Learning Letter

This course was really challenging! I felt like there was always at least 2 different things I was working on and (along with my other courses) I felt like I never got a break all quarter long. There was a lot of reading and I wish we could have had more time to talk about some of the topics we covered. I would have liked to spent more time on assessment strategies in a secondary school setting and what makes assessments good or bad. I would have liked to cover how to design a good assessment as well as how to gauge whether our students are really reaching the learning objectives/targets or not. We read a lot of articles and books on how to read and how to teach reading, but not a lot on how to assess student reading. I think thats one aspect that this course was missing. Other than that, I think this course did a great job of covering many topics and really preparing us to write lesson plans and use a variety of teaching strategies. I was actually a little surprised by how applicable everything was; I used a lot of the strategies that we learned in my practicum the week after I read about them. They were easy to implement and I could really see how my teaching improved from one week to the next just from what we learned in class and with the different readings. 

          I found a lot of value in the readings; in particular Cris Tovani’s “I Read it but I don’t get it”. I felt like that book had a huge amount of resources in it along with useful real life examples of when and how to use the different reading and teaching strategies. Just like after reading this book, I realized that my teaching philosophy is always changing and evolving after I read different things and try out different strategies in my classroom. Its a little scary to think about how unsure I really am but also good to know that I am not stuck in my ways about most things. I really liked how these readings challenged what I believed and/or felt about teaching and my role in the classroom. 

  I think the most useful thing we did was the mini lessons. I have a hard time with pacing and that assignment really forced me to look at what was the most important things to teach and how to do it in a limited amount of time. There are so many disruptions during a class period and having a 20 minute lesson is something that I can see myself having to do a lot. I also thought it was really beneficial to see how other people crafted their lessons and what teaching strategies they used as well as how they used them. Also, what a perfect way to get some more books under our belts, just like the mini books talks. 

  The literature unit plan was daunting and even tougher than I thought it would be. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I turned in my best work with that project and that is a huge regret that I have. I definitely learned a lot by doing it and finishing it, but I think it would be a great opportunity to revise it after getting some feedback and listening to what other people did for their unit plans. I will be teaching Romeo and Juliet during my practicum so it will be useful to have some lessons already done that I can just revise and then use. That is actually the main reason I chose to do Romeo and Juliet. Otherwise, I think I would have liked to do it on something else as there are so many other awesome texts that we cover in 9th grade. 

  Overall, this course was really beneficial and I definitely do not think it was a waste of time in any way. It was tough and if I had to do it again I would budget/manage my time a lot better and do a lot more research on my own time. 

Katie Brown, Washington Teacher of the Year

In your blog, you said that teachers need time to talk to one another and work together in their schools. A lot of schools have staff meetings and collaboration time, but it often gets wasted by talking about what color to paint the walls and who didn't turn their assessments in on time. How do you make sure that your time is spent wisely and do you think its better to have whole staff meetings or department specific meetings?

Do you think you would have become a teacher had you not volunteered at the school near your campus? If you knew you loved teaching, what made you go for a degree in Anthropology as opposed to Education?

You said that you were not going to take a job as an administrator, at least not right now, but that you are a leader in the school and take on various positions to help with administrative tasks. How do you fit it all in and still have time for your personal life? Do you wish you could teach part time and do administration part time?

During your year as Washington State Teacher of the Year, what was the most important thing you learned? Besides meeting the President, what was the most rewarding experience that you had?

Response to "Readicide"

First off, this book is so spot on that I had to read some sections twice because I thought that they might have been talking about my high school/school experience. I am comforted by the fact that this crap didn't just happen to me or in my high school, it has happened to many people and I am not alone, but it also scares me so much because I feel like the educational system is so off track right now and I don't see how it can possibly get back on the right track in time to save the next generation of kids who are in school now. 

I did an activity a few weeks ago where I gave my students various statements regarding education and asked them to either agree or disagree and then defend their position (this was to introduce argumentation). I expected students to participate and engage fully, which they did, but what I didn't expect was the insight that I gained from them about their feelings and thoughts on the current educational system. These students actually told me that their teachers are shutting down their creativity and making them produce answers that are in line with what/how the teachers think/feel. For instance, if a student is reading a passage or piece of text and thinks about it in a way that is not conventional (or something that cannot be found on spark notes) their teachers tell them they are wrong and then makes them do it again until they get to the "right" answer. They also said that they think this is the job of a teacher. They expect their teachers to do this so they don't even worry about thinking outside the box or entertaining other ideas that they might have. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!!! No wonder our students don't read for fun or even sometimes at all when it comes to curriculum reading. We are making them hate it! It is absolutely our fault. As teachers, we should be fostering student reading. We should make time for it, to the best of our abilities, in the classroom and assign reading at home that isn't just focused on analyzing and annotating the text but that is for fun. Sure, assigned reading can only be considered "fun" in so many ways, because it is, after all, assigned. If we can teach our students to actually like and enjoy reading, then the homework we assign will not be looked at like homework, but rather as a chance to escape the stress and pressures of their everyday life and have a little bit of leisure time. 

