Learning Letter

Dear Dr. Agriss,

                This course, paired with Dr. Torgerson’s course on Teaching the Composition Process kicked my butt. Amazingly, despite the fact that I never want to pile on a workload like this ever again, I came away feeling far more prepared for work as a Teacher than ever before. I have felt a fundamental change in me, namely in my levels of preparedness for teaching. Time management was the only thing keeping me from falling apart at the seams. My only wish was that I could have had some semblance of free time. Between the reading and the projects, however, for both classes… I had no social life to speak of, and no time to work on personal projects.

                The reading, however, was probably the most rewarding part. While the Unit Plan was a crash course in planning classes, the reading introduced me to a lot of pedagogical texts and a lot of young adult text that students are currently working with. It allowed me to see myself both as a teacher and a student, which was an amazing feeling. I wasn’t just learning how to teach, I was feeling myself become, albeit slowly, a teacher myself. Reading the young adult text was both fun, and put me back into the High-School reading mentality, considering what students might be thinking as they read.

                The pedagogical texts all had something new for me to consider, even if I didn’t really take to them. The Team-Teaching stuff, for instance, wasn’t quite my cup-of-tea, but I learned a lot about it and how it could be implemented. I only wish our teaching pairs could have had more opportunity and time to teach using some of the other methods other than co-teaching. It would have been really interesting to see that stuff in action.

                The Book-Talk was probably my favorite thing about this class. I bought so many books because of it and learned a lot about my fellow students’ taste in books. It was really interesting to see the kind of variety that emerged. Since I already reflected on the Unit Plan and the Mini-Lesson in previous texts, I’m not going to retread them. All I’m going to say is that despite having my butt kicked, it was worth it in the end. In part due to the relief of never having to have that done to me again in the same fashion. Thank you for warning me at the beginning of class that taking these two courses together was a real killer.

Sincerely,

Natalie Ehret-Austin

Journal #14: Romiet and Juleo

                Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the 9^th grade standard. It is the romanticized marriage and subsequent suicide of two infatuated, hormonal teenagers; the star-crossed lovers who will make most people of the modern day think “wherefore” means “where” and not “why?” I love this play, but only for the comedic value it has. There are many more plays by Shakespeare that I think substitute in nicely and work just as well as a replacement. I feel as though most High School teachers I had took Shakespeare way too seriously, and taught him seriously, when they really should have monopolized on his excellent sense of humor.

                Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, but it is treated like a romance when it should really, truly be handled as a comedy. Romeo and Juliet are painted by pop-culture as the quintessential romantic couple, an ideal to strive for. So many songs sing about Romeo and Juliet, and so many television shows reference the young couple. You would think that it wasn’t the 9^th grade standard given how few people seem to know the real story. I would love to teach a Romeo and Juliet unit that handles it comically, perhaps going so far as having students act the parts with over-dramatization. I have no doubt in my mind that Shakespeare thought the whole idea was funny as he wrote it, mostly due to the fact that he has such a keen understanding of human nature and human behavior that he almost always wielded it for humor’s sake.

                All this aside, I think that Romeo and Juliet is important to teach. It is a part of our cultural canon, and gives us all something to relate to and understand because we all learned it as freshmen. I can’t imagine it not being a part of High School curriculum, it’s just so ingrained.

                

Journal #13: In The Name Of God

Horrific and eye-opening, In The Name Of God, takes me where I did not want to go. The last time I read an Islamic title (Palace Walk, by Naguib Mahfouz), I was spellbound, and it was no different here. Culturally significant and timely, this novel frightened me perhaps as much as it should have. It left me feeling weird, bad-weird, enlightened-and-scared-weird, and I’m not sure if I should be happy about that or not. I don’t want to think of myself as too conservative, but I would be extremely hesitant to have this book taught in my classroom. However, I think the fact that it is so uncomfortable is what makes it worth being taught in the classroom. Would students be ready for it, is my question.

Nadia gives us a look down the slippery slope from being a devout believer to a radical fundamentalist. It could happen to anyone who believed hard enough in something, who was afraid, and who was misdirected and led on by someone. It certainly doesn’t make its message in support of becoming a suicide-bomber, but it is believable. The fact that it’s believable is what makes it so chilling, the fact that it holds truth is what makes it so unnerving.

