Ants in my Pants

I've recently become a little obsessed with teaching.  I want student teaching to start right now, even though I know I'm not prepared for it, but I am canstantly thinking about how I want to structure my classroom.  I'll admit, I do much lesson planning.  Mainly I think about what I want to incorporate in my classroom to encourage relationships between the students and with myself.  In an English classroom, discussion is very important.  If the students are familiar with each other, they will be more willing to talk.  One thing I am definitely going to do is ask a couple students everyday or maybe just a couple days a week to tell me and the class something about themselves and something they have learned outside of the classroom that week.  It doesn't have to be anything educational, although hopefully they are learning something in school, but it can be a simple observation they have made about life, or some useless trivia information.  

For instance, did you know that the lid of tic tac containers are made to dispense one tic tac at a time???

Or that we have been using ketchup cups entirely incorrectly??

And chinese take out containers unfold into plates???!!!!

Can you tell I like foodbeast.com and useless tips about eating? Food is delicious.

I will also teach them something about myself and something that I have learned outside of the classroom.  I think I will ask the class if there is anyone who would like to share, but no one volunteers I shall put some poor victim on the spot.  But I will remind the class periodically to be prepared and to be thinking of things they want to share with the class.

Graphic Representation

As a student, I hated being assigned a graphic project because I am really self-concience about my ability to draw.  I'm not necessarily the worst artist every.  It never looks unrecognizable.  But I would get frustrated when I couldn't put my imagined drawings onto paper.  It always looks so much better in my head than it does on the page.  However, I loved looking at my classmates' work and seeing everyone's different interpretations and I loved picturing what I would like to see illustrated.

Graphic representation is a great way to get students to visualize the book and make it more than just words on a page.  It also gives students a way to show their personal interpretation, which will be much easier if they are given a less restrictive medium than just an essay.  Their drawings do not have to be limited to 2-dimensions.  I enjoyed making dioramas, which were less frustrating for me than drawing. I liked using materials I found around my house to fit my interpretation of the novel.  For Herman Melville's Typee, I recreated the god the natives worship.  For the shrunken head, I used a pickled apple with a face carved into it made by one of friend's and left over from our Harry Potter party.  For the stick body, I used one of my dad's old walking sticks and covered it in a torn up shirt for the rags the god supposedly wore.  His name was Mortua Artua, but he was renamed Ammargay Odgay by my classmates, which is pig latin for Grammar God.  Although this project was not very intepretative, it made the main character's disbelief that the natives worshiped this crazy looking think more real, because it really did look ridiculous.

I would leave the project's medium and size up to my students, allowing them to choose whatever would most represent their personal interpretation.  Godwin mentions having to share his drawing of the Green Knight in his college literature class.  I would definitely encourage my students and show and explain their project in the class.  This will give them practice with public speaking and confidence to show case their own work.  It will also give the rest students many different perspectives and interpretations of a novel.

knowyourmeme

In Young Adult Lit this week, we did a meme activity with the book Fault in Our Star.  We each had to creat 3 memes created by 3 different characters or recieved by 3 different characters.  Although the content of the book resulted in the production of some slightly offensive and really offensive memes, the idea of using memes as a way to capture the personality of a character or the theme of a story is fantastic.  I would definitely use use memes as a way to help students relate to classic literature.  If they can put it into modern terms, they will be able to interpret the literature better.  This goes a long perfectly with our discussion of graphic novels since memes are also a graphic representation of an idea with minimal text.  Each meme has a preconcieved idea of its meaning.  Philsoraptor is philosophical although sometimes petty and shallow, the woman crying and holding her head is "first world problems," . Fry  from futurama is "not sure if" and the year book picture of the boy with braces is "bad luck brian" who usually experiences something ironic such as "takes driving test, gets first DUI." 

Although memes typically comment on current events or sensitive issues that people take too seriously, I think they would be great for literature as well.  I found some excellent Shakespeare (hipster shakespeare) and Charles Dickens memes. Those memes aren't particularly literary, but definitely amusing.   If students had to create a graphical and textual representation of a character or situation, then I think they would begin to see a lot more character development and relatable topic in classic literature.

goin graphic

I really enjoyed Rice's article about her experiences with starting to use graphic novels in her classroom.  She was shocked by how intensive reading a graphic novel could be and was surprised that it took her an average of 12 hours of further research to fully understand the novel.  After having read a few graphic novels in World Literature, this does not surprise me.  Most of the graphic novels that I have seen and the ones that I would consider teaching in a classroom as a unit of their own have been about different cultures, countries, and time periods which would require a lot of front loading since graphic novels are not very descriptive.  Much of a graphic novel's meaning is left up to the reader's inferrences and ability to read between the lines.  One panel structure is designed to allow the reader to imagine what happens between one panel and the next.  There is a lot of personal interpretation.  Students would definitely have to research on their own or the teacher would have to be fully aware of all the ambiguous scenes in order for the students to understand the graphic novel entirely.

