Throughout our time together as a team, we have faced many challenges when trying to conduct and gather research from our partnering schools. These challenges ranged from large-scale community changes, such as the Chicago Teachers’ Strike and the COVID-19 pandemic, to smaller disruptions such as miscommunications, timing problems, or a lack of participants. Through all of this, I have learned that, especially when working in schools, researchers have to maintain an attitude of patience, flexibility, and understanding to work through these challenges. Being an outsider at these after school programs means that my work is not a priority for the schools we are in (as it should be). This often means then that I might have to wait longer to hear back from the staff we are working with or go to a school that ends up not having anyone available to be interviewed.
While the team was not able to collect as much data as we would have liked this past year, we have learned how better to communicate with our school partners and to approach some our data collections with an understanding that we may not be able to gather as much as we would have liked to. Research like this takes a great deal of time to be able to gain a full understanding of the after school programs and the people involved. When working with people in this sort of context researchers must approach it with an acceptance of at least some unpredictableness.
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March 2020
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