When I read the article called, "Moving my English class to the Computer Lab," I was very interested. I think that every class will have a student like Robert. He will not complete reading assignments and will do bad on tests and quizzes about the content of the book. Then he will do fine when there are class debates and discussions. Our job as teachers is to get to know our students and differentiate the teaching strategies to make sure all the students can use the book or the themes from a book in some way or another. I thought it was interesting when the teacher said that she took her class to the computer lab to do some computer work like typing up a paper or maybe doing something similar to that and the students would browse other websites as well. These websites could include their email or some website they go onto like Facebook. The part that interested me about this was that she let them go and look at these websites because the kids were still doing the work intended but would just glance over at the other website. Then she would see that in their work did not falter even though these students were multitasking. I think that this can be true for some students. Although, it is not something to generalize with all students. As a student myself, I have a hard time concentrating if I know there is something I would rather be looking at or doing is in the other tab. I need to concentrate on the thing at hand or else I would end up on the other website a lot more. I like the idea of having students make up their own websites about a novel that they are reading. I had a teacher in 12th grade and he has us do a very similar activity but we did it seperately and not with a group and we did it with characters from the book. I thought it was a lot of fun and think other students would think the same thing. I also like how when they talk about vocabulary the students have to include everyone's definitions and ideas and discuss what should be put on the website. It makes the students communicate which is really important to learning. I absolutely loved the idea of the students making a trailer for the project after they read a novel. They have to show some major parts of the book but don't give stuff away just like a movie trailer does and this means students have to know the major parts of the novel. I think this is such a great idea for students to get creative and use technology about a book. There are endless possibilities and I love that since the students' work can be seen by anyone on the internet, the students worked harder to make sure everything is right. I also love that the students learned from each other. The teacher can be a "on-the-side guide" and the students could help each other out with aspects of technology that they each know. Technology in this case is very good and can help struggling readers that have a hard time reading parts of the book to come to class to discuss or to take a quiz on. The students get more excited to come to class prepared when they are doing something they enjoy.
According to Nicholas Carr when we go on the computer to make sure we read less we are depriving oursleves of reading anything offline. Is this true? Are we going to end up reading everything off the computer instead of books? Will we have "feeds" in the future to take out the middle man? Will we have artificial intelligence? It is a scary thought because we are more into technology than those who came before us and apparently we are "The Dumbest Generation," according to Bauerlein because we know more about what is on tv than our nation's history because of our results from our class discussion on Wednesday. I think we are getting close to being a "dumb" generation, but I do not think we are the dumbest. We have many more generations after us and they might be even worse. Are we leading them to be so dependent on computers and technology rather than movies and history of our nation. In the future, will there be regular classes or will it be dominated by technology? How did we become the "dumbest" generation of this age? Did we do this to oursleves, or is it just a coincidence that everyone is getting the same result with the "The Dumbest Generation," test? I am afraid for the generations to come because we are their future teachers and in classes and in life we are being told that using technology is a great thing to do in the classroom. In this case, I think it is not. I think it is scary how little we know about our nation and how much we know about tv and honestly I don't watch much tv anymore.
I think there are good and bad aspects of including technology in the classroom and into our child's lives. Students are growing up in a world where technology is everywhere and they know how to use computers and other types of technology at young ages. If a student will read a book because they get to do projects that involve the students talking with each other and working on a computer, should we use it? Or should we refrain because they already use enough technology at home and we don't want them to be as "dumb" as we apprently are. I think we are very smart, especially because we are in school and we are furthering our education, but I think that we do focus a lot of our time on media and technology. Although, I think that the reason we remembered more of the media questions is because most of them were recent. When we listen to the radio, we heard that song over and over. When we watch tv we see commercials for certain shows over and over. Then there is the history questions. I haven't talked about those topics since high school. My college history classes were more about other countries than our own. In high school we would talk a little about those topics then get tested on them and never hear about it again until maybe the next year. It is different that how the tv or a radio is. I think I want to use technology in my classroom but I think I might limit myself. I think that sometimes, it makes the students more "dumb."