I’m torn, I know the sort of backlash that comes with a book like this, especially with the fear of ISIS beating down the doors, and talking heads like Donald Trump spout nonsense about banning all Muslims from entering the country until we “figure out what the heck is going on.” America is more afraid of an attack on American soil now than they were in 2007 when this book was originally released, and I only fear the climate will get worse. Parents who do not know the contents of this book will fear that we’re spreading Islamic propaganda, or that we’re sympathizing with terrorism. That is not the case with this novel, and as uncomfortable as it is to read, I think everyone probably should. Its warning message is too important to overlook.

Journal #12: Maus

Maus, by Art Spiegelman, is a great stand-alone work for helping reluctant readers get into reading in school. Struggling readers can feel like they are getting something deep out of this thick graphic novel, and will be able to have deep and critical discussion about its events and themes, as well as how the medium proves to be effective for such a tale. Maus addresses deep topics, utilizing a medium that is very accessible to all students. It doesn’t need to stand alone, however. Maus would be an excellent supplemental work, one that could be paired with another Young Adult novel with similar themes (for instance, “The Book Thief.”) The latter option is actually a great way to help promote cross-text discussion that addresses CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.7: “Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment.”

Being that it handles a lot of darker themes, including suicide and, well, Nazi-Germany, it would be important to talk to students ahead of time. Pre-reading would be important to make sure students have some historical background, especially because the cute pictures and animals might be misleading. Due to the fact that Maus handles a lot of heavy subjects and doesn’t necessarily paint Art’s father in a positive light, it could get some backlash from parents. I don’t know if parents would complain about a graphic novel being taught in class if they knew what it was about and the maturity level of it. It could also open up discussion about students’ own experience with some of the more personal issues.
What excites me most is that Maus would be a perfect as supplemental reading in a 20^th Century History class. It would certainly get students engaged in discussions about Nazi Germany. Not only that, but because it is actually based on a true story (unlike “The Book Thief,”) it makes it that much more poignant for readers. I would absolutely love to integrate this into a history course, even more than I would an English course. There are endless possibilities.

Journal #11: The Absolute Truth About The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a heart-warming book about identity, acceptance, and the usual coming-of-age business. Being that this title is extremely controversial, I’d like to explain why parents are against it, and put forth a counter-argument to the dissenters who believe that this book is inappropriate for people the same age as the protagonist, Arnold.

Citing the profanity and sexual themes (including masturbation), parents across the country have gotten up in arms about the way it treats the behaviors of a 14 year old boy and his friend. They have also taken issue with the book’s depictions of racism, violence, bullying, and general religious irreverence (particularly anti-Christian themes). Written from the point of view of an American Indian, it is also said to reinforce negative stereotypes about native life. I have noticed, however, these complaints (usually) come from white people. That said, the author is an Indian who probably has more experience with the lifestyle than they do.

To the parents concerned about the material your students are reading, I’m about to rock your world. People masturbate, and children curse. It happens. Your kids probably do both of those things, and sheltering them from it is not exactly going to stop them. To say that this material being added to curriculum condones these behaviors also implies that Romeo and Juliet promotes marrying young and committing suicide, and that Lord of the Flies promotes children forming weird cults while running around on an island naked as a jay bird and murdering one another.

I would consider using this novel in my curriculum when I become a teacher. It is no worse than the other novels currently being used, (1984 has sex scenes, even a moment where the main character fantasizes about raping and murdering another character). In fact, it relates more to modern students than the other novels would, and certainly touches on themes that students deal with every day in their high school lives. I think the cultural importance of this story outweighs its “negatives,” as it has a lot to teach about friendship and acceptance. That, and it aggressively condemns alcohol abuse. What parent doesn’t want their children steered clear of abusing alcohol, especially when they know their kids will be going to college soon? Jeepers, that’s important.

Fangirl - Book Talk Selection

                                                                                            The Story

• Fangirl is a coming-of-age tale about an internet famous fanfiction writer by the name of Cath Avery (or as she’s better known in the Simon Snow fandom, Magicath.)
• Cath is a freshman at the University of Nebraska struggling to adjust to University life, especially when it comes to her crippling introversion and lack of writing experience outside of fanfiction.
• She also struggles with boys, again because she has little romantic experience outside of fanfiction.
• All the while she’s worrying about her extroverted party-girl twin sister Wren, her bi-polar father who is on the verge of an empty-nest meltdown, and the fact that her fanfiction needs to be finished before the last Simon Snow book is published!

