p-j-edagogy

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 9: Kay Ch. 4 Thoughts

Alright, it’s the end of the day on a Wednesday and I’m sorry if this ends up being a bit rambling, but I’m just gonna chat.

There were two main points that Kay made in this chapter that stood out to me that I want to mention here. The first what his comments on the difference in spheres of influence for students and teachers. I know it came up last quarter, but I think that students frequently feel frustrated by constantly being fed information about the world’s problems without feeling as though they have the ability to make change. Kay points this out in combination with acknowledging that as teachers we have sort of an obvious sphere of influence and way to make change through teaching. We learn about something and pass it on to students, but what do they do? Do they bring that information back home? I know for me it’s absolutely exhausting to try and share troubling news with my family given their tendency to call me names and general inability to listen. I don’t think that it is fair to expect students to have a place to let go of all the literal shit that is shoved onto their plate everyday because many don’t have that place. You might feel awesome about passing on your knowledge of social or political conflicts to students, but where do they go with that information? I don’t want to build off of the Dead Poets Society criticism that Kay mentions because I wrote my Common App essay about that movie (not about wanting to be Keating, but more about Neil) but I don’t think that any of us should strive to embody any of the characters in that movie... and Keating is absolutely the sort to just unload his personal trauma in the classroom and then just hope that students can deal with it.

The other thing that Kay said, or rather quoted someone saying, was the phrase “Teaching is a lifestyle, not a career.” I think I could allow myself to experience every possible human emotion just based on different ways of thinking about that quote. On one hand it makes me frustrated that teachers are disgustingly overworked and underpaid. On another hand it’s inspiring to think about dedicating all of myself to something that also gets to be my job. On another hand it’s embarrassing because I hate the “Ugh, it’s a lifestyle!” response to things. On another hand it really just made me think about how important it is to find a sense of balance both in and out of the classroom. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I frequently find myself overwhelmed with my responsibilities and I’m not even at a point in my life where I am responsible for anyone else. Teachers, whether they like it or not, have a lot of influence over their students, whether they like it or not, and that comes with a lot of emotional burden. I care a lot about other people and this line made me think a lot about how much emotional labor is going to be required of me to connect with and teach a different set of 30 students every hour of the school day. It may be a lifestyle, but that comes with important lifestyle choices that need to be made and I am once again left to think about how important finding a healthy work-life balance is going to be for me in the future.

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 8: Starting “Not Light, but Fire”

Part One

I really appreciated that Kay made this distinction because I have been thinking a lot recently about how easy it is for us to say things and pretend like the act of saying them makes them true but we often forget to follow up with the actions that support an environment like the one that we are claiming to create. I will say that most of my thinking has been about the relationship between expectation and consent before/during sex so a little bit different than like, creating classroom cultures BUT they’re related and I will happily explain this thought if anyone is curious!

That being said, if you want to claim that your classroom is a safe space then, like Kay points out, you need to follow through in making it actually safe. I think that Kay’s notes about treating students like people really is a strong foundation for creating a safe space. If you learn about your students and respect them as people, it is only natural to want to work to keep them safe during tense or difficult moments in their lives and in the classroom. I’m not going to be their mom (holy shit that sounds terrible), but I am going to be (hopefully) a trusted manager in a room that they have to spend time in.

Part Two

I have been told by a lot of people that I am both very trustworthy and easy to talk to. On one hand, that’s awesome in helping to break down some of the barriers between myself and students to help create an environment that values trust and respect; it feels easier to trust or respect someone that you feel comfortable talking to. I think that regardless of how accurate the people telling me those things are it is important to recognize that that is how I am perceived and it will likely mean that I project those things in a classroom space as well. I think that if students get that *vibe* from me then they are going to be more likely to be productive and respectful in the classroom and will be a lot more willing to help me work with the class as a whole to build those feelings of trust and enforce an environment of respect.

Part Three

Bold of you to assume that I can nail down one thing that I am most afraid of but I’ll pick one for the sake of brevity. I think my biggest fear is not knowing the answers to enough questions.