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Censoring in the Classroom
Censoring books in the classroom is very foreign to me. I went to a public school where we read a lot of books that were multicultured, had witchcraft, or were very prejudiced. I read Huckleberry Finn in 6th grade and watched the movie as well. I read The Crucible in 11th grade. I also read Night in college. I have had various reading in all my English courses and to my knowledge, I have not heard any student complain about the novel that was being taught and the book was never censored my the teacher or the community. I went to a school that was bi-racial. We did have mainly white students but there were a decent about of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc. There were books taught referred to all the different ethnicities and we never had a problem in my school about teaching the books in class.
In NCTE guideline article, there was a quote that stated, "any work is potentially open to be attacked by someone, somewhere, sometime, for some reason." This quote made me think a little bit. In my school we had a lot of discussions and most were about how racism is bad and how we should not discriminate against other races. The books we read were never attacked but I am sure that people have attacked The Crucible because it has to do with a lot of things that people know is fake but do not want their children to think that it is real. I think that parents and other members of the community need to realize that in the real world there are drugs, premarital sex, under aged drinking, divorce, high school gangs, dropouts, racism, violence, and sensuality. This is brought up in most adolescent books. Most parents that have books dismissed from schools would hate it if there were any of those things in a book that their child was reading. I feel this is wrong because this happens in the real world and to teach students anything different would be lying to them and why should we do that? We obviously are not telling the students to go out and do any of these things but we are teaching them what happens in the real world and not talk about a book that makes everything simple and easy and have nothing to do with the real world. I also think is was stupid that teachers got in trouble for using certain books. Teachers should use books that talk about fears, hopes, joys, and fustrations of people. Students are being denied the freedom to explore ideas and pursue truth wherever and however they wish. I know that there are a lot of schools now that are having censoring issues and I think it is very important for the English department from the school to have a plan what to do if a parent or someone else has an issue with a novel being taught.
In the article about the ripple effect of censorship I was really intrigued by all the things the teachers said about how they are dealing with all the censoring that is happening at schools. A teacher got fired because she used a book called The Shadow Box and it had offensive language and referred to homosexuality. What as teachers should we do when we have parents that are going to get mad at books we teach. I think I would give options to the students. I would have options that did use some offensive language and talk about issues that should be discussed. Then I could have some other choices that have been cencored and approved by the parent's that are having problems. I would let the students first choose their book and then send a note home to the parent if the child chose a book that was not censored to get permission for them to read the book. This sounds a little insane to me, even though it was my idea, because my school never had these issues and this is very new to me how this can happen. I am actually a little afraid because I ready to teach the classics in my classroom like To Kill a Mockingbird and now I think I might get in trouble for doing it from reading this article. This is obviously what the article wanted to convey, but I hope I have the courage to teach my students about the real world. I thought it was really rediculous when a teacher got in trouble because they were going to teach a book in their class and the title of the book made a parent think it was about something bad and it was not. The teacher was told not to teach the book. This is hard for me to believe because how can a parent have this much power and not even have read the book to know what is it about? When using, "A Modest Proposal," in class parents thought the teacher was telling kids to go out and be cannibals which is completely ludicrous because who would believe that. The proposal is supposed to me a satire and a good teacher would explain that before having the students read it. I think it will be hard to teach multicultural literature in the classroom now because censoring is becoming more popular.
In the article about Huckleberry Finn, as a person who wants to be a teacher and has had to read this book and watch the movie in school just like just about everyone else in the country, I was suprised to read this and hear about how this novel is racist and how a lot of people want it censored from the schools. Teachers feel like they have a kinship to the book because they understand what it represents and stands for. When the book was being fought over whether it should be taught or not, students were feeling weird. Friendships between friends of different races were in jeopardy because of this. The students were feeling very strongly with what their parents were saying and were not sure why the African Americans were so upset. Teachers are getting more and more scared of rick taking. This is not a good thing because as we have learned, it can be a good thing to make a student uncomfortable to leave an impression and to have the student think critically, and when teachers stop taking risks, students will stop feeling uncomfortable and start to become the bad kind of an apathetic student. I thought it was interesting how the article talked about how the movie was more effective to a student than the novel itself. I had to read the book first in 6th grade and then had to watch the movie. Since it was so long ago, I can't remember much. I think the movie did add some key points when I read this article and it told me what was added, but I think the book is a true classic and is still being taught in every school for a reason and most of the time it is not attached with a movie. The book may portray African Americans wrong, but I think that a lot of books do this. There are a lot of prejudice books in the world and some were written by a person of the same race the book is stereotyping.
