I am part of a research study!

I am very excited about a new development in my district. Once again, we are involved in the UCI Writing Project. Our district has worked closely with the University of California, Irvine, for many years on various writing projects. In these situations, experts in Language Arts and especially in the writing aspect of teaching English help teachers in our district learn best practices to implement in our classrooms.

However, this time, it’s different. This time, they are using the UCI Writing Project as a case study. The subjects are us, the teachers, and our students. There will be both quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the effectiveness of the UCI Writing Project on student achievement and meeting Common Core standards.

Here’s how it works. This is a two-year grant project. Four teachers from each school volunteered or were chosen. In my school’s case, we volunteered. The teachers are paired with another teacher in the same grade level. One teacher is the test group and the other is the control group. The test group is not allowed to tell the control group what they are doing. This will be extremely difficult for me because my department chair and I are very close, we work very closely together, and we have always done new projects like this together. Alas, I am not paired with her. She is part of the control group and I am part of the test group.

The test group is provided extra training and a stipend to spend on literature for our classrooms. The literature collection will be focused on meeting Common Core standards.

Our first day is this Wednesday, September 26, in Costa Mesa. It’s an all day overview to get us started. In all, we will have six pull-out days and six after-school meetings. I do not know anything other than that, but stay tuned!

They’re providing lunch, too. Yay!