Welp it's the End!

It’s hard to believe we are already at the end of the road. It is amazing how far we have all come and developed as future teachers. Coming into this class I was not sure how much I was really into being in a regular education classroom, but now looking back I know my opinions about teaching and the teaching of English have very much changed. All of my teaching courses (not just this one) have given me the ants in my pants feeling. I’m ready to get out there and be the best teacher I am able.
Throughout this semester the strategies we have learned from each other have been very beneficial. Not only have we learned from Dr. Shannon but from our fellow future teachers. One of the main teaching strategies I have learned in this class is the idea of creative grouping. There are so many ways to group students so that they are always working with different peers. Another thing I have learned is to never ask your students to act out; they may take it to the next level (thank you Andrew). Most importantly I have learned that discussion can be a very beneficial tool in teaching. It is a great way to assess your students to see what they know, but to also see what your students can learn from each other. (I know I’m about to contradict myself but…..) We also need to make sure we don’t discussion the students to death (sorry guysL)
I am going to take away a lot from the discussion leader and groups teach assignments. I learned that teaching takes a lot more preparation than one would think. You can’t just jump into a lesson without doing hours of prep time as well as hours of reflection time.
I have toughly enjoyed this class and all of its little quirks. J

What is the question?

 

When introducing a Shakespeare unit or play in a high school class, one will often hear a group UGHHHHHHHH followed by a do we really have to read this crap. High school students do not often understand the beauty that is seen when reading a Shakespeare play. To be honest, I really didn’t see it either. When asking my fellow students (not fellow future English teachers) what they think about Shakespeare they often say that they do not understand it and that they do not have any interest in having to read it. Then I proceeded to show them the Romeo and Juliet manga book, and they suddenly had an interest in Shakespeare. It amazes me that reformatting a classic can change the way a student will look at a text. I think that these manga versions of Shakespeare will really strike an interest in wanting to read the plays. After reading the manga version I decided to see if there were any other manga Shakespeare works and came across this website http://www.mangashakespeare.com/ I found it incredible how many different works there were.
I do have a question for all my fellow teachers; do you think Manga versions of classic works would be accepted in schools? Also; do you think parents will accept these works?     
I also read the getting to know a play five ways, which I found quite interesting. I really enjoyed how he had three major objectives for students when reading the play. Especially the challenging students to read all the lines. I know when I would read I would often skip over anything that is not dialogue, but the stage directions are also very important in the content of the play. Also bringing the students back to the 1600’s when the plays were originally written. Thinking about the plays in their prime may allow the students to get a better understanding of why the play is important. Understanding the time inwhich these plays were written will help the students in understanding why they are written the way that they are!  

Technology in the Classroom

As we have grown up, many of us have seen technology slowly becoming more and more predominate in the classroom. Through out the years in which we have been in school we have seen the classrooms go from having old fashioned black boards to the cool new white boards and now we have SMART BOARDS. Honestly even what we are writing on is high tech. Although the fact that we have all this technology is awesome, is it coming at a price and how can we use the technology in moderations and to advantages in the classroom. These are all things I am going to discuss.

From the Dumbest Generation website I read the article Is Stupid Making us Google?. This article really caught my attention. I remember in high school we would be writing a research paper and so many of my peers would just go to Google, type in their topic and call it a day. That was their research. No scholarly articles, no books, NOTHING. How can us as a generation call research going to Google and typing in a topic. Not only is Google creating a short cut to research it is causing students and people in general to have only online reading. James Bowmen says, “It is these poor cultural orphans, for whom “information retrieval” online is the only kind of reading they know”. It is horrible to think that the only reason people are reading is to retrieve information or to check our facebook. While we are having much more exposure to the written word, it saddens me to think that it is in bad grammar and improper English. While this Googling (yes it is a verb now) is giving a shortcut, it is also creating ignorance among the younger generations. As the generations get younger and younger they know less and less about what is going on in the world.

Now that I have completely bashed technology, now I am going to discuss how there are some positives. Incorporating technology in your classroom will have some benefits. When you look at the technology we now have for students with disabilities, it is amazing the progress we have made. Students being able to use computers with merely their eyes. It is incredible. The article Moving my English Class to the Computer Lab Tracy J. Tarasiuk talks about how she has a student Robert, who is not doing well on his exams and in his reading, but loves to YouTube. Students like Robert are going to be what the majority of us, as future teachers of English have in our classroom. We are going to have to adapt our lesson plans, with technology to keep these students attention. I worked with this one little boy Xavier who hated sitting in the classroom. He had a teacher who would just give him worksheet after worksheet, and he would just look at me and say “Miss Kelly this is stupid”. Xavier would have benefited from doing activities on the computer or at a listening station, to keep his interest. Technology does and will always serve a purpose in our classrooms; it is really just a matter of how we use it and how often we use it. Like everything life is good with moderation.

But Its My Class! DO NOT CENSOR ME! :-(

Censorship is something I have never really thought of until now. I figured “hey we live in the 21^st century I’m going to be allowed to teach what I want with what books I want”. Now I know this seems like a crazy idea. We need to teach to curriculum, but who decides whether or not a book is appropriate fir my students to read. As a teacher I am going to know my students so I should decide if they can handle a book and what books they should not be exposed to.