While I have never expected myself to know the answer to every question and there will absolutely be times where I need to say “I don’t know,” I am terrified that my students are going to actually realize that I am just as, if not more, flawed as them and that they are going to not like/respect me as a teacher (or as a person but that’s an entirely different fear).

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 7: Morrell and Beyond

: Part One: I was the most drawn to the Bigger Thomas Trial unit that he outlined. Maybe it’s because I always enjoyed the mock trial/MUN style projects in middle and high school, but I think that this sort of style of engagement with a text is something that I want to encourage in my own classroom and, if it suited a text, something built like this would be something I would love to attempt to adapt for my own uses. The traditional “read a book, write a paper” format is exhausted and students are exhausted by it. Giving students methods of demonstrating their understanding of a text while also getting them to practice rhetoric skills that are often completely ignored in classrooms seems brilliant to me. I think that engaging activities like the mock trail that Morrell described are more fun for students and teachers alike.

Part Two:

Youtube Video Essay: “When Time Became History - The Human Era” by Kurzgesagt

This video functions as a big boy overview of human history but presents it in a brief educational video essay (and isn’t just another Crash Course video to through up on the screen). This is the sort of thing that you may want to show students at the start of a unit as a primer or towards the end of a unit as a reflective look at the biggest of big pictures.

Documentary: Reassemblage (1983)

Okay, I will admit I haven’t actually seen this, but we were talking about it in another class I’m in and it strangely seems like it could fit into a unit looking at how we know what we know. The film features women in rural Senegal but presents them and their lives in a way that doesn’t line up with how media/documentary likes to show “African life.” I think that, based on premise alone, could work well to start conversation about how important it is to be aware of how who is telling a story affect how we understand the story.

Youtube Video Essay: “What is Real? (Plato’s Allegory of the Cave)” by 8-Bit Philosophy

This is the last video essay that I’ll include, but I could have spent hours looking through philosophical video essays and had a blast. This one is a retelling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave using 8-bit (and what appears to be largely early Zelda) images. I think it takes a really heavy and dense text with relevant themes about our knowledge of knowledge and puts it in a much friendlier and easy to access format.

Extract from Book: Don Quixote fighting the windmills in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Not the whole book because I think I would have cried if someone told me I had to pay attention to the monster that is Don Quixote in its entirety, but just focusing on the windmill scene. I think this scene provides students with both a highlight from the novel (classic literature can be fun!) as well as gets them to work with the tension that pops up when you have two characters/people who both know something but one is “wrong.”

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 4: Critical Literacy and the Canon

I am once again here to talk about The Great Gatsby ... which should not be too much of a surprise to anyone who has heard me bring it up on several occasions during the last two quarters.

The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925.

1. Canonicity: Why do you think this text is considered to be part of the canon? Who benefits or gets marginalized from an inclusion of this text in the curriculum?

I think that this text remains a key part of the canon because I would be lying if I failed to admit that it does a really careful job of weaving together a variety of key messages about greed, wealth, obsession, and (of course) the American Dream. It starts conversations about themes that were relevant during publication and have remained important throughout the last almost 100 years, at least for white people in the US. The core characters are all white, fairly wealthy and living the luxurious lives that we are told is the goal.

2. Contexts: What version of a given historical period does this text tell? How would the narrative differ if someone from a different race, gender identity, ethnicity, or class wrote it?

This is the Roaring 20s novel. It paints the picture of a life of luxury, parting, reckless spending, and yearning after people that we can’t have, I mean, that was the life that people wanted to be living and that is the story that we are fed about the time period. We’re going to completely ignore issues of segregation (did you know that lynching wasn’t yet illegal in 1925?), (white) women having only gained the right to vote in 1920, the completely silencing of the LGBTQ+ community, and the forgotten voices of anyone who wasn’t white, male, wealthy, and educated. The Great Gatsby would not be The Great Gatsby if it hadn’t been written by Fitzgerald because just about anyone else would have perhaps paid the slightest bit more attention to the social issues that plagued the nation in the 20s.

