Why did you suspend your Ed.D. doctoral program until 2016? What are you doing now?

Why did you suspend your Ed.D. program?  What are you doing now?

I like to describe it as follows:  I’m building the Visual and Active team of teachers who will support the TransformTeaching.org website.  We will BuildTheFuture.net.

I used the program to learn new ways to motivate students and to teach more effectively.   Then I suspended my work in the program to start using those methods.

See Dr. Clark's website cogtech.usc.edu

1. The program required me to learn to use a specific way of citing references.  When I didn’t follow it to the letter, I got lower grades.  I chose to continue to use my looser style of citing rather than spend the next two years focusing on commas and quotation marks.  I will reconsider in 2016.

2. The program required me to re-edit my sentences so that I would not anthropomorphize inanimate objects.    Here’s a typical sentence that I use:

Seventeen Quotations:    Perhaps the most effective strategy that emerged from my classroom is the use of quotations.   (from an article that I’ve proposed for Dr. Demiray’s TOJDE online journal).

https://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde48/pdf/editorial.pdf

Learn more about these posters

Here’s what Dr. Demiray wrote: 

The 1st Notes for editor arrived from USA and written by Steve McCREA on  Transforming Teachers, Transforming Schools: Turning "Sages" Into "Guides on The Side". He mentioned that teachers, educational managers and learners must realize that new opportunities are offered by modern communication. When a teacher becomes a "guide on the side," there is a change in the school's culture that can be measured. This presentation is extracted from a newly published book, Let's Lecture Less, edited by Steve McCrea (Visualandactive.com) and Mario Joel Llorente Leyva.

https://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde48/pdf/Volume13Number3.pdf 

I would not have been able to write that editorial without the Nova University program.  I learned about Richard Clark’s writings by studying at Nova.  I displaced my preference for learning styles and I’m examining my “intuitively appealing beliefs,” a phrase from Dr. Clarks writings.  However, I find it necessary to stop my work at Nova.

Several professors pointed out that quotations don’t emerge; people emerge.  The use of the “third person” and passive voice in academic writing has made my writing less vibrant.  I prefer to develop the active voice.  I will complete my thesis (dissertation) eventually, using a style that I find more readable.

3. The program encouraged me to read long sentences that lacked active verbs.  I found myself talking the way I was writing and I didn’t like it.  I hope during this layover away from the university work that I can build a readable dissertation.  See you in 2016.

4. I was asked to work on things that took me away from working with seven senior mentors that I’ve collected.  I want to promote their ideas.  The easiest way to do that is to help get their ideas into posters and ebooks and then offer those ideas and posters in workshops, to parents, on Youtube and via links on Facebook.  Some people have to do that work, and I would not have the internet time if I were working on a thesis that required the focus to construct a stilted writing style.  I’m planning to write about the works of Richard Clark, Abe Fischler, John deGroot, Dennis Baron, Gordon Dryden, Dennis Littky, Elliot Washor, Kurt Wagner, Milton Dembo, Enrique Gonzalez and Richard Hartjen.   I’m planning on working with mentors like Dennis Yuzenas, Leslie Lott, Jack Latona, Tony Lloyd, Cary Elcome, Matt Blazek, Pat Harris, Jeraldine Saunders, Cindy Burfield, Jerome Feldman (author of an excellent textbook called the Art of Teaching and the Science of Learning), Will Sutherland, Clive
   
   

   

   Learn more about these posters

   
   Hartwell, David Rhodes, John Cross, Duncan Maxwell, Tony Hyde, Ugur Demiray, Omar Vasile, Stephen Stahl, Kevin Howard and Jeff Hutt. I’d rather use this time to build relationships with future colleagues like Abdulrahman Almufti, Abdulrahman al-Nofal, Rehab, Reinier Cruz, Frank Munoz, Yoslay, Myriam Padron, Dr. Gilberto Diaz Santos, Mercedes Vazquez, Karell Acosta, Malak Attar, Mario Llorente, Marc Basconcelos, Maria Antonieta Espinosa Pons, Isabella Greppi, Maud Greppi, Jair da Silva Filho, Richard Peritz, Christian Braun and Diane Grondin. 

5. I write for me as the editor and what I think will appeal to parents and students.  The program required me to write to the needs of the program.  The financial cost of the program was $40,000 over two years.   The emotional and mental cost of the Ed.D. degree was reshaping my brain to create a fabulous topic and thesis that would have been read by twenty people.   I prefer to work as a teacher and keep my brain flexible and continue to prepare materials that are read by thousands of people.   My scribd downloads stood at 67,000 in May 2013.  I want to add to that number.   Perhaps by 2016 I'll have a readable dissertation ready...        

I will always be a graduate student.  There is something in the chase of a subject and in the joy of breathing new life into an ignored academic article.  I’ve simply suspended the pursuit of the degree.  I hope to restart the pursuit at Nova Southeastern in January 2016. 

https://sites.google.com/site/letslectureless/flip-your-classroom-workshop

Let’s work to get this material into the hands of more readers.

So, what are you up to now?

I’m compiling and marketing a collection of posters

I’m promoting the Certificate training program

I’m promoting www.EdutechFoundation.net,  and I’d appreciate some hits and views on the website, Facebook page and www.Youtube.com/edutechfoundation sites.

I’m planning to return to the classroom (and I continue to teach test prep at Broward College).

Free Ebooks available at www.TransformTeaching.org  and on the “DVD for Parents.”

Ten Videos, Ten Ebooks, Ten Websites

Let’s Lecture Less

Guide on the Side

Dominos for Schools

Building Better Schools by Abraham S. Fischler (edited by S. McCrea)

Free Posters

Videos at www.Youtube.com/visualandactive  

Blog at www.theIndependentEducator.blogspot.com  

I’m promoting the ebook by Dr. Fischler, particularly through a workshop called “A Youtube Account for Every Teacher Who Wants One.”  


Thanks to the advice of Dr. Marin, one of my advisors, I can re-apply in 2016, point out that I was on academic withdrawal, and I can restart the program clock in 2016 in the "sixth" year of the program (since I started in August 2010).  Because I was on academic withdrawal, I stopped the clock for one year and in 2016 I'll have two years left....  By then, I'll have the proposal for the dissertation.