currently in review for possible presentation at AERA's Annual Meeting in San Francisco in April 2006.

This past year, I applied for and was awarded a Faculty Research Program grant titled, Understanding Preservice Teachers’ Perspectives about Diversity. I am currently interviewing student teachers to better understand how they come to learn about differences within the elementary classes that they are working. Early data analysis is showing that preservice teachers have a very narrow understanding of diversity, focusing primarily on racial differences. Perhaps more concerning, preservice teachers have often mentioned that they do not believe that they were well prepared to teach the wide range of students’ differences that they are finding in their host classrooms. I plan to use this study as an initial stepping stone toward my five-year research plan. The second phase of my five-year plan is to write and be awarded a Summer Research Fellowship and I am currently completing that for a mid-October submission. These first small, internal grants are providing me with an opportunity to begin my research on preparing teachers' to effectively teach in diverse classrooms. I plan to use the findings from this study to establish a rationale for a large external grant that will provide funding for my future research interests. My long-range goal is to create a Social Justice Teaching, Research and Service Center at Cortland. I envision this center as a place where pre- and in-service teachers work together to learn how to maximize all elementary students’ learning. I envision conferences that bring scholars from around the country here to discuss topics that are central to creating schools that offer equitable, just educational practices for all students.

I have participated on and am currently serving as a member of various college, school and department level committees. I have found that it is important that I find ways to professionally contribute to SUNY Cortland through service and to become personally connected with colleagues within my department as well as ones across campus. I am still learning about the multifaceted ways that Cortland’s curricula connects to SUNY Central and hope to someday participate in curricula review for our department and School of Education.

This past year has been one of the most professionally rewarding times of my life. I consider it an honor to be part of the SUNY Cortland faculty. I 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