3. Literary Elements: What cultural knowledge would someone have to have in order to understand the literary elements (symbols, theme, characterization, etc.) of this text? If the text includes minority characters, are these characters complex or stereotypical?

There is a lot of color symbolism within the text that requires a Western understanding of colors and things that they tend to represent. The main one that comes to mind is the use of white as a symbol for purity and innocence, especially when paired with the women in the text. That aside, much of the understanding of the story and the themes within it require and understanding of American ideals and the narrative of the American Dream which are both things that a reader who is not American may not fully understand without being provided those extra pieces of information. In terms of the second question, I can’t think of a single character who isn’t white ... not that I remember at least.

4. Teacher/Reader: How does your own identity, ability, sexual orientation, age, religion, socioeconomic status, race, etc. shape your reading of this text? In other words, how does your own positionality/privilege affect your perception of this text's value?

As a skinny blonde girl, I can only dream of having as much power over a man as Daisy has over Gatsby. That being said, I definitely enjoy the novel more because I am able to see the flaws in the characters in the same way that I would see them in myself. This is a strange luxury, but not a luxury afforded by people whose identities differ from my own. As an angry little socialist, I am able to see the critique of hoarding wealth and having your life driven by the pursuit of money. Once again, a luxury not afforded by those who don’t have knowledge of these sorts of system of power. Instead of feeling excluded by the text on the very basis of its parts, I am excluded from the text for the reasons that it wants me to feel excluded. I’m not sure if that makes sense exactly, but it works in my head.

5. Assessments: Would a summative assessment on this text allow students to think about ways to enact social change beyond the classroom? Would it allow them to move past the four corners of the text and even a personal connection with the text to understand how this text has greater significance to current issues and events?

I think that a lot of the modern theories about this text are what make it so wonderful for a critical approach. It might be because I spent a year doing just that and exploring why everyone hates Daisy and explaining how we definitely shouldn’t hate her for the reasons that we do. But there are rich theories regarding Nick and Gatsby’s relationship and the homoerotic subtext that exists surrounding them. I’ve also recently discovered a world of theories about Gatsby’s race/ethnicity and reading the text through the lens of him hiding his ethnicity and being white-passing. I’m not entirely sure how much I buy into all of the theories, but there is scholarship out there that explores these ideas.

Having student choose a specific critical approach (feminist, Marxist, etc.) and exploring a key scene or character through that lens could lead to rich thought about how both people and literature can exist in ways that we may not understand on out first glance. I don’t think that the characters within the novel need to have their actions justified, most of them suck and I hate them, but having students approach a text that they have likely already been exposed to through a lens that they may not expect can lead to rich critical thinking and discussion that gives them tools to explore the world around them.

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 1 (again!): Failures of CCSSs

1. In Ch. 3 of In the Best Interest of Students, Gallagher shares eight concerns he has related to the ways in which the CCSS anchor reading standards fall short. Choose ONE of these concerns that you also share with Gallagher, and discuss why you share it. Then, brainstorm 3-5 CONCRETE curricular choices and/or classroom activities you could use with secondary students that would assist you in addressing this concern in your future classroom.

The one that stood out to me the most was Concern 3 about recreational reading. As a kid, I was constantly reading anywhere from 1-5 books for fun and it makes my heart ache that for so many people the only reading they do is the reading they have to do (and even then, not everyone is doing that reading). I want to at least attempt to create a classroom environment that encourages and supports recreational reading and here are at least preliminary ideas of how I could do that:

1. Gallagher mentions having students keep a reading log and I am going to steal that idea from him. I love the idea of supporting and rewarding students for reading in their free time, but making it an activity that isn’t tied to a grade. For some students, finding time to read outside of the classroom isn’t possible and I don’t want to punish them for not being able to read, but I would love to create a system that rewards recreational reading.