Authors have an amazing job. They can write whatever they want, say whatever they want, and then see if other people like it or not. Some books, like Huckleberry Finn, were very popular and a lot of classes used the book. Even though there are people out there that think it shouldn't be used, there are a lot more that think it should. I loved all the books I got to read in school because even when they talked about different races and I got to the points where I even felt uncomfortable to talk in class, I still thought critically and can still remember a lot from most of the stories. I think all books that people would have censored are some of the most important books that students should encounter because that means their real. That is what scares most people, besided becoming a cannibal or doing witchcraft, but there is parts that are even real from them as well. The Salem witch trials were real and there were people in poverty that were so hungary they could eat a "baby," which is obviously disgusting but that is a saying that I have heard before. When I am a teacher, I want to teach the books that are real and make my students think about the real world. I hope I will not get into trouble though. I may just have to find a school district that is okay with most books taught like mine.
In NCTE guideline article, there was a quote that stated, "any work is potentially open to be attacked by someone, somewhere, sometime, for some reason." This quote made me think a little bit. In my school we had a lot of discussions and most were about how racism is bad and how we should not discriminate against other races. The books we read were never attacked but I am sure that people have attacked The Crucible because it has to do with a lot of things that people know is fake but do not want their children to think that it is real. I think that parents and other members of the community need to realize that in the real world there are drugs, premarital sex, under aged drinking, divorce, high school gangs, dropouts, racism, violence, and sensuality. This is brought up in most adolescent books. Most parents that have books dismissed from schools would hate it if there were any of those things in a book that their child was reading. I feel this is wrong because this happens in the real world and to teach students anything different would be lying to them and why should we do that? We obviously are not telling the students to go out and do any of these things but we are teaching them what happens in the real world and not talk about a book that makes everything simple and easy and have nothing to do with the real world. I also think is was stupid that teachers got in trouble for using certain books. Teachers should use books that talk about fears, hopes, joys, and fustrations of people. Students are being denied the freedom to explore ideas and pursue truth wherever and however they wish. I know that there are a lot of schools now that are having censoring issues and I think it is very important for the English department from the school to have a plan what to do if a parent or someone else has an issue with a novel being taught.
In the article about the ripple effect of censorship I was really intrigued by all the things the teachers said about how they are dealing with all the censoring that is happening at schools. A teacher got fired because she used a book called The Shadow Box and it had offensive language and referred to homosexuality. What as teachers should we do when we have parents that are going to get mad at books we teach. I think I would give options to the students. I would have options that did use some offensive language and talk about issues that should be discussed. Then I could have some other choices that have been cencored and approved by the parent's that are having problems. I would let the students first choose their book and then send a note home to the parent if the child chose a book that was not censored to get permission for them to read the book. This sounds a little insane to me, even though it was my idea, because my school never had these issues and this is very new to me how this can happen. I am actually a little afraid because I ready to teach the classics in my classroom like To Kill a Mockingbird and now I think I might get in trouble for doing it from reading this article. This is obviously what the article wanted to convey, but I hope I have the courage to teach my students about the real world. I thought it was really rediculous when a teacher got in trouble because they were going to teach a book in their class and the title of the book made a parent think it was about something bad and it was not. The teacher was told not to teach the book. This is hard for me to believe because how can a parent have this much power and not even have read the book to know what is it about? When using, "A Modest Proposal," in class parents thought the teacher was telling kids to go out and be cannibals which is completely ludicrous because who would believe that. The proposal is supposed to me a satire and a good teacher would explain that before having the students read it. I think it will be hard to teach multicultural literature in the classroom now because censoring is becoming more popular.
