Megan's Thoughts

My name is Megan Donnelly, and I am a post baccalaureate education student at UNCA in my final semester of course work for elementary and middle school licensure. Over the summer, I had the opportunity to take an education course with Dr. Nancy Ruppert called Literacy in the Content Area. For this course, we completed a service learning requirement by partnering with the

AVID Summer Bridge program operated by Asheville City Middle School. Throughout our course, we monitored how students benefited from the use of visual materials in a series of lessons about the Gulf oil spill. We administered surveys, observed students interacting with materials, and analyzed interest inventories to determine how visuals enhanced student learning. Dr. Ruppert also gave us the chance to present our findings by attending the Teacher Education Forum in Raleigh on September 23-24.

I was the only student able to attend the forum from my class, but there were a number of undergraduates from other universities, as well as two other UNCA teaching fellows, also presenting research results. After checking in, we had the option of

listening to presentations by other professors before we were required to set up our displays for the undergraduate poster presentations. Our slot in the program was actually pretty fun. We had each created a poster to display our research, and we were able to talk with other conference attendees about our processes and results. Throughout the conference, I met and talked with professors from other universities in North Carolina, and it ended up being a great opportunity for professional development.

-Megan Donnelly