2. Utilizing student opinion in text selection. While this isn’t *technically* a recreational move, I think that allowing students to help choose the books that we look at as a class can be incredibly beneficially in supporting and encouraging them to actually read them. It’s one thing is the uncool English teacher tells them they have to read something, but I think that involving students in those decisions can help them to both look into the sorts of books that they want to read and keep them involved in the activities and assignments that come along with reading the text for class.

3. Give them time to read. Holy shit, I loved when we had time in class to actually just sit and read and it wasn’t followed by poking and prodding and asking questions. Like, to be able to have dedicated time to just sit with a book and read it and not have to think about other assignments or starting getting anxious about what I was going to say about what I read that would make me sound smart. I feel like “silent reading time” is looked at as being a waste of class time because you aren’t necessarily “doing anything” but you are doing something, you’re reading and you’re reading in a way that is safe and comfortable and hopefully at least a little bit fun.

4. Book recommendations. Whether they’re coming from me or from other students, I think that having space on the wall or the white board or even a moment to share with the class any book recommendations that people have could be a simple way to encourage reading. Again, no need for a grade to be attached to it, but just a way for people to excite each other about reading. I know I would have loved to hear what my teachers and peers were reading in high school.

2. Re-familiarize yourself with the NCTE/IRA standards linked below, paying careful attention to the ones focused on reading and literature. Keeping in mind Gallagher's discussion of the pros and cons of the CCSS reading standards in Ch. 2-3, compare and contrast the CCSS reading standards with the NCTE/IRA reading standards. Which align more with your teaching philosophy regarding reading and literature? Why? Do the NCTE/IRA reading standards help address some of what Gallagher believes the CCSS reading standards get wrong?

I definitely think that I prefer the NCTE standards to the CCSS standards in regards to reading. I love that they use the phrase “wide range” ... a lot. I think that is a big shortcoming in the CCSS standards and in the way that a lot of people approach the English classroom and it’s something that in both my personal and professional life I hope to work to move away from. Not everyone enjoys the same types of texts and I don’t think that everyone should love the exact same books. For many years I found myself trying to read books that would make me look smart (not sure who exactly I was trying to impress) and it has been only in the last year or two that I’ve really embraced trying a wider variety of genres and authors and types of texts and it has been one of the healthiest ways to reconnect with reading that I have found for myself. How else was I supposed to realize that I love Eastern European literature and non-fiction texts on food history? I certainly didn’t pick those ones up in the high school classroom.

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 9: Finishing the Quarter “Strong”

I think that Boyd approaches the idea of care from the same base level of showing interest and being invested in the well-being of your students, but then pushes that to go from passive to active. I think that the traditional notion of “care” is rooted in a sort of passive approach to other people with the implication of you caring about them being rooted in a sort of passive state of being whereas Boyd elevates that into critical caring which I think puts it both into the active state and into a level that requires generally more thought behind the caring. 

The traditional idea of care might manifest as the blanket desire for all the students in your class to enjoy the content, get an A, and get along as a class. Critical caring asks that educators look more critically at the way that the engage with their students, attempt to understand their needs, and the type of support that they offer and when they offer it. Not every student is going to react the same way to the same forms of support, and some forms of support are going to be actively harmful for certain students whereas they will be essential for others. It’s not easy or convenient to individualize care and support, but I think that it is essential to create a truly healthy classroom environment.

I think that at the core, critical care pedagogy is theoretically the same across disciplines. However, it definitely manifests in different ways depending on the subject. In ELA classrooms this often looks like allowing students to take risks at their own pace and at their own comfort level, supporting and accepting forms of language outside of mainstream academic English, and/or making conscious text choices. In a science classroom it might be more aligned with the way that you approach structuring lab class periods or the expectation for pre/post-labs. Honestly, I never thought about how someone would go about preparing to be a science teacher and that was kinda strange to think about how I’m doing all this work to learn how to teach English, but wow math or science feel like they would be an entirely different game.

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 7: Poem and Reflection

Poem:

What the hell kind of name is PJ?

I was born as a nickname

And I’ll probably die as a nickname

What else am I supposed to do with Patricia Joyce?