In the article about Huckleberry Finn, as a person who wants to be a teacher and has had to read this book and watch the movie in school just like just about everyone else in the country, I was suprised to read this and hear about how this novel is racist and how a lot of people want it censored from the schools. Teachers feel like they have a kinship to the book because they understand what it represents and stands for. When the book was being fought over whether it should be taught or not, students were feeling weird. Friendships between friends of different races were in jeopardy because of this. The students were feeling very strongly with what their parents were saying and were not sure why the African Americans were so upset. Teachers are getting more and more scared of rick taking. This is not a good thing because as we have learned, it can be a good thing to make a student uncomfortable to leave an impression and to have the student think critically, and when teachers stop taking risks, students will stop feeling uncomfortable and start to become the bad kind of an apathetic student. I thought it was interesting how the article talked about how the movie was more effective to a student than the novel itself. I had to read the book first in 6th grade and then had to watch the movie. Since it was so long ago, I can't remember much. I think the movie did add some key points when I read this article and it told me what was added, but I think the book is a true classic and is still being taught in every school for a reason and most of the time it is not attached with a movie. The book may portray African Americans wrong, but I think that a lot of books do this. There are a lot of prejudice books in the world and some were written by a person of the same race the book is stereotyping.
Authors have an amazing job. They can write whatever they want, say whatever they want, and then see if other people like it or not. Some books, like Huckleberry Finn, were very popular and a lot of classes used the book. Even though there are people out there that think it shouldn't be used, there are a lot more that think it should. I loved all the books I got to read in school because even when they talked about different races and I got to the points where I even felt uncomfortable to talk in class, I still thought critically and can still remember a lot from most of the stories. I think all books that people would have censored are some of the most important books that students should encounter because that means their real. That is what scares most people, besided becoming a cannibal or doing witchcraft, but there is parts that are even real from them as well. The Salem witch trials were real and there were people in poverty that were so hungary they could eat a "baby," which is obviously disgusting but that is a saying that I have heard before. When I am a teacher, I want to teach the books that are real and make my students think about the real world. I hope I will not get into trouble though. I may just have to find a school district that is okay with most books taught like mine.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A Lesson from the Holocaust and Beyond Tolerance
As I was reading the articles this week I was confused at first why I was reading the article "A lesson from the Holocaust," because it seemed to be all about a military school classroom and I did not see how this was relevant to me. As I read on I realized that this article related to me because of the lessons that she used in class could also be used in a regular high school or middle school classroom. This teacher talks a lot about apathy. This is when a student does not participate in class and they follow instructions but do not show passion or curiosity. I always thought this was holding back a student from actually learning. Although by the teacher realizes that you can use apathy as a strategy in the classroom. I really liked the lesson she did by having the students look up a website that has to do with threats to the Americans' freedom of speech. I thought the one student had a point when he asked why there were doing this because they had no freedom of speech in the school because they listen to the people higher than them. Although, I do understand why this is a lesson that should be taught in any classroom because it is really important to show how important the 1st amendment is.
The second article that was about the teacher who was in NYC on 9/11 and how she became a teacher after that day. I liked her strategies when she taught World Literature. I liked that each quarter she would do another destination and would talk about stubjects like she was a history teacher. I do not like history but I still thought what she did was a really good idea. I thought showing the Chinese video to her class was a good strategy too. It was amazing that students got so touched by the story even though they had to read subtitles the whole time. I also like that she did a reflection after that made the students use the story and relate to their own lives. I also like how she used the pictures as well and then made the students use the pictures to do more writing for reflection purposes. I think I am just a fan of the visuals and then reflecting on them using writing and personal thoughts. I also like when she did other destinations she used some modern day examples along with the other things she was teaching to give the students something to recognize completely. I think that is important with a lot of strategies because not all students understand and using a modern day example would probably help. I love the different presentations that her students did at the end of the year because of everything they learned. They all seemed to do something they enjoyed and there were so many different activities for the students to do to connect to the lessons they learned in class. I hope when I am a teacher, I can use stories and the possibly some world connections to get that great of a reaction of the end of the year from my students!