The Characters

• Cather – The Protagonist:  Socially awkward and learning new things about herself all the time, struggling through her first year of college and with the social demands placed upon her.
• Wren – The Doppelgänger:  Cather’s twin who views college as a party. She is constantly going out and seemingly avoiding the sister she had been inseparable from all her life.
• Mr. Avery (Dad) – The Single Father:  Divorced and works in marketing, he is also psychologically unstable. Still absolutely loving and supportive, despite his weird quirks and staying up all night.
• Levi – The Love Interest:  All smiles all the time, he’s brilliant intellectually but a struggling reader. Indomitably optimistic and shines his light on everyone, especially Cath. She’s hopeless to resist.
• Reagan – The Roommate:  Scary, but in a good way. Helps Cather come out of her shell a little and proves herself to be a true friend time and again. Expresses her caring through tough love and bluntness.
• Nick – The Red Herring: The first boy Cath really notices, but proves to be nothing more than that. An excellent writing partner, however.

Why?

• Modern Coming of Age Romance Novel (Published 2013)
• Easy to Read and Extremely Relatable
• Great for Reluctant Readers! (7-12^th Grade)
• Depicts University Life and Social Situations Realistically
• Shines Light on Nerd Culture, Specifically Fanfiction Writers
• Addresses Relevant Modern Issues:
• Divorce and Abandonment
• Alcohol Abuse
• Psychological Disorders
• Introversion, Shyness, Social Anxiety, Escapism
• Sexual Awakening

In The Classroom

·         Fangirl  has a Lexile Level of 570, and could be taught to grades 7-12. Due to its content, however, it would be best suited for later grades and students who will be able to handle the material and content more maturely. That, and the protagonist is just beginning college, making the story more relatable for students preparing for University life.

• Realistic/Contemporary Fiction Unit – which consists of students writing journal entries on blogs, making predictions about what happens next, and ends with students writing their own “fanfiction“ about the characters in the novel.
• Narrative Unit – The book acts as a supplemental tale where students write personal narratives early in the unit that they can later “spin their webs around” to create something new, different, and fictional. All fiction starts with truth!
• Creative Writing Unit – Cath is an author struggling with fiction writing while taking a Fiction-Writing Class. The novel touches a lot on the writing process and even has examples of writing projects students could complete during the course of the reading (leaving a lot of room at the end for completing a final short-story!)

Obstacles

·         This book uses a lot of foul language, talks a lot about gay fanfiction, and deals a lot with burgeoning sexual desire. Alcohol (alcoholism), drugs, and smoking also make frequent appearances, though these are depicted as relatively negative. Parents are not painted perfectly, but Mr. Avery means well, despite needing to be taken care of as much as his children do.

• Administrator Response – I can imagine very little push-back. This is no worse than many of the YA books commonly placed in curriculum, and by no means does it glorify the partying college lifestyle. The morals are sound, and it relates well to students. The merits outweigh the issues listed above.
• Parent Response – Due to the way parents are depicted, as well as the homosexual fanfiction fantasies, the sexual tension, and strong language, parents might find this book a little controversial.
• Student Response – The book is large (434 pages), and appears daunting, especially when students discover this is a romance novel. After the initial eye-rolls and groans of dissent, however, I know students will get involved and enjoy Fangirl.

Journal #10: Readicide

While reading Readicide, by Kelly Gallagher, I couldn’t stop being reminded of I Read It, But I Don’t Get It. There are a lot of similar themes in both of these books, and they both had a lot of interesting tips about how to get students interested in reading. Some of the methods were similar as well. What stood out to me, though, was in Chapter 4 and talking about the “Sweet Spot” of not over or under-teaching a literary text. This stuck particularly with me because I saw myself in his daughter Devin, thinking of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a “Lousy Classic.” I saw the merit in the book, but it was chunked apart to the point that, by the time I got to the scenes with Tom Sawyer, I was right alongside Mark Twain with wanting it to end already. In retrospect I loved the story up until the parts with Tom Sawyer, but I digress. The point is, I’ve been a part of the system that over-teaches literary text. I’ve also been in classes that hit the “Sweet Spot,” and cherish those books to this day.

