Learning Letter

Dear Sean,

            Woo! Done! Finally! This has been the literal quarter from hell! I’m not even sure where to begin with my complaints and where to direct my pent up frustration! Like, when I finally turn in my unit plan, I’m driving to the top of Mt. Spokane, hiking to the top, and yelling at the top of my lungs. I’m not sure for how long. Maybe an eternity. Most likely until I pass out. I have never reflected on myself so much until this quarter. Not that there’s anything wrong with reflection, of course, but I’ve just never done it so much. I didn’t realize how much I could actually reflect, you know? I reflected after papers and after lessons and after teaching… it never stopped! I wanted a chance to breathe. I’m not sure I would change any of it, though. This has been one of the hardest quarters (y’all weren’t lying when you said not to take 408 and 493 together…) of my college experience, but also one of the most rewarding. I’m finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel; I’m getting to the fun stuff, where it’s not just reading and writing papers – very soon, I’ll get to apply all of that reading I’ve been doing for a million years at this point. I’m going to be an amazing teacher, I like to think, and I know it’s because of classes like 493 (and 408).

            About being a teacher: I’ve realized I’ve got a long way to go. I’m not ready (obviously, considering this was the closest thing I’ve had to an education class so far…), but, beyond knowing I’m not ready, I know that it won’t be very long now until I will be. This class instilled a lot of confidence in me, making me excited again to be a teacher. I was admittedly getting kind of burned out on just taking my English classes… This class has also been helpful in preparing me to take on a lot of work seemingly all at once; I’m a ridiculous procrastinator, and it almost bit me in the butt several times this quarter. Uhhh… it could still probably bite me if I don’t get on with finishing up my unit plan. But this class, especially the unit plan, has helped me realize that I really do need to slow my roll with the procrastination. There were a hundred times this quarter where I could have easily been working on something that was due at the end of the quarter e.g. my unit plan, but I chose to veg and watch nine episodes of House of Cards (the new season was like just days away and I had to play catch up) instead of doing what needed to be done. Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson, because I’m pretty sure I’m literally dying at this point; my body is running on Red Bull, coffee, and these really tasty chips we sell at work now: they literally taste like corn chips with spicy nacho cheese drenching them. Oh they’re so good.

            As lazy as I can be, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished this quarter, with and without my group mates. I think Ryan and I worked really well together for our mini-lesson. The book talks were also nifty and RIDICULOUSLY handy. Seriously. I bought, like, seven of the books people talked about and I want to buy more. It was also really cool because I hadn’t read most of the books we chatted about; not saying that I’ve read a lot of books, but it was cool that people weren’t choosing the more “mainstream” books because I now know about a lot of really cool books that would be nifty to use to teach to students. And as much as I whined and moaned about my unit plan, that has also been ridiculously useful. Before this class, I had never even seen an edTPA, let alone filled one out. This, I’m sure, has prepared me for when I finally go onto my Masters program. The unit plan has shown me just how lazy I can actually be – let’s not lie, I’ve still got a couple lesson plans to write, I still have to print off everything, I still have to whip a self eval, and make everything look pretty… like, what am I doing with my life? I’m insane. Glutton for punishment, I suppose. The unit plan has also shown me just hoooooow much reflection and how much consideration goes into a lesson. It’s been a great eye opener, but also incredibly stressful (again, that’s partially my fault…probably like all my fault).

            This class has been fantastic. Like I said, it’s been incredibly useful, not just in the actual course content (as far as our articles to read and such), but in the books we read, and the activities we did. The mini-lessons were an excellent way to dip your toes in the waters of teaching, and the book talks introduced the class to several new novels that they could potentially work into their curriculum. All in all, I’m incredibly happy this is one of the required courses for English teachers. I sort of wish it was required for everybody, but that’s asking a lot.

Sincerely,

Marah Nekich

Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

Who hasn't read Romeo and Juliet at this point in our lives? It's the standard assigned Shakespeare in ninth grade English. I think it's a great play - overdone, a little trite at this point in my life - but done well, nonetheless. I think Shakespeare in general is an excellent addition to the classroom, regardless of age. I think R&J is a good first Shakespearian play: short, and sweet, it gets to the point pretty quickly about how wrapped up in each other these two kids are. It's great because Romeo and Juliet are roughly the same age as high schoolers, and students can easily put themselves in R&J's shoes, not that I highly recommend the students fully immersing themselves in R&J's lives...

