Written By Sydnee Logan
Currently, a few of my classmates and I from Step are preparing to attend and present at the American Educational Research Association Conference also known as AERA. This year the conference is being held in Vancouver, Canada on April 13th through the 17th. In our previous two years, my classmates presented at the AERA conference in New Orleans and Denver. AERA is a convention for teachers, researchers, and other people that are interested in learning about effective schooling, teaching and pedagogy.
The reason we are attending this conference is to present on our Build Your Own School (BYOS) project. The unit is about us literally trying to tell people about the resources we need as a community to improve Oakland Public Schools, and schools like it in America. For this project we conducted our own research and will share what we found. The reason we feel this is so important is because we attend an Oakland Public School and know how ineffective they can be, but also know effective schooling with our Step program. We believe that we should have the best opportunity to learn and experience school, like everybody else.
To prepare for this trip we have been working hard every day (weekends and on our spring break!!!) on our power-point to practice our presentation and put finishing touches on the short films we created. We look forward to sharing our research with people in Canada and around the world.
My classmates and I have a mixture of excitement and worry going into this trip. The School Structure research team consists of Rebecca Pina, Darrell Tingle, Charlie Va, D’Shari Frison, and Daryl McDaniel; and the Leadership research team consists of Nixon Callejas, Mohammed Taleb, Naja Herron, Javote Long, and Nick Ross.
Here are some of their initial reactions:
“I am stoked out about leaving the country, I am going to meet as many people as possible and I am buying so many souvenirs.”-Nick
“I am excited about leaving. I am excited about getting on the plane and happy about doing a presentation in another country. My main worry is that we have to come back to Oakland so soon.”-Nixon
“I am excited and can’t wait to meet new people and explore Canada. Well my biggest worries/fears is to get on a plane and to be away from my mother.”-D’Shari
“I am very excited about leaving to Canada and being in a new place because I am very nervous. Well I don’t have any worries because I have been on a plane before so I know what to expect.”-Rebecca