The second article that was about the teacher who was in NYC on 9/11 and how she became a teacher after that day. I liked her strategies when she taught World Literature. I liked that each quarter she would do another destination and would talk about stubjects like she was a history teacher. I do not like history but I still thought what she did was a really good idea. I thought showing the Chinese video to her class was a good strategy too. It was amazing that students got so touched by the story even though they had to read subtitles the whole time. I also like that she did a reflection after that made the students use the story and relate to their own lives. I also like how she used the pictures as well and then made the students use the pictures to do more writing for reflection purposes. I think I am just a fan of the visuals and then reflecting on them using writing and personal thoughts. I also like when she did other destinations she used some modern day examples along with the other things she was teaching to give the students something to recognize completely. I think that is important with a lot of strategies because not all students understand and using a modern day example would probably help. I love the different presentations that her students did at the end of the year because of everything they learned. They all seemed to do something they enjoyed and there were so many different activities for the students to do to connect to the lessons they learned in class. I hope when I am a teacher, I can use stories and the possibly some world connections to get that great of a reaction of the end of the year from my students!
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Standard English, Untracking, and Literature Cirlces
When I read the article on Standard English I hd a lot of thoughts about if i really should be the standard. I liked that right away the author of the article said that they would replace words they did not know how to pronounce with a word they did. I think that is a good strategy to tell students because they will not seem as intimidated when talking. I think that the standard way of speaking is a little too judgemental. I have a problem saying some words myself. I say the word "am" wrong apprently. I never thought I did until a couple weeks ago I said it while practicing a running record in a class and my friend said that it was wrong. We asked the professor and she said it was but we do have to be careful as teachers because there are so many different dialects. There are a lot of catchy sayings that can help students memorize how to say words but there are so many of those that memorizing them can be really difficult. I liked the idea from the article that the students would write everyday about anything they wanted to and then at the end of the week they would polish one off and add more to it to hand in. I also like that they related it to practice for football and a football game so that it can relate the strategy to students that play sports. In the article the teacher has an old student come in and talk about her experience in the class and read aloud some of her recent work. This was a great way to show the students what they will be doing in class and what they can accomplish. I think that great teachers come from having bad teachers because they know what doesn't work and we learn what can work. I also think that Standard English is very important but I think that people's home language it important to who they are and they should accept it. I would say I am a foreigner to the people that came up with Standard English because I don't speak all the words correctly and because I have said them the same way my whole life, I will probably never change.
The second article was about untracking and how it affects students. Tracking can really hurt students and then it will make the student think they can never get better and won't try because they don't see a reason too. When I was in high school we had a weird way of splitting kids up I would say. There was honors classes and AP classes for students that were for students that were way above the average. Then there were my classes. I was smart but not like the ones in honors or AP. We had a mixture of all types of students in there. This is kind of a mixture of tracking and untracking. The honors kids mainly get into the type of discussions that would happen in a college class but in the classes I was in we did stuff that way tedious and i didn't see the point to it. It used to get me angry because I always thought I could have those conversations but I thought they teacher was dumbing it down for the students that were on the "low" side. I would start to feel like I wasn't capable of doing hard work because school never let me. I turned into a shy person in class. The quote from the article that says, "Teachers must see the gifts each student brings to class, not the deficits," it a good way to put how teachers should act in class. We need to remember that all students have a strength somewhere and we need to find it. I liked the different strategies the article gives towards the end of it. I like the Tea Party because it would help most students understand the first chapter or so of the article. I also liked the Dialogue Journal because I think it would be a different way for students to look at the book and they may be able to think critically by doing this. My favorite was the improvisations though. I think students would love to work with their friends and this would also help students that need visuals. I think to make sure students are on task thought, the teacher needs to meet with a group to see how far they are. I think that it is a good idea to teach less books in a year but use short stories and a few books to think deeply and talk more about the book.
