Learning Letter

                The various pieces of this course have been successful in providing what I felt was a cohesive effort to impart what it is to be an English Language Arts teacher in our current educational climate. Most useful for this purpose, of course, was the construction of the three week unit plan, allowing us the opportunity to consider how we would go about introduce and teaching a text on a very real level. The unit plans allowed us to look at the actual process of educating students from every angle of instruction. We were able to think about classroom management, assessment, adherence to standards and how to get our students engaged in the material.

                The mini-lessons gave as a taste of the real classroom experience. While this, of course, did not include actual high school students, it gave us the opportunity to see how we would perform as teachers in a classroom setting, and not as students. It was kind of our first opportunity to look at a classroom as teachers and not as students ourselves and see how exactly it was that we would organize and manage a classroom of our own. Furthermore, this provided us the chance to arrange some kind of activity for students and see how that activity would function in a real classroom and then get immediate feedback from our peers concerning our success as teachers and the places that we needed to improve. This was valuable information.

                The book talks were an informative and effective means of introducing those of us (like myself) who were not very familiar with many young adult texts to a large selection and a diverse range of books. With the brief synopses provided, I was able to determine which text I found interesting and might consider teaching myself and which texts I felt were either uninteresting, or perhaps inappropriate for a high school classroom.

                From a theoretical standpoint, I think I probably found those texts most focused on actual classroom practices most informative and valuable (specifically the Tovani text and the article on assessment). These provided me with ideas and direction that I will be able to use in my classroom and to enhance my own abilities as an educator, allowing me to link the more abstract theory with these more practical applications. From what we have learned in this class about educational theory I look forward to finally taking course that will focus even more on these educational strategies and allow me to increase my understanding of my chosen profession. Finally, with this theory as a backbone of my classroom management and approach, I know that I will better be able to assist my students in gaining the knowledge and education they will need to be successful in college and in the working world, as well as in the moral and cultural worlds in which they reside.

                With the foundation that this class has provided for me, and the hard work and effort that has gone into trying to be successful in all its various aspects, I believe that I have been set on a firm and directed course toward what should hopefully be a promising and fulfilling career.

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

                This piece, of course, is a classic and I don’t think that there is a high school student in the US who hasn’t had to read it at one point or another during their grade school education. Considering this, one is forced to look at the play in a way as to determine what it is about this particular text that so many school districts and educators find so important.

                I understand that as a work the language and structure of this classic piece is remarkable and any student would benefit from being introduced to writing such as this. I also understand that as the main characters are teenagers themselves and are struggling with something that virtually every teenager goes through (that of love and loss), this text is something that teenagers can relate to, and, as far as Shakespeare goes, it is fairly simply written. What I don’t really get, and have never really gotten about this work is that it has always struck me as a bit on the whiney side and full of over-reaction to what is a romance that spans the whole of 2 or 3 days.

                While I do realize that high school students (myself included) often over-react to everything in their lives, it seems that there are works by Shakespeare that I think students would benefit more from and that have just as good, if not better, language, structure and plot. I would personally prefer to use some of Shakespeare’s comedies in the high school classroom. These texts would introduce students to the same beauty of language and would allow them to experience the funny side of Shakespeare, a side that I think is often under-represented in the high school classroom.

In the Name of God by Paula Jolin

My response to this text has to be two-fold because, as a work of fiction itself I found it dull and I found the ending decidedly unbelievable and very rushed. However, my response to the subject matter and the tension and concern that I feel the book would have elicited were it better written are a different matter.

                I think if students are anything like myself they will find this book to be a very dry read and will struggle to finish it, just as I struggled to finish it (the only text this whole quarter that I had trouble finishing I might add). Now, I must admit that it is possible that I found this text difficult because I simply could not relate to Nadia because I found her character rather flat and uninteresting, and this could show some kind of lack of understanding of her perspective.

                The subject of the book, however, is one that I think most students would respond well to. I think they would find it interesting to try to understand the thought process of a potential religious radical and to see how they might be lead, based on their beliefs, to seek violent and suicidal means of making their opinions heard. I think this look into this kind of psyche would be very chilling and would elicit discussion that would really delve into issues that are facing our world today. With this in mind, I think we, as educators, would need to be prepared for the kind of emotional response that this kind of literature could engender in our students and help them control said feelings and concerns.

