12/4/17 - Final Blog Post for ENGL 493: The Learning Letter

1. Reflect on the work you’ve completed in the course (book talks, mini-lessons, unit plans)

For each of the major works I completed for ENGL 493 this quarter, I did not give myself enough time to complete them. All my ideas are there. They are all decently well developed and I had a good idea of where I was heading for each project. Yet the execution was rushed. See, I have trouble forcing myself to do anything until stress finally forces me to deal with it. I get a tremendous amount of anxiety whenever I get work like these projects, so I end up putting it off until I absolutely have to deal with it. While procrastinating my work, I tend to think about how I will complete them. This is why the execution of many of my ideas feels rushed, but the ideas themselves are developed enough to create a project from. Such a policy cannot continue forever! Though I think I will still wait on starting projects and allow myself to ponder how I will complete them, I need to start earlier so I can removed a lot of the stress from my life.

2. Reflect on the theories and concepts we explored in readings and discussions.

For the theories and concepts we covered in ENGL 493, most of them were useful in one way or another. Heck, I would say that all the theories had something I could use from them. But that’s just it, I do not have to ascribe to all these theories to get anything from them. Just because I disagree with Freire’s conclusion does not mean his points are not well thought out and useful. I do not have to agree with standards-based grading to take some of the principles to heart.

3. Reflect on how you think your participation in this course has influenced your thinking about yourself as a teacher.

For the course as a whole, I would say my participation has been extremely influential on my own thinking as a teacher. Out of all the classes I have taken at Eastern, I would say this class marks itself as one of the top three. This class was the most practical class I have ever taken at Eastern, influencing my thoughts and actions for much more than simple teaching. I truly think I have become more dedicated from this class, both in becoming a teacher and with my work as a whole.  I am extremely grateful for my time in ENGL 493 and would gladly do it again if it meant I could learn just as much. Granted, I would hope I could hop on top of my projects in a more timely manner, but other than that, I would do this all again.

“Ten minutes later, we stood in front of the warehouse. A German employee, a civilian, the Meister, came to meet us. He paid as much attention to us as would a shopkeeper receiving a delivery of old rags....
There were many Polish civilians here and a few French-women as well. The women silently greeted (some of the workers) with their eyes.”

Why did the Meister pay so little attention to them? What might he have been thinking?
Was there any sort of solidarity between the women and the Jews? Or did the women even care?


“There followed days and nights of traveling. Occasionally, we would pass through German towns. Usually, very early in the morning. German laborers were going to work. They would stop and look at us without surprise.
One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest.”

How could German laborers not be surprised to see Jews stuck in trains? How could it be normal for them?
Why would the laborer toss bread into a wagon? Why take pleasure in others’ pain?

11/27/17 - Graphic Novels in the Classroom

Graphic novels are nothing new in literature. Something of the sort has always existed. What has changed, however, is how we interpret the medium in modern times. Most people view graphic novels like this only as comic books. That’s all graphic novels are to them and that’s all they will ever be. Yet something is happening as of late – that graphic novels are becoming more and more acceptable in the literature community. Take the graphic novel The Watchmen: it wasn’t just a comic meant to go on and sell as many copies as it could for as long as it could until the company could no longer drain any money out of it. Rather, it was a story about the nature of mankind and its tendencies toward depravity – that only lies ever united humanity and that’s just the way we were. Many graphic novels still fit the criteria of children’s comics, but some are legitimately fantastic stories now given new life through this medium.

Heck, sometimes the stories in these graphic novels aren’t original works, but recent adaptations of older ones. Over the last week, our class read the Frankenstein adaptation by Jason Cobley and Declan Shalvey. It was fantastic! As someone who has never read Frankenstein, this graphic novel is pushing me toward reading the original book, which is probably at least part its intention. This method of adapting older texts to graphic novel form gives the book a much wider audience. Our current generation of students are aware of classic novels, but don’t actually give them a chance because they are older texts. Like, students know the basic premise of Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies, Pride and Prejudice, and many other books simply because they are part of the cultural consciousness. Adapting them in part to a graphic novel would easily create interest in these classics.