The only reason I wouldn't teach R&J is that I do feel like it's drilled into students' heads over and over again. I understand CCSS demands that students have an understanding of literature from Shakespeare's time (specifically Shakespeare? I can't quite recall), but do we really have to do R&J every year? What about Macbeth? That has less romance and more violence, which is what all the kids want nowadays. Macbeth isn't too much harder on the reading scale than R&J, making it the perfect addition (or substitution) to R&J.

No Fear Shakespeare has become one of my favorite companies when it comes to Shakespeare. Yes, I feel it's still important for the students to understand and be able to read Shakespearian plays in the dialogue and meter in which they were intended to be read, but NFS really saved my butt in high school. I had no idea what was happening in some of the books we read until I had the translation to refer to. NFS has also started coming out with graphic novels, and if that doesn't peak students' interest in Shakespeare, I'm not sure what will.

Jolin: In the Name of God

I didn't hate In the Name of God; if anything, I enjoyed it. For a book that I would read on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it was great! I enjoyed the story at its base value, but... that is kind of where the enjoyment stops. I went into the book with an open mind, and not even open in the sense that I knew there was probably going to be some anti-western world talk, and that I would have to deal with that - that wasn't it at all. I figured I'd have to go in with an open mind knowing that the book contained talkings of suicide bombers. I figured, from the beginning, I would strongly dislike any of the characters that led to the suicide bombing talk, and that I wouldn't see their side of the reasoning at all. To be honest, I really didn't see the reasoning. Nadia just seemed a little silly. Now, I've obviously never been in her situation; I haven't had bombs going off in my country, except for the ones that terrorists are setting off miles away from my front door. But Nadia seems to feed into the idea of radical Islam very easily. I'm curious if it's that easy in real life, or if the "recruiters" have more difficulty than that. And then, seemingly easier than her become a radical Islamist, she changes her mind. She seems to change her views on a whim. The ending doesn't sit super well with me. It's an intriguing book, but I wish the last... twenty, maybe thirty, pages were rewritten. That would be an excellent assignment, I think, to rewrite the ending however you would like.

I don't think I would assign this book to my students, but I would definitely keep it in the classroom as a recommendation. It does start off pretty slowly, but once you get to the meat and potatoes, it's pretty hard to put down.

Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart

My first experience with Edgar Allen Poe was in the seventh grade with "The Tell-Tale Heart." It instantly became one of my favorite stories, mainly because of the creep factor, but also because it tells and shows a really good story of a monomania episode. It would be a great story to intertwine a psychology lesson into, if you're into that kind of thing.

One of the things that I think draws young adults to Poe is his dark attitude; the man writes about death or dying in most of his stories and poems. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is dark because the narrator murders a man with seemingly no motive except for the narrator's mania. I think this is a great story to venture into Poe's work: you see Poe's style of writing from the very beginning. His style isn't unique to just Poe, but I feel he does it best: the macabre, dark thematic elements to his stories and poems seem natural and unforced. Poe's narrator carries the crazy throughout the story very well.

I believe that Poe is also a great start for students to be introduced to his poetry. "Annabel Lee" is my personal favorite poem of his: the building up of this love poem about this beautiful woman in a kingdom by the sea and then boom, turns out she's actually embalmed and entombed by her former lover in his kingdom by the sea... It's always been one of my favorite poems, regardless of the content. But I think that "The Raven" is also a good route for students to experience Poe's poetry, for much of the same reasons as they should experience his stories. "The Raven" ties in Greek/Roman mythology with Poe's usual thematic elements, making the poem very universal for multiple uses.

Alexie: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

I enjoyed Alexie's book. It wasn't my favorite, but I didn't hate it. The book itself was pretty moving; I had to skip the part about Arnold's pup and that was only in the first chapter. I was worried it wasn't going to get any better. It obviously did, of course.