                I’ve never had experience with an under-taught text, I’ve only ever been exhausted by To Kill a Mockingbird, Hamlet, and Huckleberry Finn. The thing I found so striking is that it mentioned Grapes of Wrath being assigned without a direction, without a purpose. This again brought me back to Tovani’s instructions for how to help poor readers. When students have a purpose for reading, they’re more likely to be engaged in their reading and enjoy it. Reading becomes less of a chore than a real learning experience. It becomes a puzzle, a scavenger hunt for information that serves your purpose.  Giving a student purpose lets them know what they should look for, it helps them frame their ideas and guide their active reading and internal questions about the text.

                Readicide discusses how “teaching to the test” is one of the major factors that kills reading. In his book Teaching Adolescent Writers, this is his conclusion about writing as well. We should be teaching students, not tests. Yes, assessment should exist, and it should reflect what students should know, but schooling shouldn’t be like a factory. The factory model of school is soul-crushing, and squelches the love of reading and writing.

Journal #9: I Read It, and I Get It

In Cris Tovani’s I Read It, But I Don’t Get It, she brings up a lot of important points about the complex nature of reading. It isn’t just about knowing how to read words, it’s about communicating with the text to produce meaning. It is true that all of us have experienced reading without comprehending, utilizing only the voice in our heads that Tovani described as the adult voice in Charlie Brown “Wahwah, wah wah!” I’m guilty of skimming or letting my mind wander sometimes, but like she said, good readers catch themselves and put themselves back on track. When students cannot derive meaning from text at all, it is our job as teachers to intervene and model good reading strategies to help students become good readers.

Tovani uses many great examples of students’ roadblocks when it comes to reading comprehension, and addresses every one she brings up with great ease. She doesn’t just have one way to address the problems either, she has lists of alternatives. These are easy to implement, but require a lot of commitment from the teacher. Teachers have to admit their own flaws and show that they don’t always know the answers, that even good readers don’t get everything the first time they read something.

This reading kept reminding me of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and a book by Kelly Gallagher called Teaching Adolescent Writers. All three of these books deal with humanizing the teacher and the students. Both Gallagher and Tovani talk about not simply teaching the curriculum but teaching the student. It is much less about assigning work than it is about making sure students leave your class with practical skills that will help them in the real world. Even if you can’t get to all the assigned curriculum, it’s more important that the students have the skills they need to succeed. Students need to see the real-world connections of their school work and the intersectionality of their classes. This is why all teachers, not just English teachers, should take responsibility for making sure students are literate and able to read and write properly. We can’t just let those students fall behind and stay behind.

When I tell my family I’ll be helping students learn how to read, they often tell me that I’m going to be a High School teacher and thus, the students should already know how to read. They don’t seem to realize that there are students in High School who are simply poor readers. This book and Readicide both illustrated that a large number of High School students just don’t have the level of literacy they should. The schools are failing them because it’s expected that they should already know how to read properly. It’s been made so easy to get through school without actually reading that “fake reading” persists well into college in some cases. Tovani admitted that she herself fake read in college.

I Read It, But I Don’t Get It was an eye-opener.

Journal #8: The Necessity of Social Justice in the Classroom

In my personal exploration of the Social Justice subject, I stumbled upon an Article on JSTOR entitled Do Educators Have a Responsibility to Raise Social Justice Issues in the Classroom? This seemed I was looking for and dove into it. It discussed the imperative of addressing Social Justice, but being sensitive to the groups with which you are discussing the topics. It is not to say you need to change your opinions for the groups you’re talking to, but to be aware of how certain subjects will affect your students, and how these subjects will be handled and viewed by different groups of people. 

From what I’ve gathered reading the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom, education is trying to do what it was said to do. Education is trying to become the great equalizer. It is our goal to empower our youth for enacting change, making them feel like they can make a difference, and ultimately making the world a better place for all people. Certainly, through education we can introduce students to the realities of social injustice, but are all teachers equipped fully to handle the sort of turbulence the discussions of these subjects cause? 

