Well, I am BACK! I’m exhausted, but after attending 3 days of AERA down in Philadelphia, I drove back to Buffalo Sunday morning, getting back officially in the evening. Yes you read that right, I drove. We either need to add more affordable, direct flights to nearby cities, or rebuild our railroad infrastructure in the North East. I mean, we used to have train connections to Philadelphia thanks to the Lehigh Valley Railroad back in the late 1800s (Mohowski, 2023). If you want to take Amtrak to anywhere outside of New York, you most likely have to go all the way down to Penn Station. But, I digress.
I stayed in Center City, which was pretty interesting. I found Philadelphia to be an odd mix of both Buffalo and Manhattan. Its old like Buffalo, it still has its older buildings that are hundreds of years old. It gives it charm. But, it also has newer buildings and contraptions surrounding these vintage structures. Where I was staying, I found the streets to be a little quiet, except on Friday and Saturday night when the city was bustling. However, it became very apparent that the substance abuse and housing crises was even around in my area of the city, which was close to the convention center. I hope that as time goes on, the citizens of Philadelphia are able to help these people get the support that they need.
AERA 2024 was an enlightening one, focusing on anti-racism, equity and dismantling oppression. I attended almost every early childhood special education session as I possibly could. It was great to be able to network with others in the field, as I haven’t been able to do so since my time at Hofstra almost a decade ago. To be surrounded by others who are just as concerned about the medical-deficit in the field was refreshing, with academics focusing on revamping teacher preparation programs. With this being an interest of mine, I’m excited to get into the field at this time, as this ignited my drive to start to hone in on what I’d like to do my dissertation on.
I supported Tanya-Lewis Jones on her poster for the first day on Thursday on the role of racial congruence in early educator-child linguistics interactions. I also presented at a roundtable discussion on Saturday, where I spoke about my qualitative HTKS-Kids feasibility study! You’re free to take a look at the 2-page research brief about it on the brief page, or you can click here. It was a little intimidating at first to be around other academics, people very versed in psychometrics, but I was able to defend the study well (as I’m told!) and I’d like to think that was because of my research talk boot camp!
AERA was an exhilarating experience, and people are already planning on attending AERA 2025! It’ll be in Denver next year. I’m not sure if I’ll have anything to submit, but I might! I’m told that my graduate assistantship will be assigned to the new early childhood professor at UB this fall, which I’m looking forward to! I’m hoping we can both work on exciting early childhood studies together this fall! This week, I’m shifting gears into grading projects for my students as we launch forward to the end of the semester!
References:
Mohowski, R. (2023, February 5). Lehigh Valley Railroad remembered. Trains. https://www.trains.com/ctr/railroads/fallen-flags/lehigh-valley-railroad-remembered/
Samantha Didrichsen, MSED. 