It’s 2020 yet when I introduce myself the room is transported

To 1920 and suddenly I’m no younger than my grandmothers

Their first and middle names combined

To name a child born at the start of a millennium

My mother chopped off everything by the first letters

Slapped them on me

And said, “Good luck introducing yourself!”

TJ, CJ, DJ, EJ, but somehow never PJ

Clarifying over the phone that, “It’s like pajamas, ya know?”

(Often a poor attempt to lighten a serious phone call;

it leaves an awkward silence lingering)

Better than the alternatives

Trish, Pat, Patty, Joy, Trisha

Makes my eardrums itch thinking about it so I suppose I’ll settle

I’ll be a 20 something with the names of both a child and a grandma

Still wondering, what the hell I’m supposed to do with a name like

PJ

Reflection

I am torn with bringing activities like these into a classroom because while I absolutely see the value and the ability for students to creatively engage with their identity and background, I also feel like something like this tends to shut students down a bit. I love poetry, like, I spent 2 years working on a poetry zine with a friend from high school and I have always loved writing and creating poems and seeing the fun and plan that exists in poetry. However, when I went in and looked at what the blog post was exactly I was like, “oh god I don’t want to think about this right now.” I think that is largely because of the fact that this week is a bit of a living hell, but I also think that sometimes presenting something as simple as having students engage with their name or place of birth can feel a little too fill in the blanks. This is where I feel torn though.

For many students, poetry isn’t fun and it isn’t something that they want to get really creative with and explore identity and ways to “play” with voice and language and for them this might be a great way to get them to start exploring those options. Like, there is a very set goal to achieve and then still a bit of space that they have to step in and explore. However, for students who maybe don’t like having that knowledge of the end goal or who don’t like having a very set limit on what to write it might feel a bit suffocating and limiting in terms of choice.

Overall, I think that encouraging creative writing is a good thing and perhaps shifting the emphasis on the product that is created to looking at the process that students engage with to get there or reflection after the writing is done is a better way for me to justify approaching poetry assignments like these in a classroom or maybe I’m just thinking a bit too much about my own thoughts about writing a poem about my name and less about the big picture. Hard to say...

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 6: Multigenre Writing

Mmmmm I have quite a few thoughts about this TedTalk and I’m going to answer the questions for discussion, but I do “apologize” if I get a little sidetracked.

1. Robinson discusses the the state of being "fully alive" as one that stems from aesthetic experiences allowing our senses to operate at their peak.  How can we use multigenre writing in the classroom as a way to wake our students up?  How can we help our students investigate writing as aesthetic experience?

See, this is where my *thoughts* mostly sit because I was really bothered by his points about ADHD and other illnesses that make handling stimulation and overstimulation being sort of “made up,” which although he said he wasn’t going to say ... that’s really kinda what he was saying.  The idea that being medicated for your mental illness will “put you to sleep,” as Robinson says, or change who you are as a person is a big part of why people are afraid to seek out medication. Like, pushing the idea that medicating your children is a problem in a “made up epidemic” is deeply troubling as someone who has gone my entire life with my parents refusing to help me and doctors not being willing or able to give me anything to help has quite honestly made a lot of my life a living hell. I really could go on about this because I honestly paused the TedTalk and had to vent to my boyfriend about it for a while because it stung a little more than I was expecting. However, I’m not going to use this as a space to solely vent about the stigma that continues to surround mental health.

That all being said, I can support the idea of shifting our approach to students experiences in the classroom towards being an aesthetic and genuinely exciting experience. Creating multigenre writing experiences that center on topics, forms, situations, etc. that students recognize, understand, and enjoy and then blending those with the writing that is still required to be taught in the classroom can take an assignment that may shut students out and invite them in.

2. Robinson argues that we need to think differently about human capacity and the capacity for divergent thinking.  How do you see yourself using multigenre writing with your future students as a way to support their capacity for divergent thinking?