I like the themes within the book. It's one of those books that can be easily taught to a younger audience because it deals with issues that can be prevalent to that younger audience, bullying being the biggest issue. This day and age, bullying is especially intense as it can now follow kids home via social media. This would be a good book for 8th and 9th graders; while it's a good book for anybody to read, 8th and 9th graders are transitioning into their high school years. Being roughly the same age as the main character adds another element to the story, as well: it allows the students reading the book to relate to Arnold on a similar level. For that reason I wouldn't recommend this book for kids much younger than Arnold. The suggested lowest age of the book is 12, and I don't think I'd go much lower than that unless I had an advanced reader who had maybe tackled material similar to this prior. The book is pretty depressing in certain parts; obviously there's Oscar, and there's Arnold's grandmother. In fact, all of the deaths that involve alcohol are pretty traumatic. While I'm always one to believe that kids shouldn't be coddled, there are lines that should be drawn, if only in sand.

All in all, this book was rather intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that it was written by a Washingtonian, of course, but beyond that, I enjoy the bildungsroman aspect of the story. Most students are teased at some point in their lives and most students have the sense of hopelessness that Arnold occasionally feels. This story is great for students to read because it can help them see that it's not always hopeless and that things will eventually get better.

Tovani: I Read It But I Don't Get It

I really enjoyed Tovani's book. It resonated with me because I could see myself in the children this book is meant to help. I've always enjoyed reading for pleasure; one summer, I can remember choosing to sit down at the library in my grandmother's town and just read all day instead of playing outside. But schooling swiftly killed my love of reading (and writing); coupled with the instant gratification of the internet, I started to loathe having to sit down and read books, especially books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies. Not only did I not enjoy the story behind them or get anything out of it the author wanted me to, I didn't understand where the hell my classmates were getting any of their ideas. How are you finding these themes? What do you mean Daisy is the green light that Gatsby is seeing? And then when I finally started to develop my own theories and opinions, I was shot down and told that I was incorrect; "that's not what the author meant." Yeah? How do you know, Mr. Carroll? Did you write the book?

I like what Tovani mentions about asking questions. I think that encouraging students to ask questions, to ask their own questions, is better than just standing at the front of the classroom asking questions of your students. But if you're going to do questions, regardless who asks them, you have to be open to them. You have to be open to the answers that you might receive. When you shoot down an answer, a theory, an idea, the student loses confidence. It doesn't take much to stop students and their participation. Maybe I'm still just a bit hurt from high school, but questions don't have to be shot down. Maybe we had a strict timeline to stick to so entertaining the idea of other theories would have cut into that strict timeline. Who knows? What I do know is that I want to encourage my students to ask questions, to lead discussion, because, in the end, that's one of the only things that matters.

What Is Social Justice?

This was, admittedly, a hard assignment for me. Not hard in the sense that it was difficult to go out and find an article about social justice but hard in a sense that I harbor a bit of resentment over "social justice warriors," which are always the people that come to mind when I think of social justice.

The article I found discusses what's gone wrong with social justice in the last year. The people who are fighting so valiantly for "equality" have seemingly steamrolled any opinion that "offends" them. There was recently an incident at a college where several students were riled up over the hypothetical situation of Halloween costumes and what should be done to police students and what they chose to wear. Keep in mind, Halloween had not happened at this point; most people probably hadn't even bought their costumes yet. But a handful of students comprised an email that asked (paraphrased), "Who is going to make sure that nobody wears any offensive costumes?" The dean of students fired back an email that basically said, "I'm not sure who should police these students, but it's not going to be me."

All hell broke loose. The offended students demanded that the dean resign because they felt he had not handled the situation with tact. And maybe he didn't. But these are college students. College students who, literally, screamed in this man's face and wouldn't let him get a word in edge wise about why he didn't want to police a bunch of adults. Because that's not what you do. You don't tell people they can't wear something because it offends you. That goes against every single thing every social justice warrior stands for. Maybe I'm just jaded. Maybe I've just been told that I'm offending people because I use the wrong gender for them one too many times. One of the only girls who would let the dean get a word in responded to the dean, telling him, in so many words, that things that needed policing were things that offended her. I can assure you, she gets offended by a lot of things.