I fully agree that discussions of social justice in the classroom are important. We need to be able to discuss inequality and aim to rectify it. We need to address racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, body autonomy, bigotry, and so on if we hope to create equality for the future. English and Social Studies classes are the most suited for these types of discussion, because these two subjects often bring up civil/human rights. In addition, students need to feel like they can communicate their opinions in a safe place, and school should be one of those safe places. They need environments that nurture discussion on these topics, because without them they may feel like they have no hope to change the system if no one is willing to listen. In addition, students with privilege should be subject to the opinions of others. Seeing different viewpoints and understanding why other people hold these viewpoints is key in thoroughly developing one’s own opinions.

The article I found:

Kohli, Wendy et al.. “Do Educators Have a Responsibility to Raise Social Justice Issues in the Classroom?”. Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy 14.1 (2003): 137–146. Web.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/43587172

Journal #7: Utilizing Culture to Make Literature Relevant

In reading Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom, I found the ways that they chose to welcome diversity and culture into the classroom to be particularly interesting. Primarily, I found the push for use of pop-culture to be both expected and a strange mixture of exciting and disheartening. Drawing parallels between Hip-Hop and classical poetry isn’t a new concept, necessarily, but while I’m not against it I feel a little sad that students just don’t have natural interest in classic literature. It’s likely due to the fact that, as the handout said, the time periods from which they came are dismissible by modern standards. They just don’t see the modern applications without the pop-culture nudges.

I always have found that, to me, the older literature is more exciting to read. It’s a gateway to the struggles and concerns of the past, and it’s culturally different from what I’m used to in modern times. While the struggles are similar, the values are slightly shifted in one direction or another. This causes readers to think about what social constraints dictated people of the past. That all being said, social constraints affect modern people just as much, which leaves much more room for discussion because the modern issues are going on as we speak. It’s reasonable to assume that students aren’t going to have the same passion for the past as I do, and I have to mold my curriculum around my students and not my own likes.

The important thing to take away is that discussing modern issues is imperative if we seek to enact change. Many of the issues of the past have either been resolved, or have changed in some way that make them less relevant to the modern references. Utilizing modern references as a lens to see older texts can frame them in ways that make them relevant to modern issues. Ultimately, it isn’t about simply enjoying the books, but having an interaction with them that is valuable to in some way. If pop culture is required for students to have a meaningful connection with the past, then that’s what must be done.

Journal #6: The Common Sense of Teaching

Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire was striking, and I can easily imagine why it took the world by storm when it was published. Education has always been posed as “the great equalizer,” an assumption that education is what drives off oppression and lifts the oppressed out from underfoot. Education has been framed as the path out of poverty as well. The truth as Freire explained it is that education is simply not enough, because depending on the type of education it may very well perpetuate oppression. I’ve certainly been in lecture courses where teachers utilized the “banking” method of teaching. Critical thinking is lacking in this method, and I’m pleased that Common Core is stepping up to try to fix this problem.

                I was reminded of the famous Common Sense by Thomas Payne while reading this. Freire used a lot of the same shocking methods to ‘jolt’ readers awake. Comparing the banking concept of education to necrophilia, for instance, is on par with the sort of comparisons made in Common Sense. You come away with the same feelings reading both texts, the sense of enlightenment and the desire to act. Freire’s answer, of course, is problem-posing education. Education that promotes discourse, and teachers learning from students just as students should learn from teachers. The environment promoted in this work is one where we as humans acknowledge that we are incomplete animals and that our common goal should be to advance ourselves. I love this, I love everything about teachers being willing to admit that they don’t have all the answers. I agree that students and teachers should all be working together to achieve betterment.

                Discussion classroom models are a very easy way to implement this kind of teaching. Instead of presentation and lecture, teachers need the input an answers from students. Students need to be engaged in their learning. Most importantly, students are not objects, they are not receptacles for meaningless facts. If a student memorizes a fact without understanding why things are that way, they are not truly knowledgeable. If students do not question facts, they are not likely to question authority either. If they do not question facts, they cannot hope to problem solve on their own.

