Well, I am 3 weeks into my Kenan Fellowship and I have already gotten more out of it than I could have ever imagined. The 2 weeks spent at the DPI Assessment and Accountability Division have been informative and eye opening. I have been impressed with the professionalism and the expertise of the staff at DPI and surprised at the level of work that goes into building the assessments we administer. As I think about what I hope to learn from my fellowship it involves learning new material, experiencing jobs in education outside the classroom, and an in-depth understanding of the development of our state assessments. I hope that, through my fellowship I can take what I learn and pass it on to other teachers. By learning all I can about assessments and passing that information on to others I hope I can help relieve some of the test anxiety for teachers and help students across North Carolina receive the fair and equitable education they deserve.

Tracked out on Monday and had a phone conference with my mentor Dr. Tammy Howard from the NC Department of Public Instruction on Tuesday, guess you can say we are hitting the ground running. Since my fellowship is about testing and ways to develop good test questions, we spent quite a bit of time discussing things I need to learn and ways I can help teachers understand the tests and what to expect from them. With my year round schedule my fellowship will look a little different, so we decided I will start with 2 weeks at DPI starting June 10th meeting with some test measurement specialists and attending a few workshops on item writing for science tests. We are not sure what my final product will look like yet but we kicked around ideas ranging from writing science items, to developing a training document or podcast for teachers, and ways to inform the public on test development and use. Since I have spent my entire professional life in the classroom this journey to the other side of the testing process should be quite a change!