Introducing my New Blog :)

     Hello, I am Margaret, and I'm a first year Ph.D. student in Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia.  I have a BSEd. in English Education (with ESOL Certification), and I taught middle school Language Arts and Reading (including gifted classes) for seven years.  During my time as a middle school teacher, I worked with the Reading Bowl and the Beta Club.  I loved both of those extracurricular activities. I also taught high school for a brief period of time.  I have a Master of Arts in Teaching (with Gifted Certification) with a focus in English from UGA and a Creative Writing Certificate from Kennesaw State University.  I am very passionate about the National Writing Project and have done work for both the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project and the Red Clay Writing Project sites.  Several of my colleagues have started blogs about what we are learning and discussing in our courses, and I thought I would do so as well, especially since I am interested in how blogging and social media are changing communication.

     All of my research interests fall under the umbrella of language, writing, and education.  They include the following: 

• Multicultural Education (including issues of equality) 
• Children's Literature (especially International and Multicultural Children's Literature) 
• Graphic Novels and Memoirs (novels written in the style of comic books) 
• Multimodal writing and composition 
• Critical Media Theory and New Media 
• Writing Pedagogy, especially that which involves Creative Writing 
• Critical Pedagogy 
• Gifted Education and how it is changing, shaping, and evolving (in particular, I am interested in how we can give minority and economically disadvantaged students more access to rigorous and engaging curriculum) 

     My colleagues and I are committed to creating an online community in which we as educators, scholars, and writers can share ideas, both with each other and with those outside of our field.  I hope you all enjoy reading about what I am learning, and I would love to hear your input.