A Study of Racial Fragility Among Michigan Educators

WEEK THIRTEEN Hey! You're back again to read the best blog of your entire life! Yahoo for you! I am very pleased to inform you that my week was pretty steady. Here's what went down. So to start off the week, I hopped right back onto the MSU train as it pulled into the station. This time, the train's name was Mr. Flennaugh. He is a professor at MSU and, astonishingly, very excited by my research project (his own words!). I emailed him initially at the start of the week just to get a feel for who this man was and he responded within 24 hours expressing his interest for the project and also how he wanted to set up a Zoom meeting to further expand our communication. Now my heart is really racing. I email him back with my availability for next week and....he doesn't respond. Have no fear though, he was probably just busy and I'm sure we will work in a meeting next week somehow.  Alright, moving along. This week was also time for me to send out some more K-12 proposal ema

WEEK TWELVE Wow, its Monday, and as you can tell, last week was very all over the place. It started out swell, all of a sudden Okemos responses were flooding in..7, then 8, then BOOM 19 (and mysteriously 21 by the end of the week)! This progress seemed to be carrying over to MSU as well, after Mr. Rasmus so graciously sent information about my survey over to an acquaintance at the university (Mr. Popovich). He informed me that my research proposal would likely be brought up at the next college meeting! Yes! The good fortune! On top of that, Mrs. Noble of Okemos 7-8 Middle School also got in touch with me about distributing my survey to the middle school! Then, as quickly as it began, my victory streak came crumbling down. Okemos withdrew from my survey. To protect the privacy of the bearer of bad news, I will not go into detail about this withdrawal, but needless to say, I am a bit upset about this. This news overshadowed a large portion of my week but MSU, like the faithful companions

WEEK ELEVEN As Buffalo Springfield once said, "there's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear." This was my mantra for the week as I realized that nobody can truly handle my research but me. Well, that's a bit exaggerated, but nonetheless, the frustration is real in Han Land. As I waited patiently for signs of life from Haslett (none of which I received), I got some disheartening news from Webberville...they will not be participating in my research (wow, shocking, I know). After settling down from a moment of pure rage, I forced myself to acknowledge and understand the immense pressure being put on teachers as schools return to in-person learning. Additionally, I came to grips with the fact that Williamston and East Lansing both had great showings which, in itself, is a great accomplishment. Other than that, I waited for MSU to show up with some more responses (considering it was sent to 60+ teachers) and to my dismay, I have seen no more tha

WEEK TEN When the going gets tough, the tough get going! It's been a week of calling out into the abyss and getting no feedback whatsoever, but my research project shall prevail. Here's what I've been doing: Over the course of the week I sent a plethora of emails. I sent to Superintendent Friddle of Webberville to see if he had approved of my research (no response), I sent a follow-up to Superintendent Cook of Haslett to see if he had even received my first proposal email (no response), and I sent a check-in email to Mrs. Parkin to see if we can boost our response count from MSU. As of now, we only have 6 responses from MSU (flashbacks to Okemos are swirling through my head) but I have dubious hope this number will grow because, in total, Mrs. Parkin sent my survey to 63 professors (18 from Biology, 40+ professors in her department, and a few to professors in Physiology)!  As for the Okemos investigation, my work continues. In class I asked Sophie Casey to probe her mom (a