                

Journal #5: Assessing Critical Thinking and Hiding Zeroes

Student growth is important, but how we assess that growth when working with teaching literature is a bit tough. It isn’t like math and science, where concepts are relatively concrete and either you know how to apply them or you don’t. Learning literature is about reading and comprehension, and assessing it is done by observing how students apply what they’ve read in various different ways. In Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?, we’re confronted with different ways of assessing students’ learning of literature, and the most obvious take-away is that tests that assess critical thinking are better for students than simply memorizing facts for a summative test in the written work.

This made me feel particularly good, because I carried my experience with discussions/essay tests over into my Three Week Lesson Plan. From personal experience, I always learned literature the best through class discussion and being assured that no wrong answers exist if you can find support for your claim in the text. It helps students maintain their uniqueness, it allows students to apply critical thinking and their own experiences to the text. After all, any one book can be read thousands of different ways based on who’s reading it. Expecting students to think there’s only one right answer is unfair to them and literature as a whole.

I was also greatly struck by the Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook. Primarily the way it talked about motivating students by lifting out zeroes in cumulative scores. Zeroes are devastating to grades, and morale if those zeroes are left in when showing students their progress. Missed tests and assignments do still keep their zeroes, but letting students know where they’d be without them is a good way to let them get a sense of their actual grades and progress. Demotivation leads to students dropping out, and not being conscious of zeroes could inadvertently make students feel like they aren’t smart or good enough to keep working hard in academics.

It seemed like they were proposing ungraded homework to potentially help with the zeroes issue, which I think could prove to be a double-edged sword. On one hand students who struggle getting homework done and turned in (I forgot homework often in High School) would have better grades without all the zeroes. On the other hand, we can’t guarantee that students will do the homework that’s given to them if they aren’t given incentive to through grading. I’m still not sure how a teacher would motivate students to do something they don’t have to do when most kids in secondary school are more concerned with extra-curricular activities or spending time with friends.

Journal #4: The Handy-Dandy California State Universities ERWC Assignment Template

I am both disappointed and amused about my thought processes while reading about the California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template. Part of me wishes I had read it before I wrote my course introduction draft, but the other part of me is pleased to know that I followed the majority of the ideas listed in the template. It gave me further inspiration for my project, however, making me all the more eager to work on it.

That all being said, the way the Assignment Template was laid out was extremely helpful, including a lot of information in the margins about Common Core prerequisites and how these different activities help students learn. While it was about Informational Text, it could easily be applied to literature, primarily young-adult novels. Due to the fact that young-adult novels try to make a point, inform, or convince readers to think about the answers to hard questions, many of these guidelines can be used. So much of these assignments involve critical thinking as well, which is so important for our young people to know how to do. Not only does it prepare them for college, but it also prepares them for life. After all, thinking critically helps keep people from being taken advantage of.

The outlines for writing were also very helpful because they make sure students are considering the content of their work while revising, not just their surface grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation errors. When I was in school, teachers didn’t really have us consider our content problems, they simply had students peer review for technical errors. In the case of these assignment templates, they ask the students to ask themselves about who their audience is and what the purpose of their writing is. It also attempts to move us away from the standard “one and done” draft process that we see so often in Middle to High School classrooms. Students need to feel comfortable writing multiple drafts, because that’s how real writers do it.

Journal #3: Team Teaching: Apprehension and Consideration

I am probably the only one who feels this way, but after reading both Leavitt’s “Team Teaching: Benefits and Challenges” and Friend and Cook’s “Some Approaches to Team Teaching,” Team Teaching feels like it would be a chore. I enjoy doing group projects, but doing a group project every day for a whole quarter seems like too much extra frustration. In the case of student-teaching and apprenticeship, it makes sense that student teachers must test-run their skills and actually practice good teaching in the classroom. Team Teaching is necessary in these cases to allow for the student teacher to get the most out of their mentor teacher’s experience while also getting direct experience themselves. However, in the case of two professors Team Teaching a college course: it sounds like it would be weird for both the teachers and the students who are used to a lecture style course with one professor. However, this is only my point of view, and it’s clear that those who are participating in this kind of Team Teaching are having a ball doing it. There must be something I’m missing.