I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher. Literally from the time I went to kindergarten I would come home and play teacher with my stuffed animals and I always knew that's what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Sure I have thought about other options, but I always come back to teaching. For the most part, people have supported my decision and thought it was great since I was so good at spelling and speaking, and because I got really good grades in school. But as I went through HS, people started asking me tougher questions about why I wanted to be a teacher and what I loved about English. They asked me who my favorite authors were and if I loved to write, they asked me about poetry and the creativity that comes along with English. I always had stick answers to give to these questions but then I realized that I was lying. I didn't have a favorite author, I hated writing, I didn't enjoy poetry, and I didn't think that I was creative at all. I never read for fun, and barely crawled through the dense reading that was assigned in my Honors and AP classes. My friends would encourage me to read the Harry Potter series but I never did because I hated reading and didn't feel like it was a good investment of my time. Then, after my senior year of high school, I experienced my first real free summer. I didn't have a job, I didn't feel any need to prepare for the next grade, and I didn't have any summer reading assignments to worry me. Thats when I really started to enjoy reading. Sure, I started off with the Twilight series, but those were the first books that made me choose between reading and having a life. I only wanted to read. All summer long I kept looking for more books to devour and that summer I probably went through 15 books. That was one of the best summers I have ever had. It was the first time where I didn't have to read something and take notes, I didn't have to worry about a paper that I was going to have to write, I was reading purely for the fun of reading. To this day, I still look to a book to occupy my free time. I would much rather read than watch tv and sometimes I even fall into the trap of reading book after book and forgetting/neglecting other school work. But guess what, I still get good grades and I get to read for fun. Its the best of both worlds. 

Reading has given me so much and I am so sad that students today don't get the feel the way I feel about reading. I totally understand where they are coming from though and its my goal as a teacher to inspire their love of reading before they go off to college. I want them to have the necessary skills and discipline to read in their free time, but I also want them to be able to understand the texts they are reading in school, without feeling like they are being punished or tortured. I want to stop readicide because I almost fell down that hole myself, and it wasn't a good time. 

TPA Lesson Plan

I actually just did my first "real-life" TPA lesson plan for a lesson that I taught this morning. Some of the sections were so easy I thought that I was missing something and other sections were so dense that I didn't even know what to write down. I hate how redundant it seems. State the learning objective, revisit the learning objective, restate the learning objective, have students state the learning target in their own language... Why??? I get the point of having a clear learning objective that is specific and measurable, but honestly, it is a waste of time to be stating and restating it so many times. I also think it is a waste of time and hugely ineffective to have students in high school write "I can" statements. Maybe for elementary students that would be beneficial, but it is an ineffective filler for HS students. 

I think the different prompts in the TPA are useful because they really make you think about what you are doing and how students are going to benefit from the lesson, but I also think that the prompts are somewhat redundant and ask the same question in many different ways. Ask me about differentiated instruction once and I will make sure that I have it, but other than that, it is busy work. 

The other aspect that threw me for a loop was behavior management strategies and parent/community involvement. I am teaching honor students who rarely forget to do their homework, are rarely off task, and who rarely skip class, so I really don't have to worry about behavior management, but it is still on the TPA (and I understand the importance of this for other classes, but do I have to answer it if it doesn't apply??). Parent and community involvement is also one of the categories and I can understand how that is important for larger units but for a single lesson plan it might be irrelevant, and in my case was. For both the behavior management and parent/community involvement sections, I pretty much just made up some answer and called it good. I felt like I did that with a lot of things on my TPA and I'm not sure if that was because I haven't been taught how to do one or if those questions were just pointless. Im still trying to figure that out. 

"I Read it, But I Don't Get it"

In Chapter 2 of the book, Cris talks about how teachers sometimes struggle with teaching kids to read. Teachers will say that students should know how to read already, and if they don't, they are too far gone. Its not my job to teach them how to read because that was supposed to be done in elementary school. I think that a lot of teachers really do think this way. But the problem lies in the fact that reading and literacy is a lifelong goal. It never ends! She gives us 2 ways to help student comprehension and one of them really stuck with me. That is, "become a passionate reader of what you teach." In order words, make darn sure you read books before asking students to read them, and don't ask students to read books that you didn't enjoy or get anything useful from. We need to do our best at that because if we are not passionate, then our students won't be either. Its sad that curriculum demands us to teach certain books, but we can be creative and adapt to make those books for engaging.

In Chapter 4, Cris gives us 6 indicators that help us monitor our understand. The one that always gets me is reciting the text instead of interacting with it. I can read and hear myself saying the words, but at the end of the page, I have no idea what I read. It helps for students to have those indicators so they can realize what the real problem is, instead of just saying that they are bad readers.

