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.

Videos!

I loved Shafer's ideas about making videos and film a personal way for students to engage in learning and to interpret a text.  I think turning a text into a film is a fantastic way to show that a student understands what is happening, how a character feels, and what the character's environment is like.  I loved trying to imagine what a character's bedroom looks like.  If students are assigned to make a video, they can make all aspects of the text and character come to life rather than just writing it down.

I enjoyed Diane's account of how the digital videos improved her teaching and her classroom.  Adding this new technology and new medium of interpretation to the classroom entirely changed how she teaches and thinks.  It is nice to know that improving a classroom can be as easy as doing something new.
 
Although I love the idea of video assignments, I will confess that I am a fanatic hand waver if I hear the words, "You will be making a video for this class."  I freak out.  I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to film.  I'm not even competent or at all confident with Windows Movie Maker, which can be as simple as uploading pictures and putting in words and audio.  It sounds so easy, but I have a very difficult time putting my ideas and thoughts into that medium.  I am very nervous about the video we will have to make in this class and the book trailer I will have to make for Young Adult Lit.  Even though I know there will be people available to help me and it really isn't that difficult, I still stress out a lot over using technology for creative purposes.

My first video assignment that required actual filming was my Senior video for my high school English class.  Thankfully this was an all-class project and I barely had to do anything.  We even hired another student to do the filming and editing for us because we wanted it to be perfect.  Although this video was supposed to connect multiple books and show interaction between different characters and incorporate everything we had learned since freshman year, it actually ended up being incredibly silly and not interpretative at all.  The teacher took no part in the video process, offered no advice or suggestions, and ended up not even grading us on it because she was not able to watch it before the school year ended. It was actually pretty disappointing.  I think that if we had focused more on one book or even two similar books, we could have incorporated more interpretation and our script would have been more uniform.  Instead, all 13 of us ended up writing part of the script for different characters.  We didn't compare them or fit them together at all.  Also, our teacher should have taken more of an active role in the process rather than just asking us how we were doing with it every week.

Jstor

I want to make my classmates aware of a website called JStor that I came across while searching for journal articles for my "further research" paper.  I thought about presenting it as my digital tool, but decided it's not quite important enough for that, but still very useful.

Jstor is a place to view and buy journal articles.  With an account, you can have up to 4 free journals on your shelf.  These free journals can be deleted after 14 days, giving you more space on your free shelf.  I found this very useful when I wanted to use an article that was absolutely perfect for my further research paper but it was not available through the library. I know that unavailable journals can be accessed through interlibrary loan, but sometimes that can take days.  Jstor gives you instant access! The only downside to Jstor is that you cannot print out a free article, only ones that you have paid for.  But reading off the screen was worth it to have an article that I really wanted to talk about.  Jstor could save your butt if you put off research till the last minute, really need a certain article not available through library, and don't have time to wait for interlibrary loan!

Blogging Revisited

I blogged about blogging last week, but this weeks reading was also on blogging and brought out a few points that I would like to talk about.  Wilber's Chapter 3 talkedd a lot about the benefits blogging has for students.  Blogging encourages them to write and gives them an audience.  As a reluctant blogger, I have never been concerned about having an audience for my writing.  I've never been much of a writer to begin with and never write for personal enjoyment.  But after reading about how much students enjoy reading their classmate's comments and love knowing that someone else is actually going to read their thoughts, I decided to read over all my comments and see how they made me feel.  I surprised to see that I was actually a little disappointed that a couple of my blogs did not have any comments.  Although I have never cared much about the audience of a blog, I suppose I should have known I would have some invested emotion in it based on how disappointing it is when I think I have posted the most hilarious facebook status and nobody likes it.

Admittedly, I get extremely self-concious if I think too much about having an audience.  It definitely influences what I decide to say and what I leave out.  The amount of thought I put into a blog also determines how much I care if someone actually reads it and enjoys it.  I doubt I will mind if no one comments on this one because it isn't very thought out or extraordinary, even in my opinion.

Cellular conundrum

I find myself growing increasingly more excited to begin teaching. And by exciting, I also mean anxious.  I am constantly thinking of what I want to do in my classroom, what rules I want to have, how I will have my syllabus set up, what I will do for bonus points...I'm becoming obsessed.  And student teaching is still a whole year away!! So I definitely need to start writing some of my ideas down in a retrievable place so that I can revisit them later and not have to remember them for a whole year.  Since documenting our educational ideas is the entire of this blog, I decided I would jot one down in this post.