I love the idea giving students choice in their approach to a task or goal in the classroom. Not everyone learns best in the same way and not everyone is going to benefit from being assigned to write a five paragraph essay on a book. Allowing students to engage with forms and genres that they understand, value, and see as being the best path to deeper understanding of a topic seems like the obvious choice when creating formative or summative assignments. While I do see the value in being able to teach students how to create well organized and thoughtful argumentative or persuasive essays, there is also a lot value in using a multigenre approach to understanding that allows for more freedom, more creativity, a variety of approaches to the same goal, and the chance for individual or collaborative work. I am a product of the environment that I was raised both in and out of the classroom and my approach to teaching reflects that, but I am no way the expert on how best to have an individual student reach a goal and I never will be. There are going to be (a lot of) moments where the best plan of action might be to step back and let a student forge their own path, even if that means “breaking the rules” of a given genre-based assignment.

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 4: Exploring Lesson Plans

1. Characteristics of the lesson planning genre: List and briefly describe 3-5 characteristics of the genre of lesson planning that you noticed across all of the lesson plans you explored (my examples on our module as well as others you found in your investigation). 

- Divided sections/topic: All of the lesson plans I looked at separated each element of the plan into either a labelled section or into its own section in a graphic organization tool.

- Timeline: A breakdown of the days/hours/minutes/etc. that would be required for the lesson or its elements

- Standard(s) being met: Included the CCSSs that the lesson plan covered

- List of materials, texts, etc. needed: Some included more than others, but all of them included a list of various things that both the teacher and students would need for the lesson.

2. Differences across lesson plan models and structures: List and briefly describe 3-5 differences you noticed across the different lesson plans you explored (my examples on our module as well as others you found in your investigation).

- Method of organization: It seemed that there were two basic schools of organization being either a list format or a table style graphic organizer. Many of the templates and full examples that I looked at combined elements of both of these systems while some followed exclusively one or the other

- Specificity of timeline: Some of the lesson plans gave just a general “here’s what to do on each day” timeline while others broke down each activity into how long to allot for it within a given class meeting

- Detail included outside of the instructional plan: This is kind of a vague difference, but it sort of catches all of the variation in goals for the lesson, types of standards included, homework, and other information about the overall lesson that was included in the plan

2. Criteria for Excellence in Lesson Planning: Based on the lesson plans you explored as well as your own thinking about what determines a successful lesson plan, list 3-5 characteristics, traits, or evidence of effectiveness in this genre.

Variety in activities: Most of the lesson plans I looked at were for just single day or two long lessons, but a couple were larger plans for teaching an entire text or topic and in those I found myself most impressed with the variety of ways to get students thinking and engaged in the overall topic

Balance of teacher involvement: Lessons where every activity is the teacher talking and lecturing and showing examples seemed to be generally less engaging and interesting than lessons where there were blocked off sections for teachers to be less involved in a lecture and shift the focus to student work

Adaptability: While I don’t think that this is something that necessarily would show up in the lesson plan itself, being able to adapt either parts of the lesson or move things around or delete them entirely depending on student reaction, efficacy of the activity, or other unforeseen circumstances seems like it has to kind of be key

5. Potential Difficulties: List 3-5 difficulties that you project you may face as a pre-service teacher working within this genre. 

Miscommunication of goals: I think that going into a lesson or activity with a goal or goals and not being able to effectively communicate those goals to students whether it be because of the natural variability in what students get from a lesson

Misjudgment of timing: While there are certain elements of a lesson plan that you can predict the timing of pretty accurately, things like estimating the time it will take students to complete a discussion or brainstorm can be a lot more difficult to estimate and a misjudgment could alter the timing of the rest of the lesson plan

Misjudgment of the efficacy of a mini lecture: I know that I assume that when I say something that everyone automatically understands what I mean, but this is usually not the case at all and if there is a key idea or topic in the mini lecture that I am not able to accurately get across to students it would kinda derail the entire lesson.

Just not knowing where to start!: This is the one that I worry the most about because there are so many possibilities of things to teach even within the constraints of CCSS and state/district expectations and requirements, like, how do you even pick a place to start when everything is so interesting and amazing.