                All in all, I think that had this book been written in a different way it could have been effective in its efforts to help the reader understand the mindset of its main character, but the way that it is written seems ineffective and uninteresting to me.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

As a text I think that Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian would be remarkably effective for high school English instruction. The fact that it deals with things such as racism, cultural prejudice, socio-economic issues and many other aspects of modern life through an adolescent perspective and does so in a well written and composed manner is fantastic. My only concern with teaching the text personally is some of the language and sexually suggestive (and not so suggestive) material that is lightly peppered throughout the text. These things would not be overly difficult to deal with, however, and add sufficiently to the flavor of the narrative that I think arguments could be made for the inclusion and discussion of them in high school classrooms.

                The various drawings and comics contained within the pages further improve the application of this text with an adolescent audience and would provide a means whereby you can discuss the social issues represented from multiple different creative mediums, even allowing for the opportunity of students to create their own drawings or comics in relation to these issues. Arnold’s ability to express his emotions through these drawings can help students develop tools of their own to deal with issues that they are facing in an increasingly difficult, diverse and demanding world.

                Alexie’s ability to tap into the adolescent mind and deal with almost every difficult issue a teenager may face is truly amazing, his willingness to face things like death, sexual attraction, violence and alcoholism speaks volumes about this insight. I would hope that at some time in my career as an educator I would be able to teach this book to my students and get their take on Alexie’s perspective of these difficult issues. Plus, as Alexie is a local writer in Washington state, students would be able to relate to the locations and culture that much more readily than they might otherwise.

Ragtime by EL Doctorow Book Talk

Description: Ragtime is an historical fiction novel based at the turn of the 20^th Century and features many key historical figures of the time: Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini and Evelyn Nesbit to name a few. Each of these characters are tangential to the actual story, however, which features a family of characters who are known simply as Father, Mother, Mother’s Younger Brother and Little Boy. This family becomes embroiled in the circumstances surrounding an African-American Pianist named Coalhouse Walker Jr. whose automobile is destroyed and desecrated by a private fire-fighting company in New Rochelle, New York. Coalhouse demands justice for this act of racist violence and humiliation and is rejected by civil means of retribution and thus takes justice into his own hands, demanding the return and restoration of his car as well as the death of the fire chief responsible.

Rationale: I put forward this book as an ideal book for the classroom because it deals with an issue that is still very much a part of our society and still needs to be addressed. Furthermore, it provides a rare glimpse of racism occurring outside of the American South, helping students to understand that racism is not just a Southern issue. I also like the fact that it takes place in a period of American history that is often under-represented in our education system; introducing things like the Harry K. Thaw murder trial (also known as “The Trial of the Century”) and the blossoming of the movie industry. I would recommend this novel be taught in an 11-12^th grade classroom as it contains mature material that would be better handled by an older audience.

Teaching Ideas:

·         I think this book would work excellently in a dual-disciplined Social Studies/English classroom as a chance to work with the much ignored early part of the 20^th Century. It could further be used as a text to introduce the issue of racism in the U.S.

·         Teachers could also use this text to draw connections between interpretations of the same story in different media forms as Ragtime is also a movie (made in 1981) and a Broadway musical.

·         Educators could also approach Ragtime from a stylistic angle, accentuating Doctorow’s use of large block paragraphs and no separation of dialogue (including no use of quotation marks).

Obstacles: Parents and administrators would most likely object to the explicit sexual material that appears in the first fifty or so pages of the text. Specifically, these are related to the sexual abuse of Evelyn Nesbit (pictured above) by her husband Harry Kendall Thaw, and her lover, the famous architect and victim of murder, Stanford White. There is one scene related to Mother’s Younger Brother that deals with masturbation and is again linked to Evelyn Nesbit. All of these instances, however, are brief and mentioned primarily as a statement of historic fact (in the case of Evelyn’s sexual abuse) or character building/humor (in the case of MYB). Students’ primary concerns would likely stem from the daunting paragraph lengths.

Readicide

               Gallagher’s Readicide brings up a subject that I have struggled with concerning academic reading for years. In school, it irritated me that we would focus so much on why Harper Lee said what she said, or how symbolism works in Lord of the Flies, or any number of other nitpicky little details that seemed to detract from the enjoyment of the story. Consequently, until I got out of high school and had an opportunity to read To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies on my own, I detested them. By focusing so much on trying to wrench out every little bit of critique and literary device used in the books they introduced me to, my teachers effectively slaughtered any interest I had for them. I, however, am a lover of books and actually have a fondness for discussing them, imagine how those who don’t love books must have felt with this inundation of what they must have viewed as completely pointless information.