I would really like o know who makes these all powerful book decisions. Who gets together and says yes students can learn that and know they can’t learn that. Children are going to learn everything god and bad whether it is in the classroom or out on the streets. Lets be real with these children, the world is not pretty. So maybe some of the literature or language within the literature should not be pretty. Take for example the changing of Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn taking the n-word out of the book. While I agree it is a nasty word so I am NOT encouraging its usage. I do believe it was appropriate to take the word out. It is part of the language of the novel. In my opinion it would be like deciding that the Holocaust is not an appropriate topic to teach or students shouldn’t be allowed to read Twilight. What make Twilight (including sex, love, lust and violence) more appropriate for students than a classic novel. Who decides this? I personally would like to have a word with them!!  

A New Perspective on Teaching

By far I feel that Beyond Tolerance is the most inspiring article we have read in this class. The ideas are revolutionary (in my opinion). Students feel they are going to come into an English classroom in high school and they are going to learn "crap" that they will never use in the real world. I cannot remember  how many times I heard in high school "why are we reading this, it has no purpose in the real world". Often students were referring to works we as Teachers of English find incredible. Raquel Cook brought the idea of teaching English to a whole new level.
This story kind of reminded me of the Freedom Writers story. Cook is so inspirational to these children, almost giving them a new outlook on life. This makes me feel like this is the type of teacher I want to be. I want my students to question and wonder. Cook says that many of her students questioned about her being a history teacher. Why must we limit ourselves to one subject matter. Isn't literature just history written in the form of a story. Isn't history just our ancestors story's just written down. Even a piece of fiction often has a glimpse of an authors life involved. I challenge each and ever future teacher to challenge their students. Make them question the world, make them wonder what their purpose it. Have your students constantly taking a walk in someone else shoes. This is how we as teachers are going to be able to shape society.
I apologize for my tangent on making the world a better place through our teaching methods. On another note I absolutely LOVE the Holocaust literature ad study. I find the entire time period completely fascinating. For the purposes of this class I read The Diary of Anne Frank, which is an incredible story. When I read this book many years ago I do not remember having the same reaction as I did this time I read it. (I guess rereading really does help sometimes). I think this is an amazing topic that should NEVER be skipped over in any classroom. My only reservation about the topic is some students maturity level. Especially if one is trying to teach the topic in  Middle School. I am really curious to hear about how everyone feels about the Holocaust topic within a school. How should it be handled?

Because I was more advanced...

I would first like to explain the title of this post. At first glance one may think that it has nothing to do with any of or required readings this week. For me, this excuse was why I had my first exposure to literature circles when I did. When I was a sophomore in high school I moved from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, because of this move I was placed in all lower level classes. In my lower level English class I connected with my teacher who could see me and a few other students were flying through the material and need to be challenged. To do this she set up a single literature circle, so while the rest of the class was doing lord knows what, myself and a few select students were responsible for covering the rest of the years topics through literature on my own. Personally, I thought this was the teachers way of no longer having to deal with the fact that we were finishing the work so quickly, but know that I look back I realize that because of this I learned to appreciate the literature.
I think that is what literature circles can do for children, it gives them a deeper appreciation for what the book is talking about. My only reservation about with literature circles is sometimes the students don't talk about the books or you do have those students who are not interested in the literature, whether or not they picked it themselves.
When looking at the novel chosen for this week I freaked out, think there is not way I am going to be able to finish this thing by Wednesday. This is something I think will happen to our students. If we give them a long novel they are going to be scared by the size. I have been racking my brain for ways to deal with this novel size problem. How can we keep students from looking solely at the size of a book. I know it even happens in college. Students look at a textbook and think "oh know this  is going to be difficult" (often said in more colorful language), but really how can we deal with this problem?

Whatever the Language, We All Need to Learn

I remember in third grade I had a new classmate Emilio, who came into our class in October and by the time spring break came round Emilio was gone. I never understood why he was in my class. He didn't speak much English, he was constantly confused and he really didn't fit in. Now I lived in a very culturally diverse town, but I had never experienced this, why did Emilio speak a language that I did not know? Finally after leaving Milford Massachusetts I have learned why Emilio was in my class.
In other classes we are also discussing multiculturalism, and why it is important to appeal to those students who may not speak English. In the narrow minded world of  America we feel that everyone should have to speak the same language as us, but this may not always be the case, so we have to differentiate our lessons to work with these ELL students.
After doing some research and reading our assigned text I have come up with some simple solutions to help our ELL students feel more at home. One way to do this may be through labeling. Go around the classroom and label objects in not only English but in your ELL student's first language. This will help them to learn some key English words and phrases. Also invite your ELL student to teach lessons about his/her culture. This could create a fun break from the content and allow your students to learn more about the student.
Not all multicultural students are going to be ELL students. As teachers we are also going to have students who speak English but may look different. Not all students are going to be raised to be accepting of differences, so as a teacher it is important to embrace the differences. In A Class Divided we learned of a teacher who took an interesting approach to dealing with students not being accepting. While not every teacher is going to be able to facilitate that experiment, there are other ways to embrace differences. One important way is going to be through the text we use in our English classrooms.
Now after rambling about everything random I ask my future teachers of English a question: What do you feel some good texts would be to help encourage students to be more accepting of others who may be a little different?