11/13/17 - Poe, Dread, and Annabel Lee

I have never been a fan of Edgar Allen Poe’s work. He comes across as far too creepy, but a very specific type of creepy: he is extremely specific with creating a sense of dread in readers. Most details Poe includes in his stories are either directly used in the story or are brilliant cases of foreshadowing. So, I agree when others say Poe is a great writer – he certainly is – but the way he writes and the subjects he covers are usually too much for me. Out of the five pieces he wrote which we read this week (The Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher, Cask of Amontillado, Ligeia, and Annabel Lee), I can only get through Annabel Lee in a single sitting. This is probably because Annabel Lee is only a poem while the other four works are short stories.

Death is ever-present in Poe’s work, with a beautiful or mysterious woman dying in every story mentioned except the Cask of Amontillado (since there are only two men in the story, with one killing the other). In Annabel Lee, however, Poe is a bit more reserved. Annabel Lee herself dies tragically, but that’s the end of it. There’s no supernatural force like in Ligeia, no tragic death like in the Fall of the House of Usher, and no sinister reveal like at the end of The Black Cat. Annabel Lee dies and her lover can only like next to her in her tomb each and every night. It’s certainly creepy, but it never goes beyond that, which is extremely unlike Poe, in my opinion. Furthermore, Poe writes how the two of them will eventually be reunited, giving the promise of a happy ending. Since Poe wrote Annabel Lee close to the time of his death, perhaps he was writing about himself – the promise of seeing his wife again.

Whatever the case, Poe will always be remembered for his fascinating obsession with death. And if Annabel Lee really was about his wife, I certainly hope he was reunited with her in whatever life there is to come.

11/10/17 - Sherman Alexie & How to Write About Prejudice

Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Dairy of a Part Time Indian is a novel about the struggles of the fictitious Arnold “Junior” Spirits, a young Spokane Indian born with hydrocephalus. At only 14 years old, he struggles to adapt to his new white school, face discrimination from those on “the rez” and at school, and eventually find his place as a basketball player for his new school, leading to his acceptance.

What stuck out to me the most about this book was how Alexie goes in depth with how Arnold was treated and how he responds. For instance, Alexie does not shy away from having his characters use some very severe racial/homophobic slurs against Arnold. The slurs aren’t censored out, nor do they linger any longer than they need to; Alexie uses such powerful and awful words because that’s exactly what some entitled kids say to others they see as beneath them. I was honestly surprised to see an author use words like that in a young adult novel from 2007. Whether we like it or not, some kids use that kind of language with each other and it’s refreshing to see an author tackle the use of the word “nigger” in a respectful manner.

Discrimination like this in young adult novels often gets censored to the point of uselessness, touched upon briefly so it doesn’t leave an impact, or makes whoever the bigot is into such a caricature of a racist that it comes across as disingenuous. Very few young adult books have such a casual depiction of prejudice. The book doesn’t waste time trying to tell the reader how prejudice is wrong. Instead, the reader is shown how it is wrong through the reactions of the characters – the equivalent of “show, don’t tell” except for a book instead of film. Furthermore, Alexie is not afraid to show Arnold’s own racism. While told through the eyes of a young teen, Alexie gives a compelling analysis of a complex topic which is very rarely touched upon in such detail.

10/23/17 - On Gallagher's "Readicide"

In Kelly Gallagher’s “Readicide”, he writes about the many ways schools are inadvertently driving students away from reading. One of the most interesting points he makes is how write that schools are both increasing the number of standards they need to meet as well as taking traditional literature out of schools in favor of preparing for standardized tests. At first, I thought this couldn’t be the case. That is, until I read some of the standards sophomore history teachers were expected to hold their students to: understanding the underlying philosophies behind Western civilization, give detailed analyses of World War I and II as well as their aftermaths, and explain how most countries fit into the world’s economy.

Now, I will say that I could answer these questions in high school – although that is only because I avidly read through whatever history textbooks we got, so much so that I usually finished reading them sometime in the second month of the school year. I love learning about history; that’s the only reason I could answer the questions. To expect the entire student body to meet these standards, however, is absolutely ridiculous. Personally, I don’t think students could explain these things until they got into college, and most of the history classes I’ve had in college wouldn’t tackle these subjects until they got into the late 200 level.