We have been talking about the increasing amount of technology in students' social lives and in the classroom.  Although we need to integrate technology into the classroom to fit the students' learning styles and preferences, and to add multimodality and different levels of learning, we also need to find a separation and gain control of the students' use of technology while in class, aka the cellphones.  If how students are with cellphones in class is only a foreshadowing of what they will be like when I am finally a teacher, than I need a plan of action. Hopefully one that works. This is what I came up with:

I will have two baskets: one for the cell phones and one filled with candy and small oddities.  If the students place their cellphone in the basket, they will be allowed a piece of candy or whatever is in the basket that day.  I think somedays I will bring in brownies or maybe something even more entreating.  Especially on group project days or computer lab days when it is more difficult to supervise the students. I cannot decide if I will have the baskets on my desk so that the students can help themselves, or if I will go around the desks with baskets while I take roll so that I can make sure no one is taking candy without putting their phone.  I also thought about giving bonus points to whoever turns their phone in everyday, or perhaps having a pizza party if everyone in the class puts their phone in the basket everyday.  Obviously, keeping track of which students put their phones would take more monitoring but I think it would be worth it.

I would like to feedback on this from anyone who likes or dislikes the idea :)

Blogging about Blogging

I really enjoyed the section on blogging in the Kist reading.  It addressed a lot of the stereotypes and fears I have had of blogs before.  Although I am an English major, I have never enjoyed writing and I have definitely never enjoyed writing about my personal thoughts or opinions and then sharing them with others.  When I think of bloggers, I always picture people who have nothing better to do than write down what they believe to be the most important things in the world. They think their words are from God and that everyone should believe in them.  They write about deforestation, religion, philosophy, politics, and sex.  I never wanted any part of that.  But Kist says that bogs need to be "more than just a place to pontificate," which is a great word for what I thought blogging was for.
I expected to approach this blog with reluctance and extreme hand-waving.  I had to keep a blog in high school too and I absolutely hated it because I knew that all of my classmates were going to read what I said. I was supposed to be saying intelligent, meaningful things, but felt like I had absolutely nothing to say. The teacher responded to every single one and was highly critical and judgemental of what we said. The blog for this class is much easier because I don't think of it as something for my classmates, but as a place to write down what I think.  Also, I can write about what I want, what I found interesting, what I am passionate about.   I can't say that I LOVE to blog, but it has definitely been more beneficial than I expected.

Potential in all it's unattainability

Freshman year, in College Writing 101, I wrote a paper about e-literacy and it's dangers in the world of student research. The danger it poses is not because of the internet's tendency to be an unreliable source, or that research from books is so much more credible, or that the internet is just so full of distractions that students will never be able to focus.  The danger is that students are not taught how to effectively research online and find credible sources. A lot of the research I looked at included detailed studies about students who simply use google and just choose from the top search results.  What students aren't told is that the top google search results are merely those that viewed or used the most, that the ones that provide the most information about the search topic or that are the most credible. Because honestly, wikipedia is almost always going to be in the top search results and it is neither the most informational nor the most credible source.  Websites can also pay google to place their site in the top search results so that they receive more publicity and activity.  However, if students were given just a few simple instructional sessions on how to research online, how to cross reference sources, how to check credibility, and how to access the vast amounts of viable knowledge that can be found on the internet, then their research projects and papers could become vastly superior to those of our parents who used typewriters and periodical catalogs.

I started recalling all of this information while reading Kajder who discovers that social media and new technologies are being used in the classrooms, but are really just sort of thrown in there to look pretty and don't actually add to much to the learning environment.  Several people have mentioned this in class. Schools invest in ipads and smart boards but the ipads are only used to search online for certain class sessions and the smartboards are only used for power points! This is sort of like having the world wide web at your hands and just using the top google results. These tools have so much potential to add to the learning experience of the classroom.  They should be an automatic "go to" when we are searching for ways to make a lesson multimodal or simply more interactive.  But they often end up being just for show.  My high school recieved a grant to put smartboards in the "classrooms of the future" which were the basic subjects such as math, history, english etc. My English teacher only turned on the smartboard on at the end of the year when we were using power point for our research presentations. It was a complete waste. But I still do not know how she could've used that specific technology to enhance our learning.