6. Question: Pose a question or concern you have about the process of lesson planning, the differing structure of lesson plans, etc. This will shape my mini-lectures on lesson planning! 

What are some of the key things to keep in mind regarding organization of lesson plan elements? The variety in the examples was both comforting and overwhelming, but what are some of the main thoughts that you have when choosing a method to organize.

[p-j-edagogy]

Week 3: Genre Brainstorming

1. Context: I wanted to focus on brainstorming to create a plan for a personal narrative or memoir style writing assignment directed at students in 11th or 12th grade specifically. The end goal would be an appropriately formatted final product that fits the basic conventions of whatever medium the student chose. Length, format, and style notes would be specific to the form that the student chose to engage with.

2. Genre: Personal narrative/memoir

3. Criteria for Excellence in the Genre: I would be looking for:

use of the narrative to convey emotion and feeling in an effective manner, 

a justifiably chosen topic or memory that the narrative describes, 

use of the form as an active element in the narrative through understanding of the conventions involved, 

and clarity in the ideas and scenes described through appropriate word choice and sentence structure (read: not necessarily standardized English). 

4. Activities that Will Likely Lead to Success: 

- Individual or pair brainstorming of ideas to write about

- Familiarization of different forms that could be utilized through providing resources and examples of different narratives

- Providing resources regarding the basics of conventions for forms such as poetry, comics, video, photo essay, etc.

- Free writing during the prewrite stages to allow students to work with a number of their brainstormed ideas before committing to one to fully flesh out

- Set aside class time for prewriting including possible mini instruction on possible prewrite activities/strategies that students could engage in

5. Potential Difficulties: 

- Lack of comfort with sharing a personal memory or moment

- Feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities for a topic or style

- Lack of comfort with engaging in alternative forms that extend outside of the traditional essay style narrative

6. Pre-Addressing a Difficulty: 

Looking specifically at students who may feel uncomfortable by being asked to write about a personal memory or event, a factor that could contribute to feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities of topics, I think that showing examples or encouraging the choice of a seemingly minute topic could be helpful. Reminding students that classroom assignments don’t need to be a place to discuss trauma and that there is no pressure from the idea of a personal narrative to share something deeply personal, they could write about their drive or walk to school and have it be just as valuable and likely feel safer to share.

[p-j-edagogy]

Week Two: Foundations

I really enjoyed the reading and being able to put the term “banking” to experiences in the classroom that I think are fairly universal. I think most everyone has sat down and had the teacher just lecture at them for the duration of class and then use tests that emphasize memorization as the sole determination of understanding of the material. The banking method more specifically refers to viewing education with the teacher’s role being to provide information to their passive students who then receive the “deposits” of knowledge. It places the two in opposition and implies that the teacher is the one in control of the classroom space where the students just exist to learn, or more specifically to memorize and take at face value.

One of the main ways that I could see this taking space in a language arts classroom is in situations where a teacher provides students with themes or messages that they should be taking from a text. In my own experience, I have found myself frustrated when a teacher tells me what I should be getting from a text instead of allowing me to notice patterns and trends and come to my own conclusions. There is often a silent rule that the teacher gets to decide what is important within a piece of literature and that then becomes what the class discusses and/or writes about. This effectively silences those who end up taking something different from the writing, who value other topics, or who feel strongly about certain themes or ideas. 

I think that creating assignments that allow students to choose from either a wide range of topics or create a topic of their own creates the most opportunity for conversation and collaboration. I cannot explain how much I despised receiving a prompt or thesis to write about instead of being able to choose and create my own assignment based on the thoughts and ideas that I valued and found interesting. By giving students the freedom to choose what they want to discuss you are showing that you value their thoughts, creating a space for individualized discussion, and promoting their own analysis and critical thinking skills.

Additionally, I think that both hooks and Freire look at a sense of identity, both in student and teacher, as a core element of education that needs to be valued and appreciated. I don’t know how exactly I want to emphasize my own belief of its importance, but I want one of the foundational pieces of my approach to teaching to be in the value of individual identity within a collective space.