Yesterday, I conducted 6 interviews for my project about teacher retention. Today, I am still considering all their thoughts, all the paradoxes, good points to reflect on, ideas they caused me to have about ways that might actually work for boosting teacher retention. But most of all, beyond my head being full of ideas and swirling with connections and common themes among the group, my heart is utterly full from this research.
Interviewing is the easy part. I love sitting with people and talking about a subject I have experience in. I get to sit with them and reflect on the profession dearest to me. I am intrinsically invested in this topic, and in this back-door way to stay vicariously involved in public schooling.
I wish I could be some of my subjects' friends. I wish I could spend more time with them, but alas, that breaks social research protocol and also, and interview is an interview. It only lasts for x amount of minutes. But instead of mourning this fact, I am simply reveling in the fact that my life's work allowed my path to cross with theirs just one more time, and this time, in a more valuable way than would have been if I were merely their coworker. Now I hope that I do their voices justice in the next stage -- the more demanding part: data analysis.
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