Our children needn't be coddled. There's a real world after high school and, seemingly unknown to some college students, after college as well. You can't be offended by everything. I'm not saying that a teacher needs to be at the front of the class dropping racial slurs into the conversation; flat out, that's wrong and that's not at all what I mean. People who get offended because you don't know that they subscribe to different pronouns than what they look like? Slow it down. Hate is bred; it is learned. The hate that social justice warriors have for everybody outside of their cause is ridiculous.

Social justice is not making sure everybody is equal and on a level playing field; it's making sure that everybody can be on the field in the first place.

Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Freire's chapter was hard to read, honestly. I can't imagine teaching students like that, let alone that there are teachers out there that already do. I wanted to believe that I came from a different school, that I came from something where we didn't just regurgitate answers when the teachers asked us but I can vividly remember reciting our multiplication tables in third grade when our teacher held up a card with numbers on it. I had no idea what we were doing. I didn't even know what a "times table" was at the time, let alone what the numbers meant. I just knew my classmates were saying numbers, so I did, too. As you can imagine, I never got the answers right.

I've come along way since those days, but I can still see it in some of my classes even in college. Maybe I'm just biased towards my English Lit classes, but I've never just sat there and had to regurgitate information in those classes (high school, yes, college, no). In my math classes, oh absolutely I had to just rattle back information that I knew. Quadratic formula? Have no idea what it does but I know a song to remember the formula (I think it solves something to do with parabolas, I'm pretty sure?); the formula for slope? Yeah, I got 'chu but beyond telling you "rise over run," I haven't the foggiest. I don't want that for my students. I don't want them to tell me that Mustafa Mond is like a biblical figure in Brave New World, I want them to tell me why they think he is one. I want to hear what they have to say. My students are not my banks to deposit my knowledge. I want them to build their own banks full of their own (and other students') knowledge.

I like the talk about a partnership vs a "student-teacher" relationship. While I feel like Freire is getting a tiny bit dramatic talking about liberation and oppression, I do agree that students will not get much out of their education if there is a "Charlie Brown teacher" standing at the front of the classroom mumbling, Womp womp womp.

Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

This chapter that we read has actually been super reassuring for the future. I was concerned about not knowing exactly what or how to grade. I feel more adequately equipped to handle assessing my students' work, which is really comforting.

What this chapter reinforced that this class has introduced to me is blogposting for responses. It takes the stress off of discussion, I feel. Students are given time to think over reading assignments and pose discussion questions on their blogs. It's not necessarily anonymous but nobody is actively sitting there listening to your response and it gives you time to rework what you might actually be trying to ask or say. Journal writing works the same way. It's good to be able to just "dump" all of your thoughts and feelings about a particular topic onto the page without worry of judgement. Turning in the journals or the blog posts is a good way for private feedback from the teacher, as well.

I've never been totally into peer feedback, especially in my lower level classes in college. I don't claim to know everything about grammar, but I can assure you a lot of the people I peer reviewed with in class didn't know a lot at all. I would try to help them by writing in the margins, letting them know what could be fixed and they never took my advice. They gave bad advice, as well. It was frustrating to spend time peer reviewing and not getting anything out of it. There was never really a point as I wasn't learning anything and I felt my peers weren't learning anything, either. But this chapter has revised my interest in peer reviewing with its tips as to how to teach students to peer review. That was one thing I had never really thought about: most kids probably aren't brought up to know how to review - they just say "good job" and move on with their day. If we teach our students the questions to ask, peer reviewing could actually be something much more than what it is now.

PS: I promise I kind of know how to read a schedule. Sometimes.

Standards Based Grading

I was against standards based grading for the longest time; in fact, it was so long that it was only taking my Winter 2016 class of English 493 that changed my mind. I heard all the flack that the tests caught and was super surprised that there were actually people that were for something that caused teachers in Atlanta, Georgia to alter their students' test scores to make them appear better than they were. Why would we want that for our schools? For our students?

