PhyreBards

So, creative writing is one of my soapboxes. I really feel like the composition of short stories, personal narratives and poetry would benefit our students in ways that they don't usually experience in the English classroom. So often we focus on essays, arguments, and citations that students don't realize that creative writing is an option--and that what they want to write is what is valued, not their interpretation or logical argument. Through creative writing students may find that they enjoy putting pen to paper. (Or in our technological world, fingers to keys.)

Now, I'm not a part of the expressivist movement in composition theory where everything a student writes is from his/her own experience. I feel that formal writings like arguments and analysis are very important and our responsibility to teach in the English classroom. But I just want to ask that you give your students the chance to express themselves through creative writing as well. After all, the literature we give them to read is someone else's creative expression.

Between my classroom management course and my methods course, I’ve found myself reflecting on my teaching principles quite often. I’ve always maintained that I will always uphold my principles in my teaching and in my classroom. However, our class discussion over the “Big Bucks” program and a recent conversation with my friend who works with Teach for America made me toy with the idea that there may be times that I have to abandon my principles for the sake of my students. I am now left wondering at what point you decide it is appropriate to abandon certain principles for the sake of upholding others.
For instance, I am not an advocate of the “Big Bucks” program because I don’t think it promotes intrinsic motivation or encourages life-long learning. I feel that it is a temporary fix for bad classroom behavior. However, I now realize that I am adopting this attitude from the idealistic perspective that the classroom should be about teaching life-long learning and learning for the sake of learning. My friend who is working at an urban, low-income school in LA mentioned the other day that, at this point in time, a good day for her consists of getting half of her students to show up at school. I started thinking about what I would do in this situation. I wondered if I would implement a program such as “Big Bucks” if it truly was the only way to reach my students at a certain point in time. Ideally, I would not use a program like this long-term, but could it serve as a starting point to get my students to show up? While I still do not like programs like these or think that it is the ideal way to manage a classroom, if I truly believe that my students are at the heart of my classroom, would I abandon or temporarily put aside my own principles for the sake of the students and adopt a system that works and speaks to them? How do you know when you’ve reached this point of having to temporarily set aside your own beliefs and principles to better reach your students?

This week of readings, class discussions, and placements has made me think about how close we are to being actual teachers. I had a reality check when we were talking about lesson plans and how to make a lesson work. I am pretty nervous about how to put together effective lessons that generate enough excitement through all of my students. I am going to be looking towards my cooperating teacher of my placement to help me put my ideas into effective lessons.

The differentiated instruction reading forced me to consider all ability levels of all of my students and that all students in an honors class may not be capable of true honors work. This proves to be quite a challenge, but as the reading mentions, the English classroom is perfect for differentiated instruction. I, as any teacher should, want my students to work to their highest potential and differentiated instruction will be important to help all students.

Something that we have yet to discuss, but has been on my mind, is team teaching. One of the reasons that I chose English is for its ability to lend itself so easily to other subjects. I am interested to learn about how to use other subject area teachers to plan units and integrate multiple disciplines into our studies. This is probably another topic for another time, but just thought I would throw it out there.

"We're adults, how did this happen and how do we make it stop?" Grey's Anatomy

I loved the chapter on "The Craft of Questioning," which was Chapter 8 in "Making the Journey." Last semester, I taught an English/Language Arts class and there was one day when I wanted to have a discussion about a short story that we had read and while the students could answer my questions and were engaged, it wasn't a successful discussion. So while I was reading this chapter, all I could think about was that day in Mrs. Cooley's classroom that could have gone a little bit better. I feel as though a majority of classtime in English should be reserved for discussion so the advice in this chapter is very important. There is no doubt that asking questions and discussions is a great way for students to discuss pieces of literature because it can challenge them to become critical thinkers as well as to become an active participant in the learning process.
The author's concept of what questions to ask and when was very interesting. She writes about how students should not waste time on the lower order questions but should instead jump right into the higher order questioning and how the content relates to the reader. I feel I need more information about this in order to believe in its success in the classroom. Not to have low expectations for Middle School students, but I think many middle school students do not have the capability to think that far advanced when they are reading right away. I believe they can be led into higher order questions such as comparing and critically analyzing characters, but jumping in without overview of the major concepts could get overwhelming.
I loved her ideas related to having the students bring in questions to ask. I think this could be a great activity for the students that would challenge them to think of good questions if the right guidelines were laid out. This also allows for differentiation because those more able students can think on a higher level. What could also be a fun activity is to challenge the students who are able to think on both sides of an issue, to take the contradictory sides of student arguements. "Playing devil's advocate" would be a lot of fun for the students as well as a good learning opportunity for everyone in the class so they could hear different viewpoints and begin to think more critically.