Among the things I did like about the concept of Team Teaching in a college setting was the modeling of polite debate and/or playing devil’s advocate with the lecturer as outlined in “Benefits and Challenges.” I’m sure it’s quite indulgent for the two experts in the room, but it is also a great way for students to see more than one side of an argument while witnessing a live formal debate between two respected teachers. Scholars often disagree on the details, and being able to witness the back-and-forth between them live would be invaluable as a student. I worry that students may need a lot of encouragement to join in, however, because the show alone would be just too interesting to interrupt.

Further, of the types of Team Teaching that made the most sense, this made the most sense to me as being the most beneficial. Teachers with different expertise, different understanding, and different backgrounds bringing their varied points of view to the table is a great way to promote discussion. If teachers have differing opinions, then it makes students more comfortable in their own differing opinions. Perhaps even the teachers will learn a thing or two. I know that, as a teacher, I don’t ever want to stop learning.

Journal #2: Blind Fear and Common Core

Common Core Standards had always been a subject of fear for me, mostly because of all the strange myths that circulated when states first began adopting it. It was around the time I had fully decided I was going to become a teacher, and this sudden shake-up of the system was unnerving. I had no experience with Common Core, I graduated right before any sort of measures were taken to change curriculum. The word “Standards” made me think of standardized testing, something I had been very familiar with. I started having visions of cardboard cut-out lesson plans, robotic teaching, and the shriveling of my creative spirit. I would be struck with occasional thrills of terror at the thought of not being able to use my creativity in my lesson plans. After all, my favorite teachers had always been those who deviated from the norm, who were less strict and chose learning activities which were creative and fun. Things went grey, but I was holding out that Common Core would just be a fad and somehow another change was quick on its heels.
After having read “The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12: Origins, Goals, and Challenges” and previous articles like it, I have far less fear than before. I’ve come to understand that the standards are a benchmark, not some prescribed curriculum that is entirely uniform across the country. I love how this specific article addressed the fact that all students are different, and that a standardized form of teaching is detrimental to students of different cultural background or different interest levels in subjects. It addresses the need for creativity, and nurturing teachers’ love of teaching as much as nurturing students’ love of learning. I’ve been soothed, I feel comfortable and even excited about Common Core because it offers meaningful goals for teachers and students to reach together that will have them prepared for their academic future.
Recently, I’ve heard a lot of non-teachers, typically political pundits discussing Common Core. They’ve been saying a lot of the same things I’ve heard over the last several years and it brings up the need for adults to self-educate when they don’t know or understand something. As much as I disagreed with the pundits on most things they manage to put the fear in people who don’t understand. I’ve been asked about my feelings on Common Core, being a future teacher, and my answer is always, “Students need goals and so do teachers.”

Journal #1 on "Discussion in a Democratic Society Chapter 1"

While reading the first chapter of Discussion in a Democratic Society, it brought to mind a lot of my own memories of class discussions in High School, College, and University. My experiences have been varied and invaluable in the sense that, in their variance, I can see what has been done right by my fellow students, and what went terribly wrong. This chapter brings up the need for students to feel comfortable expressing their opinions and experiences. The kinds of environments that helped students in my classes feel this way are always more relaxed, and often had amiable teachers with good senses of humor. Having been in classrooms that both excel and fail in these key areas highlight the importance of knowing how to encourage conversation and pointed discussion.

Fear of judgment has always been something that held me back, and in High School I was much less concerned about the judgment of my teachers than I was of the judgment of other students. Building an environment that enthusiastically supports the opinions and discussions of everyone in a classroom while also encouraging students to broaden their horizons and consider other points of view is no easy feat. It should, however, be the goal of every teacher. Open-door policies where students can feel comfortable discussing ideas further after class or via email are also very good ideas for encouraging students and making their ideas seem valued.

Happily, the difficulties of discussion were not ignored in the chapter. Discussions get heated, and sometimes they turn into arguments which leave a teacher to moderate or play devil’s advocate. It is likely, however, that a comforting environment where everyone’s opinion is appreciated will help to quell the distress and upset that comes from the debate environment. In my experience, I always found class debate fruitful, even when assigned to positions I did not personally hold. Learning about the reasons for why people feel the way they do encourages respect and understanding of different ideals and cultures. Exposure to the multiplicity of the world and its lack of clear-cut answers is daunting, but also comforting in its own way. It prepares students for the real world where gray-areas and openness to change of opinion are more visible.