                The statistics that Gallagher presents in his book are fascinating to me. Seeing that allowing students to read simply for the fun of it does not negatively affect their ability to read and write well, and may, in fact, help nurture such ability more effectively than trying to cram literary device and critique down their throats is remarkable. Furthermore, his support for the practice of silent sustained reading seems to fly in the face of pedagogical practice that existed during my time in high school (nearly twenty years ago). At that time, SSR was just considered a practice of lazy teachers and was viewed as simply a chance for teachers to catch up on grading assignments and checking email that they couldn’t get to during their prep period. Gallagher helped me to understand that such a practice can help offset some of the damage that might be done by our efforts as teachers to help our students grasp the concepts that our curriculums and standards require us to teach.

I read it, but I don't get it.

Tovani’s book has a remarkable amount of information about how to help those students who struggle with reading, and the various ideas and reading strategies are very well constructed. Upon first reading the book I felt that much of what she was saying seemed to be aimed at an age group much younger than the High School students that I intend to teach, but if I were to tweak some of the work sheets and strategies a little it could easily be used for an older audience.

                I have always supported the idea of actively reading any text. By that I mean reading with a pen in your hand and having a real conversation with the text as you read. I recognized this as a habit of good readers, but for some reason had not made the connection that if readers who struggled were to use the same strategy it would help them to come to a better understanding of the intent of the author and the difficult or more confusing passages of the text. Using this strategy to tie what the reader already knows outside of the text to help them understand what is inside the text is common sense, but having the means within my hands to help students make that connection is invaluable.

                Most interesting of all, however, is this idea of fake reading. Even as a fairly accomplished reader, I have found myself committing the act of fake reading when I have to deal with difficult texts in my college courses as well as in my own reading at home. Surprisingly enough, even as an excellent reader, I often felt that if I could simply pronounce the words and go through the text with a certain mellifluousness I was accomplishing comprehension, even when, after completing a text, I couldn’t really explain to anyone what it was that I had just read.

Social Justice in the Classroom: Understanding the Implications of Interlocking Oppressions

                I was impressed with some of the ideas expressed in my article. It stated that in order for Social Justice to be properly handled in a classroom setting, indeed, properly discussed in any setting, the participants of that discussion must understand that they fall on one side or the other of any –ism portrayed in our society (racism, sexism, etc.) and that because of this fact, they are all oppressed and they are all oppressors. This fact would probably prove very uncomfortable for many people as it requires that they accept that they are imperfect and prejudiced in one facet or another. With the negative connotation linked to being prejudiced, many students and individuals in our society might find this a distasteful thing. However, acceptance of these failings within themselves can actually help strengthen their own identities and understandings of themselves through a recognition of their prejudice towards others.

                My article also suggests that it is through an understanding of this idea of identifying ourselves based on our interactions with one another that we can better understand those with whom we hold some kind of prejudice (once recognized) against. The author shares a quote by Audre Lorde as follows: “I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.” This quote helps us realize that our interactions with one another are largely an effort to impress aspects of ourselves upon those with which we interact as well as to assimilate aspects of those with whom we interact into ourselves. Social Justice demands that we find some means of accepting that these –isms exist and that they exist within ourselves, whether in that we are against said –isms or whether we actual exhibit such –isms within ourselves.

Critical Pedagogy and the Urban...English Classroom.

The research project attempted in this chapter is very similar to much of the research I have seen concerning the attempt to make classrooms “multi-cultural” and “diverse”. I think it is interesting, however, that they used this paradigm in order to teach, in a lower income, minority school, the concept of critical thinking on issues of cultural diversity and the struggles inherent in a system that, even after all our efforts in the past 20-30 years, still fails to adapt a pedagogy that can be applied equitably to any cultural, financial or other diverse background.