There is so much evidence in our own experiences and in what we are reading that the technology out there could be very useful for a classroom of igeneration students, but still I have not learned HOW to use it. I grow increasingly worried that I will be left with this knowledge of potential with no way to reach it or even begin to grasp at it.

Frustrating and Life Enhancing

I was really intrigued by the quote from Gee (2003) in Miller, "Learning should be both frustrating and life enhancing."  I entirely agree with this.  I have retained the most knowledge, and the most useful knowledge, from classes that were both challenging and interesting.  I have attended many classes whose subject fascinated me, but the work was easy so I did not have to really injest the material.  But in classes that I had to really study and dissect the material in order to grasp the concepts, I learned an incredible amount; not only about the subject or the content, but about my abilities to learn in general. Reading Shakespeare is an excellent example. I remember almost everything from a Shakespeare play that I have studied because I have to really pay attention and examine every line in order to understand the vast amount of meaning that Shakespeare works into his lines.  But I can fly through a young adult novel, understand every word, but only retain the fine details for a short amount of time. 

I think that attaining this type of indepth learning is where multimodality or using technology in the classroom really comes into play.  Instead of just reading a book or a text, using technology or some other form of mental engagement would provide the interaction and context the students need to feel like they have really dissected the different levels provided by the assigned reading.  Having the students cross-referencing similar texts and writing down the similarities and differences or making flow charts of the characters and their roles in the text would provide a source outside the text that would contain information they have pulled out of the story themselves. And to me, knowing that I found the information and I figured out what a book is trying to tell me is much more of an accomplishment than simply memorizing what a teacher has said about a book and then applying it on test or in a paper.

Something on The Side

Throughout the past week, I have been thinking about how I will want to motivate my students to read for fun, outside of class.  In 8th grade, my English teacher said we were required to read 300 pages per 9 weeks outside of class and from books not included in our assigned reading.  This assignment more or less gave the students a reason to read outside of class, not necessarily motivation.  Also, there was no reward for the students who read more than the required amount.  Perhaps I only feel that this should have been changed because I always read well over 1,000 pages.  Many teachers require that the students read one book for fun outside of class, but this still makes reading a requirement and gives no personal incentive, besides the desire to not get an F, to read. 

I have decided that I will offer bonus points each quarter for any student that creates a project or gives a simple presentation in order to entice the other students to read a book they read in their spare time.  This would give the students who are falling behind to make up for lost points and reward the students who already read outside of the classroom.

I would love to hear anyone else's ideas!

Why Tweens and Teens Hate School

          Rosen's chapter detailing reasons why students might dislike school highlighted several reasons why I often found myself bored in school as well. Outside the classroom, our lives move so quickly.  We are immediately connected to each other through phones and the internet.  In fact, I know that my boredom did not become intolerable until I was given my first cell phone when I was 17.  Not only was I suffering from senioritis, but I was anxious to get back to a world that could communicate with me instantly and convey its meaning in just one symbol, the smiley face emoticon, :).  Adding that one symbol to a sentence (an abbreviated sentence) can define the meaning of the entire text.  There is anything like that in the classroom.  Everything is drawn out, wordy, repetitive.  Teachers repeat the same things over and over because usually the facts are not very memorable.  The facts we do remember are those that come with a catchy saying or an acronym.  We apply essentially the same concept when we see symbol <3 as we do when we look at the acronym "ROYGBIV." We immediately know the context of whatever communication or written text will follow it. Class and lectures just seemed like a waste of time when I was familiar with a language that was so incredibly fast.
         Rosen attributes the disconnection between teaching method's and the current students' learning methods to the fact that teachers are not family with how they learn today.  Even I am not familiar with how students learn today.  The technology now available in schools was not in place when I was a high school student.  I am terrified of the first time I will have to plan a lesson using a smart board.  My students will be ten times more familiar the technology than I will be. My teachers seemed inadequate enough with the technology available to me.  I can't imagine how much more difficult it will be to fight for the students' attention when we have to read from actual, stationary, non-illuminated books without screens and they are used to constantly being ocuppied with 5 different tasks at once.

Hey everybody!

My name is Jessica. I'm a Junior Secondary English Education major.  I live in Springville, New York but grew up and graduated from high school in Pennsylvania so I feel much more at home at SRU than I do in New York. I have two office jobs on campus for the College of Humanities, Fine and Performing Arts and for the Honors Program, so if you have any questions about the campus I can either give you the answer, find the answer for you, or direct to someone who has the answer.