Becca
Life in Madison
Hello, all. I’m writing from Madison, where the torrential rains have led to a plague of mosquitoes–serious swarms of them. Luckily our home has an infestation of spiders, so things seem to be balancing out. Ella has arrived! She was very timely, arriving a week after the spring semester ended, so that I had plenty of time to pack the hospital suitcase and relax after a semester that wound up being pretty hectic. It is pretty spectacular, this parenthood thing, and Ella and I enjoyed our first music class together this morning. The summer went quickly–watching ‘baby tv’ all day (aka sitting and staring at the baby for hours at a time) along with helping her learn to maneuver this brand new world seemed to suck the hours away, and now I’m heading back to school/work, which is hard to believe. School starts this week with a bang–I’m ready to begin my dissertation proposal, while continuing various research projects. It is difficult to concentrate, as you can imagine, but I’m hoping to make some progress this semester and be that much closer to finishing and getting back to the world of schools. I’m in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and I’ll be graduating with a phd in ‘Education Leadership and Policy Analysis’, which is a fancy way of saying education administration. I’m learning all about how to run schools, starting my principal practicum this year in a Madison elementary school. My dissertation will look at the role of school leaders in adapting to demographic change. I’ll focus on schools here in Wisconsin which have undergone drastic changes in the last several years with the immigration to this state of many recent immigrants, particularly Spanish speakers. I’ll look at how leaders facilitate faculty learning and curricular reform to support a new group of students. Should be fun. That and everyday living in Madison, which has an incredible commitment to local agriculture, evidenced in the ginormous farmers market that we have each Saturday ringing the capitol building. So, let me know if you are in Madison anytime soon. You can check out pictures of Ella at: picasaweb.google.com/babymesh.
Best, Becca