Schools also have the inverse problem: while many traditionally-taught books are being removed from classrooms, those books which remain are taught to death. As Gallagher puts it, schools chop books up, add worksheets every few minutes during cooking, overcook all the flavor from the book, and serve in bite-sized chunks (never as a full meal, only as a snack). All this says to our students is that we don’t believe in them. We don’t trust them enough to get through a book all on their own and develop their own ideas and opinions on it; no, we must make sure they fully understand it and that no little tidbit is missed. Yes, the student now “knows” whatever book they are reading, but they despise it afterward. What modern America has developed is a sure-fire recipe for ensuring students can pass any test on whatever book we assign them, but ultimately are worse readers for it and lose out on any critical thinking skills they may have developed from reading and understanding the text themselves.

10/18/17 - Tovani and The Art of "Getting It"

In Tovani's book, I Read It, but I Don't Get It, she outlines many of the issues young students have when it comes to reading. Most of them come down to the simple task of getting them to care. Now, simple does not mean easy. It is by no means easy to get students to care about what they read, but it is straightforward. All you have to do is help them relate what they are reading about back to their everyday lives. One of the better examples Tovani gives is when she is asking a male student to read an article about Area 51. The student tries and fails to read the article well, so she tries a different approach. She says to “use outside information”; to add the student’s preexisting background knowledge to the article to make it more relatable for him. And you know what his initial response is? “I thought that would be cheating.” That’s right, cheating. Students have been so conditioned to treat each source of information as its own self-contained bubble that they cannot connect the dots of information even if they are right in front of them. This allows the student to write about things which they might personally disagree with, but then they discard the information whenever they are done using it or file it away under “use only for school”.

Another reason students don’t care about reading is that they are easily confused by the text. This is not to call them stupid, just to say that reading something without really trying to understand what is being said can lead to a lot of confusion. While not the main cause of causing students to not care about reading, it is, in fact, an issue which compounds their already muddied understanding of the text. To counter this, Tovani offers many strategies: make a connection (as discussed in the paragraph above), stop and think about you have read, paraphrase what you’ve just read, or perhaps just increasing or decreasing your speed of reading. Personally, I think it’s amazing to see an author write about confusion among readers, which is often lamented by education but seldom worked on or ever resolved. 

10/16/17 - Racism in the Classroom

The article I chose to use for our Social Justice discourse was “Combating Racism in a Multicultural World: Classroom Ideas”. In this article, the authors write about teachers using other peoples’ cultures to combat the racism that teachers see in certain students. In a history lesson, for example, the class might look at how the Mexican people saw the Mexican-American war develop (among others) and use the war as a means to understand how and why some Mexicans are bitter toward the United States and its citizens. Another way might be to travel to a local museum to learn about the experiences some groups had to go through to get where they are today, such as the Native Americans. Books are also useful tools to discuss past and present racism in the United States, such as ­­To Kill a Mockingbird or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The reason I chose this article above some of the others I found was because the authors had an inherent assumption about students: that only a few students outright desire to be racist or think that racism is an acceptable expression in civil society. Some want to be racist for the sake of being contrarian and edgy, but neither the authors nor I think that is the case for most students – instead, racism tends to be born of ignorance, of a lack of interaction with people of other culture groups.

This is not to say that simple interactions will solve all issues of racism in society, just that it is a good start. What the authors definitely want to avoid is a message which is feel-good, but empty – that “all cultures are interesting and fun, everyone gets along”.  All cultures truly are interesting, but they almost always clash with each other. So instead of pretending all cultures are equally valid and there aren’t any problems between various cultures, just dive right into why certain cultures clash with one another. Try discussing the dichotomy between undocumented Mexican workers and the white working poor, or how urban African Americans are viewed by the media and contemporary society, or even how certain American companies and politicians cultivate and exploit racism for their own benefit. In order to truly combat racism in American classrooms, we need our students to understand why people are racist in the first place, only then can our student move beyond these notions of racism and become better members of society.

Link to article: http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/combating-racism-multicultural-classroom.shtml

10/11/17 - Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Banking, and Adaption vs. Change

Within Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire makes two very specific points that I wish to refute and/or confront. The first is that education should serve to make its student people who change the world instead of learning how to fit into the world. The second is that banking cannot exist in a truly beneficial education setting.

