RPP Update

Just got off the phone with my advisor, Ken. It was a short phone call. Shorter than I would've liked, but Ken is a busy man, I suppose. I did get some clarification, not as much as I wanted, but some is better than none.

Ken is working to put his cluster students into partners so that we can have a "buddy" to work on our RPP with... someone to check in with, someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to look over our progress and motivate us to get things done on time. It works in other settings (i.e. fitness groups, etc), so it could possibly work here. Ken will have to make sure he explains it and sells it for everyone to be on board, but then again he does have the influence of being our advisor, overseeing our practicums, and he could just force us.

We also discussed my practicum options, such as whether or not I should stick with the CLC (Course Linked Capstone) or switch to the IPIC (Independent Practitioner Inquiry Capstone). Ken told me to base it off of my professional learning goal I created when on campus, and create my capstone based off of where I want to go next. After a brief discussion of the possible ways I could take my paper and what I wrote about in my professional goal (from what I remember and what I'm thinking about now), Ken suggested I switch to an IPIC. It's nice to have the perspective of a professor/advisor to help me make that decision, but I'm not looking forward to the literary review and the unstructured-ness of the IPIC. Okay, okay... the IPIC isn't "unstructured," but the CLC was super structured and was less work. The reason I'm switching however, is because my practicum wasn't fitting within the super-narrow structure. This should be a good thing, though. I'm feeling better about my practicum, just less at ease about the proposal and the narrowing down of my topic.

When it came to my questions about the RPQs (Reflective Practice Questions), Ken suggested that I start with which topics I wanted to write about first, then throw some questions around until I thought I found a question that I could write thoroughly about in the amount of pages assigned, submit them to him (my advisor) for approval, work with my advisor to fine-tune the questions, then write my RPQ and submit it to my cluster-buddy for feedback before submitting the final product for my portfolio. Seems simple enough, meaning it's going to be complicated. :P

I'm glad I received some clarification. It was also just good to talk with Ken... it made me feel less disconnected then I did before speaking with him. I may have more questions then before I spoke with him, but now my questions are a little more focused, which is a vast improvement. I'm still anxious about this process, but I can breathe a bit easier... for now, at least. :)