Those teachers made a poor choice but that should not reflect poorly on the actual benefits of standards based grading. While I am not at all for coddling students (I'm not saying throw them to the wolves, but I am saying that after high school, they'll need to be ready to be told "you need to do better."), I am for standards based grading. If we set up a national standard for our students to achieve before they enter the real world, they'll be much more adequately prepared to handle what comes their way. A zero on an assignment to most students is just that: a zero. It doesn't help them prepare for the next exam; now the student is just worried about doing better on the next exam to make up for that zero. The stress I remember feeling in high school was awful; I don't want my students to go through that. I want them to see the marks on their paper and know what they can do to fix the marks and what resources they have available to them. We're not teachers to cut down students who might have outside factors contributing to their lack of studying; we're teachers to build up every student that comes through our classroom door.

This post is running a tad bit long, but let me discuss one of my favorite movies. Stand and Deliver was a properly made movie based on a true story about teaching. Jaime Escalante was so good at what he did, when his students - almost all from working-class Hispanic families - passed the AP Calculus exam with flying colors after being confined to the "dumb" math classes, the Educational Testing Service demanded the students retake the exam. Jaime believed so much in his students that he continued to prepare them until they were told to retake the exam with only a day's notice. The students went on to pass the exam - most with 4s and 5s. If we're not prepared to believe in our students, to believe that they can go from the bottom to top with our assistance, then we don't deserve to be teachers. Sometimes we might be the only ones who believe in our students.

Team Teaching!

Team teaching is pretty fantastic. I think the Leavitt article did a swell job of covering the important aspects of team teaching. I thought that I had never experienced team teaching when we first talked about it in class but then I realized that I had had the opportunity in high school to do such; I took a class called "American Experience" which smooshed together our junior year history, English, and religion courses. It was really cool because it was a two hour block of three teachers getting up and teaching together - literally team teaching (I don't know why I thought I had never come across it before). It was nice to see the three different perspectives on whatever we were learning. Religion and history obviously intersect pretty well, regardless of beliefs - both teachers were able to discuss, civilly, their beliefs about what happened at different times in religious history. The class was mainly based on American history, but it was interesting to hear about the different ways religion shaped what was going on at the time.

When I first started reading the Leavitt article, I was apprehensive about team teaching: these are my children and I want to teach them how I'd like. But team teaching teaches them even more than I could on my own. The article is right: teaching students how to have civil debates, I feel, is just as important as teaching them the subject matter in the first place. I think having a teacher pose questions to get students' minds going is also great. I've been a student for far too many years and I've had plenty of classes where I'm not sure what questions to ask; they might be there in the forefront of my mind, I'm just not sure how to phrase them properly. Having somebody else there to help ask questions is quite helpful. After finishing the article, I'm convinced that I'd like to team teach sometime in the future, maybe after I get my feet wet in actually knowing how to teach...

"Discussion" Discussion

"Discussion in a Democratic Society"

This chapter was interesting, and I really think a great way to start off this particular class. While I've always known that discussion can't be a thing without being prepared, I never really believed anything else was very important in a discussion. You read the material, show up, and chat. I never thought about it as anything more than that. But this chapter kind of skews that view; instead of just trying to say what I want to say, regardless of teacher status or not, paying apt attention to the other participants is important as well. Writing that out makes me kind of embarrassed but it's true: I was always okay at listening to what others had to say, but never fully there in the sense that I was actively listening to what other people were saying the entire time they were saying it. I remember one time in high school, I had to play a judge for a class project. Being judge included all the usual proceedings as a judge, including determining if someone's objection was uncalled for. The moment I stopped paying attention (for whatever reason), someone called out "objection!" and I hadn't the foggiest what they were objecting to.

But I digress. This chapter brought up a lot of excellent points for discussion. As I was reading it, I found myself thinking how I don't like to call discussions "discussions" and want to refrain from doing so when I start teaching because I was always... hesitant to participate in discussions. I never knew if my ideas were good enough to merit discussion. That could definitely just be me being the insecure student I was but I don't want any of my students to go through that same situation. Ergo, I figured calling them "conversations" was a better route, and, low and behold, one of the next paragraphs I read on page five discussed the preference of "conversation" over "discussion." There is a much more laid-back feel to a conversation; you can invite students to say whatever they'd like (pertaining to the topic, of course), regardless if they feel like it contributes or not. All you're doing is having a conversation, a little chat about a topic. I feel that removing the formality of discussion from the classroom would actually foster a much livelier discussion in the end.