The idea that education should shape its student to change the world is one that I fully support, yet the way Freire describes what comes afterward is what troubles me. He writes that students should not learn how to fit into the world. That right there is an absolute lie. There is no way any given student or even group of students will change the entire world. They may change part of the world, but human nature is immutable; the world will always try to revert to the simpler system, to make people fit into its own framework. Furthermore, students learning how to fit into the world is not inherent negative. As educators, we may want to change the world, but we have to do it in an acceptable and legal framework. As educators, we ourselves adapt to how the education system works and attempt to make do with what we have. In short, it is impossible to avoid being changed by the world while we and our students are changing the world.

Banking alone cannot work in an educational setting. You need input from students to ensure they are learning and to spur on their growth. However, if, like Freire write, we were to take out all banking-style teaching in schools, then education will inevitably suffer greatly. Why? Because certain subjects need banking – certain subject have immutable facts that need to be passed on: math, science, history. Regardless of student input or student opinion, two plus two will always equal four. Despite what Little Susie might say, certain compounds will always have the same exact reaction when they come into contact with other certain compounds. And in history, events will always be the same as they have always been: the Roman Empire collapsed, the United States had a revolution to break free of Britain, and China went communist in the 1930s/40s.

This is not to say that these subjects are exclusively banking-style, only that they and many other subjects need an initial basis of knowledge which may require banking from the teacher.  Once student have this basis of knowledge, then they may move on to problem-posing, to applications of these subjects: how would we use advanced mathematics in our everyday lives, does evolution really work the way we think it does, how did the fall of the Western Roman Empire change the course of European history, etc. We definitely need problem-posing in schools, but to pretend that banking has zero place in the education system is bunk. Nor, as Freire writes, can education depend purely on banking when students need to develop critical thinking skills. Instead there needs to be a health balance of banking-style to problem-posing (probably at a 25-75 ratio or something like that). Education needs these two styles two work in conjunction with each other instead of in opposition.

10/9/17 - Critical Pedagogy and My Own Experiences

In Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom, Duncan-Andrade and Morrell write about how a change toward more student-oriented pedagogy will produce better-educated and well-rounded students. It certainly sounds interesting and I do have a few reservations with the way the authors put their ideas forward, but the other portion that caught my attention was the year in which it was published: 2008. In 2008, I was a sophomore in high school, so I can compare my own experiences with what Duncan-Andrade and Morrell are writing about.

I can wholeheartedly say the wonderful changes the authors of this piece are advocating for were nowhere to be found in my high school. My high school valued traditional/classical curriculum and obedience to the system. There was very little discussion about current events or potential deviations from preapproved curriculum in order to better reach the student body. Heck, our history textbooks did not cover anything after 1994. It served as a good marker for how the school operated, because it certainly did not feel as if curriculum had changed in that school for a good fourteen years. It is a little bit jarring to see people putting forward these ideas on pedagogy when I have zero experience with said ideas and do not have a decent framework to view it from.

I would like to touch on how the authors put forward their ideas on how use popular culture, mainly because I disagree with it. Personally, I don’t think popular culture is worth much at all (neither is the culture of America’s elite, but that’s another point entirely). Duncan-Andrade and Morrell almost come across as idolizing popular culture instead of carefully and thoughtfully using it. Popular culture can be extremely toxic and problematic when applied haphazardly. I realize that the authors were far more careful in their applications of popular culture in the classroom, but I had to draw that from inferences. Plus, drawing from popular culture can politicize a classroom and deepen the divide between students just as easily as help them to realize how they should empathize with each other. Teachers should use popular culture to connect with their students, yes, but a teacher’s ultimate goal should be to help students move beyond their own cultures and view cultures as they truly are. Duncan-Andrade and Morrell indeed write about how students need to provide counter-arguments against the elite’s culture, yet they ultimately do not go far enough and should help students realize they are subject to their own culture’s flaws as well.

Tldr: I cannot relate too well with the Duncan-Andrade and Morrell and their ideas due to my own high school experiences. Popular culture is not as great as the authors make it out to be and students need to be aware of its pitfalls.

10/4/17 - Student Assessment in Light of the Fall of No Child Left Behind

Assessment has gotten a pretty bad rap lately. With the poor implementation of No Child Left Behind and its heavy-handed focus on standardized tests, it’s no wonder that many feel this way about the program, but why have tests as a whole been under attack? Testing and general assessment has always been around in schools and always will be. There will always be a need to determine whether or not students are learning the material they are being taught. The disagreement, then, should not be on whether or not we assess students, but rather on how we assess our students.