                Most interesting to me in the article is the concept shared by the authors, but apparently coined by Freire and Macedo, that being the “dialectical relationship between reading the world and reading the word, where readings of the word informed readings of the world in a dialectic cycle.” This fascinates me because it expresses eloquently the way that I view reading of any kind. Reading anything, rather literary, informational or just for entertainment, should be used to help the reader better understand their world, and become a more integral part of it. Furthermore, having become a part of their world, the reader can use what they experience in it to better access any reading they may come across. Learning to bring this concept into the minds of students and help them understand that reading is not about words, it’s about ideas is why I have endeavored to become an educator. I want my students to see all the various thoughts expressed by so many authors of so many different backgrounds so that they may use those ideas as a springboard to become thinkers themselves. To look at everything they come across, rather in reading, or in the real world, with a critical eye and a desire to find the truth, or lack thereof at the center of any idea they come across.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

I think this document really stresses the importance of education beyond the school grounds. It helps us realize that our attempts to educate children are more than simply trying to stuff them with information (what Freire calls “Banking Education”) and is about trying to raise the next generation of critically thinking adults. What I find somewhat difficult about this concept, however, is how one is supposed to have a “problem-posing” classroom when many times the best means of giving information for the students to discuss is to lecture about such a subject. Ultimately, I think it comes down to giving them the basic framework that they need in order to discuss a topic or idea intelligently and then seeking an understanding of that topic or idea through thorough discussion where, instead of focusing on your aspect as teacher, or even facilitator, you focus on your role as a fellow student of ideas and problems. All that we as teachers must do is present the problem to be discussed and perhaps a minimal amount of background knowledge in order for students to access that information.

While the language used in this article is rather thick, it is fairly obvious why it has stood as such a valuable commentary on the necessity of today’s education to be something more than just pouring a load of facts into a passive brain that will ultimately forget everything by the end of the semester. I think that fostering an environment that focuses on the ability of students to play a completely active and integral role in their own education is an accomplishable feat, though it certainly will require a concentrated and careful effort on our part as teachers to ensure that how we are teaching is not oppressing our students’ ability to function in a real world where information and reality are constantly and consistently in flux, and where what may be true of a topic today may not prove true of that same topic tomorrow.

Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

                I actually looked forward to reading this particular article because assessing student learning is something that I struggle with. I haven’t come up with what I feel is an effective, fair system for assessing how a broad range of students with equally broad ranges of life experience and ability can be fairly assessed as to whether they are meeting certain standards without somehow making those who are failing, by no fault of their own, to meet those standards feel as if they are failures. The assessment tools and strategies in this article certainly provide many different ways in which to assess student learning and many, if not all of them, seem that they would be very effective in assessing traditional scholastic abilities, however, they still seem to marginalize those who do not thrive in a traditional scholastic environment.

                While I am aware that there is likely no perfecting assessment strategy, I think it important that we constantly attempt to improve our strategies to help those who maybe do not fit the norm set out in classroom-style education. The strategies most effective in this regard are likely those that focus on assessing students based on their own improvement in relation to their own achievements, as opposed to assessing them based on the achievement of their peers who may, or may not, have had similar life experiences and challenges as themselves. The problem with this, however, is that there are specific standards to which the education system holds all students, and standards while difficult to create fairly, must exist in order for evaluation of learning to take place.

                Obviously, I do not have the answers to my concerns and the chapter does not really address these issues, other than the bit on standardized, high-stakes testing, but I still find much in the chapter that is helpful. It does provide several examples of grading rubrics and how to establish these rubrics in a fairly formulaic and easy to follow format. Also, I find the example of a rubric for grading class discussion to be a pretty good example of how I would like to assess discussion in my own classroom. For the most part, I found the chapter informative, but not very helpful in addressing the big issues of student assessment.

Assignment Template for ELA

The assignment template was a pretty thorough bit of writing. I was impressed with how it systematically seemed to move students from a contemplation of reading, through the actual reading itself and into writing about the reading. Along those same lines, for some reason it had never occurred to me that writing for understanding and learning still constituted effective academic writing, which this method of reading and writing definitely indicates and supports. I especially appreciated the authors’ efforts to include direct support from the CCSS for every aspect of their reading and writing strategy. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the template to me, however, is the “Connecting Reading to Writing” section. This brief section lays out what I feel is a very easy to follow and seemingly very effective means of helping any reader come to a better understanding of how they can write about whatever it is they are reading, and I wish that I had had some of these strategies taught to me in grade school rather than having to find them on my own.