If I decide to teach the graphic novel version of a canonical text, it will be much easier to introduce the novel to my students.  I will most likely be familiar with the content and the meanings and the graphic novel would simply be supplemental.  However, I do not know if I would ever assign a graphic novel version to my students unless they had difficult reading.  With a normal classroom, I would use scenes from the graphic novel to reinforce or bring to life what the students have read in the original text.  With a classroom of slower readers, I would teach the graphic novel and read important scenes from the original text so that my readers would have some exposure to the original language, especially with Shakespeare.

Although I really liked Rice's ideas and her desire to introduce something new and of such great value to her students, I thought some of her ideas were a little over the top.  She had extreme problems with teaching any text that had something remotely inappropriate.  One graphic novel had a monkey peeing on someone and she had to immediately call a friend in China to figure out why the monkey would pee on someone.  For awhile she was not sure if she could teach this to her classroom.  She was also unsure about teaching a graphic novel that included a phonetically altered curse word that even she didn't pick up on until she studied further.  I was very shocked by her censorship in an English classroom.  If anything, my English teacher promoted the banned books and tried to expose us to as much controversy and real world issues and language as possible.  If we were quoting a book and left out or hesitated at something "inappropriate" she would encourage to quote the book word for word no matter what.

I was also surprised by the amount of money she expected to get and the amount of money she actually got during her first year of teaching graphic novels.  Maybe I am a little ignorant of book prices, but $2000 sounds like plenty to begin a new form of teaching and reading.  She seemed put off that she only recieved $2000 the first year and $1500 the second year.  She then spent $600 of her money.  I realize that buying books new and through a school would be more expensive than when I buy books off of amazon, but each book couldnt have been more than $30, in which case she could've bought at least 150 copies of a graphic novel the first year, which seems like an incredible amount to me.  But then I am used to really small highschools in which the class size is usually 116 and classrooms only hold about 20 students.  But I can only hope that I introduce something new the to the classroom and the school I will be able to obtain $2000 because that sounds pretty useful.

Story Board

I had a great time sketching out the story board for our short film.  Of course, by sketch, I really mean draw stick figures: girls with long hair and traingle bodies, boys with short hair and just stick abdomens.  Sometimes I wish that I was more artistic so that for these types of projects, I could do something phenomenal.  But then I remember that I am a perfectionist when comes to things that I am good at and if I had any ability to make a sketch look nice, I would've spent hours making each one perfect. I suppose I am thankful that when it comes to drawing, I can accept much much less than mediocre.

I think that this was a great project to do for a short story.  It forces to find the expression and meaning in each line, which lines might give more clues to the characters personalities and background.  Short stories can be hard to understand because there isn't much character development and their personalities aren't as clear.  But if drawings are required, then the students can get a little under the surface and bring out the descriptions that are hiding within the symbolism.  We are required to actually film our shots, which I think is a great way to use transmediation, but honestly, the drawings were enough to make this short story come alive for me.  My group read "Where have you been, where are you going," and I really disliked it at first.  It was just about some girl who likes to wash to her hair and gets stalked by a really really creepy guy.  But when I started to draw it, the emotions became more significant.

Habitual Reading

One of my assigned readings for Young Adult literature was about literature circles.  It talked about the trends surrounding literature circles and what made them popular.  Besides Oprah starting book circles on her show an publishers beginning to include discussion topics in the back of books, one section was about teachers reading themselves. I had never thought about how important it is for teachers to read themselves because it just seems like a give. Of course teachers read! They're English teachers, how could they not? But then I looked at my own reading habits even as a student and realized that I do not read on my own any more.  I only read for class assignments.  It has been a long time since I have browsed through the library and chosen a book that simply looked interesting or that had been recommended to me by a friend.  I don't think I even talk about what books are good to read anymore because I am so busy thinking about what I have to do. I realized that when I become a teacher with a full time job, a house to take care of, a family, and probably children to chaffeur around, I will feel like I have even less time to read than I do now. 

So over spring break, I have decided to do some serious reading and continue to make a habit of always having a book on hand, even if I can only sit down to read it once a week.  Although, one reason I gave up "fun reading" was because I have a difficult time putting a book down and if I'm reading a really good book, I will have a hard time putting it down and getting all of my actual work done first.  This became highly evident last week when I was reading Divergent, a book assigned for Young Adult, and stayed up past midnight (which is highly unusual for me) and reading the whole book in 2 days even though I still had a week to read the first half.  But it was a fantastic book and I could not stop reading until it was over, no matter what other pressing assignments I had going on. But perhaps this will be a lesson in self-control as well as a good habit for a future English teacher. If I am not reading and not even seeking out a good book, as can I expect my students to constantly be on the look out for a good book as well? Or to be willing to read a book that is recommended to them? I LOVED it when my English teacher would read a book that I recommended to her and I enjoyed talking about the book with her.  I would like to be ready to have the same relationship with my students.

Langwitches

I visited the Links to School Bloggers link from Treedon's blog which led me to Langwitches- The Magic of Learning through Technology.  This was a great site packed with information about blogging in the classroom, digital learning, global education and using Ipads in the classroom.  There is so much in this blog, it will take a long time to unpack all of it. 

There are Unit plans for classroom blogging and digital story telling.  There are numerous links to conferences and downdloads concerning technology in the classroom. There is a section on professional development.  Everywhere I look on this blog, it goes deeper and becomes more specific.  This is a great blog for ideas and resources.