As Beach & the other authors of Teaching Literature to Adolescents state, there are two main areas to focus on for assessment – through knowledge of what is written and whether or not our students can apply said knowledge. Both types are necessary in learning and understanding literature. Yet it is often the first style that receives most of the attention. It’s easy to teach, easy to grade, and it works if all we are looking for in our students is a base level understanding of how literature works. But the issue is that we want more from our students. Students need that initial layer of understanding so they can move forward to applying that knowledge toward putting in critical thinking about whatever piece of literature they are reading.

If these are the ways we focus on assessment, then what are the standards by which we assess? The answer is a simple rubric which both the students and the teach hold to. Regardless of what subject is being taught, the rubric needs to be easy to understand and fair to all students, with clear definitions of what consists of above-average work, average work, and sub-standard work. As we have discussed previously in class, holding a student to a high standard does not require standardized tests or sacrificing critical thinking skills. In fact, high standards will inevitably support a student’s academic growth.

9/27/17 - On Common Core

Today, the public’s opinion of public education is some of the lower in our history. Education may go through waves of reform and resistance to reforms, but the public usually doesn’t hold public education in such low regard. These opinions are often expressed as resistance to Common Core, one of the newer waves of reform which is currently the government’s main policy for schools. This is especially frustrating once one realizes just what Common Core’s purpose is. Common Core is a series of general standards students need to be able to complete once they exit a certain grade level, not a dictation of curriculum. It merely tries to direct curriculum toward what it should look like, not predetermine exactly what the curriculum is going to be. It’s more of a compass giving direction than government-micromanaged curriculum.

So then, if Common Core is not the impetus behind the public’s frustrations, why does it receive so much flak? The simple answer is that it’s a government policy people can remember the name of. To discuss the internal politics of an individual school or school district wouldn’t do much to assuage Little Jimmy’s parents about why their child is having trouble at school. Schools don’t want to accept blame, whether it is the teachers or the administration, so Common Core/the federal government acts as an easy scapegoat. “ ‘Why can’t our children get good funding?’ ‘It’s because of Common Core.’ ‘Who is responsible for these inept policies?’ ‘It’s because of Common Core.’ ” It all about saving face. If the government is at fault, then schools/districts can push the blame onto someone else, giving the public a reason to despise Common Core without truly understanding it.

Furthermore, we never hear about when schools are doing okay, average, or slightly above average. No, we only hear of those that are struggling, failing miserably, or one that embodies an underdog-to-modern-success story. If a school does well, then it’s because of dedicated teachers and administrators. If a school struggles, then it’s because of the big, bad, government. We will never hear when Common Core works, only when it doesn’t. 

9/25/17 - Class Post on Discussion as a Way of Teaching

"Discussion as a Way of Teaching" comes across as a very useful and informative piece. It gets right to the point, offering clear and specific advice.  Here’s my take on a few of the ideas it puts forward.

Hatful of Quotes definitely seemed like an excellent way of opening up discussion. By forcing students to listen to the same quotes over and over again, the students can both hear others' perspectives on the matter while simultaneously incorporating those views into their own analysis.

However, I disagree slightly with the piece’s perspective on the limited number of quotes. Such an approach can backfire if applied without forethought. If students are not familiar enough with the subject matter, they might simply agree with what was said previously or restate what was already said without adding anything of what they thought about that matter.

Quotes to Affirm or Challenge was another one that caught my attention. We’ve used this one (with some slight variations) in a few of the classes I’ve taken at Eastern and I love it whenever we do. For instance, students would spend a few minutes after reading a piece in order to find a quote we wanted to use to encapsulate the reading as a whole. Then, after everyone had shared their quote, we went around the classroom talking about whether or not we agreed on the quote and if it still had significance in modern society. Like, if a quote about Freud came up, a student might talk about how we disagreed with him but still recognize that Freud’s theories are still important in his field today.

The last one I’d like to write about will be the Speech Policy. It’s a small thing, but acknowledging your own nervousness (past or present) regarding public speaking and taking the pressure off of having to speak for a teacher’s approval goes an awfully long way. Personally, I would have benefitted tremendously from hearing this in high school. I know I’m not the only one who feels that way, either.