                My only real concern with the template is that it seems to focus primarily on reading informative text rather than focusing on literary text. While all of the ideas presented in the article would be effective in understanding literature, they do seem to lack guidance in how a reader should go about taking what seems to be just a story about a given set of characters and translating that into meaningful arguments and ideas. I would like to see some discussion on helping students come to understand how characters can represent ideas by how they interact with the circumstances and other characters provided within a literary narrative and various other aspects of such works and how they move from narrative to thought and argument.

                For the most part, however, I was very impressed with what the template provided and am actually quite grateful because it provides me with an effective means of helping students move through the reading aspects and into writing about the reading itself. Thus improving reading comprehension and writing skills.

Team Teaching: Benefits, Challenges and Approaches; TPA Lesson Plans

I found the depth of the TPA lesson plans to be rather extensive, this obviously facilitates deep consideration of exactly what is being taught in any given lesson as well as how said lessons can be effectively measured and assessed. My biggest concern, however, is that it seems that there is a lot of room for lessons to be overthought and over-prepared. While I understand needing to teach with a specific purpose in mind, and to have an idea of how you are going to get there, planning every single minute of that lesson seems ill-advised and makes readjusting that plan as needed more difficult. This also seems to leave very little room for students to reflect on what they have learned in the time they have spent in the classroom. On the other hand, without a format such as the TPA lesson plan, one would run the risk of having no direction whatsoever for their lessons, leading into tangents, digression and probably over-teaching.

                In the two articles on team teaching I found particularly interesting the aspect of having one of the two team teachers act as an “exemplary student” by centralizing themselves in the classroom and acting in a specific way. The benefits of this would be extraordinary! Just taking the few examples of roles suggested in the article (which was certainly not an exhaustive list of all the ways one could take advantage of such a set up), you could have the non-active teacher step into whichever role best fit the subject matter or flow of the classroom. Imagine the benefit of having a “devil’s advocate” in the room to act as a catalyst for discussion, and even to act as someone within the discussion group who can bring them back on track!

                The other article presented many aspects of team teaching that I remember seeing as a student in grade school myself. I do not feel that all of those presented would be as effective as others (the one about having the other teacher take a small group aside is one that I have never been a big fan of, for the reasons listed in the article), but many of them could be used in various different ways to insure differentiation of teaching style, classroom management, and efficiency of learning as well as many other aspects.

Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts

I was surprised to find that there were not nearly as many goals and standards required for the varying grade levels as I would have suspected. My experience with most efforts to standardize a curriculum or any other large body of information for instruction generally involves an exhaustive list with multiple bullet points and unachievable amounts of information to be delivered in a very short time. Based on the standards presented on the website, it would seem that the Common Core has made some effort to streamline, or perhaps generalize, these standards into a few key points. That said, however, it is likely that what is presented on the website is not indicative of every bit of the minutiae involved in ensuring that all of the various aspects of these general standards are delivered in a year long school curriculum. The handout we were given points this aspect out as well as visiting many of the common arguments against the standardization of education, most notably the tendency for these kinds of standards to not be applicable to the less dominant cultures in American society. However, at least in the first chapter of the book which the handout represents, there appears to be no suggestion for how to fix this common discrepancy. However, I think that the standards given in the CCSS are applicable to any culture and focus more on the fundamental aspects of reading, comprehending and analyzing literary and informational texts.

Discussion in a Democratic Society

It is clear to anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in an English or Language Arts classroom that discussion is an invaluable part of understanding reading, structuring and evaluating writing and grappling with the controversial or thought-provoking ideas delivered by many literary texts. This article helps articulate the kind of environment that must prevail in order for such discussion to thrive. Most interesting to me is the thoughts expressed about discussion itself and the focus placed upon how the ideas presented by the various members of a classroom can help each individual member gain a greater understanding of their own ideas as well as challenge those ideas which they may take for granted. I think most important to me is the idea of Autonomy expressed by the authors of this article. We must remember that the students we are dealing with in secondary classrooms are at critical points in the development of their world-view and their stand on difficult topics. By helping them remember that they may remain firm in their own beliefs while still trying to understand the beliefs and views of others helps us and them to foster an environment of acceptance of any view, even those they may not hold true with the predominant viewpoint. Of course, it also allows us to remind them that we discuss difficult concepts because we want one another to challenge our beliefs if only to make them stronger.