When I read the two chapters about literature circles I was thinking about how I could implement this into my classroom. I do agree that students can do good when they have choices, time, responsibility, a little guidance, and a workable structure. Students are not wanting to read because they don't understand the book and then they feel like if they talk in front of the whole class, everyone will think their question is stupid. In chapter 1 it said that students are starting to talk about books online and this is exactly what we do in this class. I thought that was cool to see how it is becoming more popular and I think it is a good way to share our feelings about what we read and we can talk to other students through it as well. I also think in order to promote the literature circles, or reading in general, teachers need to read. How can we tell students to read and do other assignments when we dont do it either. The book did talk about how literature circles would be hard to grade and I agreed when I thought about it. I think the teacher just need observe and facilitate the room and grade according to how well the students participate and how they seem to be improving in their reading. I also think that we need to remember that we can't use role sheets all the time for literature circles. I had a teacher that did that and it became very tedious. I like the quote from chapter 2 that says, "You can't fall in love with books if someone stuffs it down your throat." I understand that some teachers do that and I think we as teachers need to realize when it has been long enough on a book. I liked the idea from chapter two that the teacher could become an equal in the classroom when the class is reading a book that the teacher never read and they can be in a group and discuss and do the same work as the students. I think the students would love to see that and also I think it would be a good way to observe how groups are doing. I think literature circles can be a really good use of time in a classroom as long as it is used properly.
The second article was about untracking and how it affects students. Tracking can really hurt students and then it will make the student think they can never get better and won't try because they don't see a reason too. When I was in high school we had a weird way of splitting kids up I would say. There was honors classes and AP classes for students that were for students that were way above the average. Then there were my classes. I was smart but not like the ones in honors or AP. We had a mixture of all types of students in there. This is kind of a mixture of tracking and untracking. The honors kids mainly get into the type of discussions that would happen in a college class but in the classes I was in we did stuff that way tedious and i didn't see the point to it. It used to get me angry because I always thought I could have those conversations but I thought they teacher was dumbing it down for the students that were on the "low" side. I would start to feel like I wasn't capable of doing hard work because school never let me. I turned into a shy person in class. The quote from the article that says, "Teachers must see the gifts each student brings to class, not the deficits," it a good way to put how teachers should act in class. We need to remember that all students have a strength somewhere and we need to find it. I liked the different strategies the article gives towards the end of it. I like the Tea Party because it would help most students understand the first chapter or so of the article. I also liked the Dialogue Journal because I think it would be a different way for students to look at the book and they may be able to think critically by doing this. My favorite was the improvisations though. I think students would love to work with their friends and this would also help students that need visuals. I think to make sure students are on task thought, the teacher needs to meet with a group to see how far they are. I think that it is a good idea to teach less books in a year but use short stories and a few books to think deeply and talk more about the book.
When I read the two chapters about literature circles I was thinking about how I could implement this into my classroom. I do agree that students can do good when they have choices, time, responsibility, a little guidance, and a workable structure. Students are not wanting to read because they don't understand the book and then they feel like if they talk in front of the whole class, everyone will think their question is stupid. In chapter 1 it said that students are starting to talk about books online and this is exactly what we do in this class. I thought that was cool to see how it is becoming more popular and I think it is a good way to share our feelings about what we read and we can talk to other students through it as well. I also think in order to promote the literature circles, or reading in general, teachers need to read. How can we tell students to read and do other assignments when we dont do it either. The book did talk about how literature circles would be hard to grade and I agreed when I thought about it. I think the teacher just need observe and facilitate the room and grade according to how well the students participate and how they seem to be improving in their reading. I also think that we need to remember that we can't use role sheets all the time for literature circles. I had a teacher that did that and it became very tedious. I like the quote from chapter 2 that says, "You can't fall in love with books if someone stuffs it down your throat." I understand that some teachers do that and I think we as teachers need to realize when it has been long enough on a book. I liked the idea from chapter two that the teacher could become an equal in the classroom when the class is reading a book that the teacher never read and they can be in a group and discuss and do the same work as the students. I think the students would love to see that and also I think it would be a good way to observe how groups are doing. I think literature circles can be a really good use of time in a classroom as long as it is used properly.
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