Chapter 5 mentions the 3 text connections that my cooperating teacher uses; Text to text, text to self, and text to world. After hearing how she uses these strategies in her class, I have found myself using them purposely in my reading as well. I think to an extent I already used them, but never had a name for them or knew what I was doing. Something that is mentioned later is that the connection had to help the reader, it cannot just be a connection to say that there is a connection. This is so important!! I see my students doing this all the time, but just because a character is pregnant in a book and other people get pregnant in the world doesn't mean that that connection is helpful at all. We need to teach students about this and make sure they are making the right connections. Chapter 5 also lists a few "fix up" strategies. One that I would add is to talk about the text with another person who has read or is also reading the same text. I think this is different than just retelling what you have read about because it involves 2 voices and 2 minds that probably are alike and different in many ways. Having another person to talk with is something I have always tried to find when I don't understand a text.

Chapter 8 talks about inferences and something that really stuck out to me was that when students make inferences, they should be probable. We all have active imaginations and could think of a variety of different endings our outcomes for a story, but we need to make sure they are probable. If they aren't, then we are just using our imagination, but we need to be focused on using our brains. Sure imagination is great, but use your imagination to go write your own story or your own ending. We have to use our brains and make inferences that make sense if they are going to be of any use to us in comprehension.

The resources at the back of the book are super helpful and useful! I really liked the one that asks you to read for 30 minutes and then stop and answer certain questions. They aren't text based questions or questions that have correct or certain answers, but it just makes you think about what you read and maybe gives you an idea if you need to go back and reread or use the "fix up" strategies. I also like that it breaks it down into small chunks. That makes reading seem more manageable.

Teaching For Social Justice - Teaching blob by Vanessa D'Egidio

     I read a blog by a primary school teacher, Vanessa D'Egidio, on Teaching for Social Justice. Her main focus was on teaching social justice to younger children, but many of the ideas presented can be adapted for older students. In her blog, she focused a lot on gender stereotypes, which is appropriate for all students, but the focus of ideas talked about can be changed to be appropriate for the grade level you are working with. For instance, instead of talking about gender stereotyped toys, I would maybe present the idea of the "player" vs. "slut" discrepancy of males vs. females and would be able to garner the attention of high school students easier than if I were talking about toys. This goes for most topics that she presented in her blog.
     Community building is a critical and foundational component of anti-bias teaching and learning." Vanessa talked a lot about how she had to first and foremost create a sense of community in her classroom. She had to make sure students felt comfortable with each other, that they knew proper body postures and gestures such a eye contact and facial expressions, and that they knew how to speak to each other respectfully. I think that this should not be overlooked, even in a high school classroom. We may assume that students can refute each others points with respect, but a lot of students still don't have that skill by the time they are in high school. It is our job to then teach them those skills needed so that they can participate in the classroom as well as the world outside. 
     "Anti-bias work in the classroom is inherently complex, messy, and challenging. Keeping this reality in mind though, it can be done, and more importantly, it can be adapted successfully..." We have to keep in mind that this is not an easy task. We will have to work on it, adjust our practices, and be prepared for failure. We also have to get back up and keep trying if we do fail. Social justice in the classroom is not something that can be taught in a day, week, or unit. We have to work together to create an atmosphere that allows for social justice, and we have to expand social justice to the world outside of our classroom as well: "only by collectively recognizing and actively working against bias will social justice take root in our communities."

http://feministteacher.com/2012/08/28/guest-blogvanessa-degidio-on-teaching-for-social-justice-in-primary-school-classrooms/

Critical Pedagogy in Popular Culture

"An oppressive rendering of a culturally diverse text is still oppressive." (pg. 186)
-->> So true! We are told that we need to be culturally inclusive in the classroom, and a lot of teachers fall into the trap of then choosing literature that features a person of color as the main character and calling it good. That is not culturally inclusive though! We need to think outside the box. We can still use "classic" literature and see the struggles of the non-dominant and be culturally inclusive. Not to say that that will cover our bases, but classic literature is still a very important aspect of the English classroom and it still needs to be taught to our students. The fun part is that we can dive into it and talk about endless possibilities. We can encourage our students to think deeper and at the same time be critical and not make connections where they may not exist.

"...we are encouraging the creation of meaningful links between the worlds of the students and the worlds of canonical texts." (pg. 195)
-->> I think this one of our main jobs and goals of being a teacher. If we can incorporate both popular culture and canonical texts into our classrooms and curricula, our students will be engaged and will be willing to participate in classroom activities. We can help them make connections by providing the materials for them or we can encourage them to make their own connections by asking them to bring in popular culture ideas or texts and explore and defend the connections to canonical texts. Because the world is always changing and popular culture is almost never the same from one month to the next, we need to be sure to stay on top of things. We need to know how to use the current technologies, social media outlets, and who's dating who in the world of celebrity gossip. These things are important to our students and so they should be important to us as well. We will become disconnected from our students if we cannot talk with them about their interests.