Ashton Mallory ENGL 493

All the way through Elementary and Middle School, whenever my parents went to parent-teacher conferences, my teachers always said "she is a good student, but she is always reading during class". I LOVED reading. I would finish books in a matter of a day sometimes. But since high school and college, I have been reading less and less. Even when I have the time to read (which isn't very often), I don't want to read because I am so burned out. When I am averaging reading 200 pages a week of generally boring or dry material, I don't even want to pick up the most exciting of novels. I think that our education system, as it has been and sometimes continues to be, doesn't allow for enough choice for students. We give them exactly what to read and how to read it, and we don't give students the ability to think and learn about how these texts apply to their own lives. Or we don't allow students to choose their own reading enough. But it isn't just about ch...

What struck me about this book was how much it actually applied to me as a student. During the fake reading section, I found that I was reading about myself. Often, when I don't have time to read, I will skim a text until I make it work. I don't like to do that, but when I don't have an assignment or something to do with the reading, I find that I am less likely to complete the reading. I also have found that in my school setting. When I ask students to read something and don't give them a lens or reason to do it, the words of the reading often go over their head and they can't actually comprehend it.  Giving students a lens through which to read and how to read a text. Don't just give them a vague reason to read ("there will be a test on it"), say "I want you to read this for the different characters and fill out this sheet so we can talk about it tomorrow!". Give students a reason to read and really look for certain aspects of a text, a...

Social justice is a buzzword. Now, I don't mean that in a bad way. But because of the divide in our country, it creates a lot of tension. Social justice is the practice of creating as much equality and equity as possible in society. However, that practice has become equated with people who want socialism and government interference. But, if I teach in a conservative state (Alaska), and I say "I'm teaching social justice in the classroom", I would be in for a world of trouble. So instead,  I think that allowing for students to explore tough issues, and have the building blocks of solving issues they see themselves. For example, when there's an issue in the classroom, I won't interfere. I will allow students to discuss the issue and come to a solution without me taking over the situation unless it is dangerous. See, conservatives and liberals want the same things ultimately. But conservatives want to solve these equality issues for themselves and not have the go...

I fell in love with their format for final presentations. I love when my kids "perform" because I feel like that is a better judge of what they have learned and of how they have learned. I like that students have the option to pick how they want to present the information they have learned. When I plan to do this, I want to tell students at the beginning of the unit, so as they are going through it, they have a lens for what they want to do and the information they want to include. Having the lens for what they want to do can also help students who need scaffolding throughout the lesson. It can adapt to different learning styles, such as kinesthetic or auditory, or visual. I also like the idea of having other students pose questions to the presenter, as that is how it works in college and in the "real world", and students will have a lower affective filter because of their peers rather than the teacher asking questions.

"Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teachers. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teachers she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat." I posted this section because I believe it is the most important for new teachers to understand. When we step into a classroom, this is an easy trap to fall into. Students are not containers to be filled, and the "good students" are not students who need to be filled and are good at following what the teacher wan...

My mentor teacher does not tend to give many "tests" and instead focuses on essays and continual responses from students (with a few small quizzes thrown in). In "Assessing and Evaluating Student Learning", there is a section that discusses evaluating journal and blog responses. My personal philosophy is that students tend to dump everything they know on an objective test and then forget it. I would much rather students read the text and then emotionally respond to it before discussing it in a class (kind of like how we are doing this right now). I believe that students gain more skills from journaling/blog posts. Because at the end of the day, I want students to read the texts, but its less about what they read and more about how they read it. Last year, when I started thinking about what I would like to do for my student teaching lesson, my original idea was to read The Hunger Games  with students and have them do a theme journal, where they work with partners to...

The part I struggle the most with is the introduction of learning targets. Often, when I am starting a lesson, I just say "we are learning about compare and contrast essays today" or "we are going over sentence fragments". But in observations, I have been dinged for not placing the actual learning objective on the board. But since my mentor does not take that step, I also don't so that lessons feel as continuous as possible between her and I. When I have attempted to place the student-friendly learning objective on the board and have students interact with the actual objective, I got funny looks, confused faces, and outright frustration. So I continue to skip that portion of the "necessary" lessons because my students have not been gaining from it. I find that it is often unnecessary in high schools because even without telling students, if I ask them what the learning goal was, they can tell me. Also, in my current makeup of students, I am strugglin...