American Born Chinese

It's hard to say how a book will be gauged by students when you give them a book. Some may say that all books given to them by teachers makes it automatically a "bad" book and therefore they do not want to read it or even put forth effort towards understanding any part of it. American Born Chinese has a twist that I have not yet seen in the classroom. It is a graphic novel which I thought was only something people read in their free time. This brings in a whole new type of reading into the classroom to encourage kids to actually read. I liked graphic novels in high school and I would have loved to read one for class because I found them more fun and interactive. I find that reading with pictures makes reading more fun for those reading.

With our students we could have them take a passage from another book or even something they wrote themselves and create their own graphic novel. It would be fun and the students would have to take the details from the story to illustrate their graphic novel.

American Born Chinese is about kids in school and so this allows students to see more situations than the ones that they are in. I find that so many books that I read in high school were "outdated" and I didn't like that I could not easily relate with what was going on with the characters in the story. I wanted to relate but found it often to difficult because they were from another time and place. With American Born Chinese it was all about real life, I felt.

Night

Night is a tragically sad story about a boy and what he sees during life in an internment camp, that I believe is a very good story to teach in either an English or a History class. This book sheds light on how life was inside the camps and give a deeper look into life of people in other countries. It gives the fact that it is based off real life events and what one boy/man remembers of his life then. This story gives students a look at a different time and a different place that they may not understand. This book also comes from a person their age, which allows them to connect with the writer more.

In a classroom you could couple this with a book like Schindler's List to show a different look. Also other books or movies that give a deeper look. The students could write a paper on why the Germans thought they were right or maybe on why the Jews thought about why this was happening. Lots of things could be done with a text like this. Like you could do a journal activity where the student must keep a track of there thought through the story or even through the quarter. You could also have this as a Friday reading each week until it was finished and write a response on what they heard and felt. This book is and easy and quick read with lots of emotion.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a hard thing to cover in a classroom. It is hard to read when you are alone and even if you do happen to read it you have a hard time understanding what is being said. For students to even be able to sit through this play is if you make it into a reading exercise. Like assign people to be different parts and read through it as a class. If you did this you would have to stop along the way and discuss what is being said so that the students can understand it better. Another way that you could do is watch a play and discuss it as you go along to help further understanding.

This is a good story to share with high school kids because the characters in the play are their age and they could possibly be able to relate a lot better with this. This story shows that sometimes with passion we forget to think and sometimes things get out of hand. It is important to share with our students that things can work out in a different way than how it did for Romeo and Juliet.

This story has been over used in my opinion and more and more stories are coming out now that explain in easier words what this story says. Maybe that is considered dumbing down the reading for the students but I see it as adapting the story type to the time. Reading a book is a lot easier than reading a play. When I read it I could not make it through the play without hearing voices reading off each part.

TPA

From my limited work with the Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) I have found that I really like it. The way that it lays everything you need out in such a concise way that anyone can pick it up and use it. The TPA lays everything out for you starting with what are the goals and what the students should already know to how to assess the lesson at the end. Two things that are really becoming more important in lesson planning are the students and their world around them. We really need to know who are students are. Once we know who we are teaching we can find out how they learn and what drives them to learn. If you just go in with a lesson and don’t understand who you are teaching then you will fall short in conveying the information to them and possibly have to repeat yourself a few times. Students are not robots and they don’t all learn the same way. Some students may have similar learning styles but not every student will learn the assignment or lesson the same exact way.

The second thing is the conditions that might be around the planning and delivering. A student might understand what you are saying in class but when they get home they may not have time to do the work you assign or they might pick up the book and try to get a deeper meaning and will get completely lost. What teachers have to understand is that no matter what our students are doing their minds are not always right there. I am as guilty of this as any because I am thinking of the fight I had with my husband while reading a book for class and by the end of it I don’t understand what I read or what we are even supposed to being doing with the information. Our students have similar issues as this. They have things that are more important to them than a silly assignment.

Access Tool

Silent Reading Record

Read for 30 minutes and then stop and complete the following:

1. What did you read? (Include title and page numbers.)

I read Little Women. My starting page was 13 and my ending page was 22.

2. In four or more sentences summarize what you read.

The four girls awoke on Christmas morning to find sweet little books left under their pillows from their mother, and these books tell the girls how to be good woman. Each girl decides to read a little of their book each morning when they first wake up. After they all read, they all go downstairs for breakfast and to wait for their mother to come home so that they can give her their gifts. When the mother gets home she tells the girls of a poor starving family that they should donate their breakfast to. The girls happily give up their big breakfast to help the other family. Later in the day after they have a wonderful dinner the girls throw a play in the upstairs of their home. After the play they go downstairs to find that the older man who lived next door left them sweets to say Merry Christmas.

3. As you were reading, what were you thinking? Write at least four sentences. Did you make any connections? What were you wondering? What opinions do you have about what you read?

I was thinking about the life back when this book was written and what it was like to be poorer than most. I wonder if I would be willing to give up my food so that another family could eat. I also wonder why more people can't be as good as this family. We are not taught these kind of ideals now. I read a lot of books about women finding their own way.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It Part 1

We all at some point have read something for school or fake read something for school just to get it done to say that we did it, but in reality we don't really know what we read. I have sat there and read something for class and not gotten it. I think it is important to talk our students about what the purpose of reading this assignment is. We also need their input on what is going to be important for them to get to by the end of the reading. I have read and tried to get where the teacher says to but sometimes I get lost and when I ask for the teacher to clearify something they tell me that it is explained in the text. We need to talk to our students because sometimes the reading to a student will be as clear as mud.

Somethings that we really need to talk to our students about is the "seven strategies used by successful readers" before we send them out to read some assignments. After a while the students will start to pick up on what to do while reading and will eventually understand what to look for in their own reading.

A couple of questions that I developed from this reading are: do we feed them too much during class?Can you be a good reader and a word caller? When do you stop teaching reading?

A Response-Based Approach

There is a “horizon of possibilities” in everything we read. We find that when we read we think about what we are reading and then think about what we have read. In this we are expanding our initial thoughts about the story and then grow and expand what we know. When we think critically about what we read we can then learn new concepts and new ways of life. This writer explains that in education it is important to encourage our students to think consistently about what they are reading and what they are seeing day to day. However, the application of this concept is having a little difficulty. Like with any new concept we have to take some time to learn how to tell students about it and how to use it day to day.

The concept of “exploring a horizon of possibilities” means to “live through experience.” The idea of living through experience is something we all do but we don’t really think too much about it. If we were then we would see that we not only live through our experiences but we also gleam information off of other people and their experiences. We also gleam information from people in the books that we read. In a way we live the experience with the people in the books. In this way we are learning from their experiences and can find a “horizon of possibilities” through books. Books open up so many experiences that we cannot or would not want to try. For example you could read a story from the civil war times and learn what life was really like for people back then. I find that when I read I take a step into the world that I am reading and I try to take a few steps in the writers or narrators footsteps. 

Social Justice in the Classroom

There is a teacher who is teaching in revolutionary ways. She wrote an article called "The Power of the Connected Classroom: Why and How I'm Teaching Social Justice". She is making the argument that the time is now and that we need to start at a young age teaching students that things like the Holocaust are happening today. She says that she teaches about the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide in her English classroom for more than just the interest in the stories. She also teaches them because it leads into talking about what is happening in our world today. People die every day in other countries because they are not given the proper medicines or because they are getting worked really hard in sweat shops every day because of unfair working conditions. This teacher asks her students: “what are you going to do about it?” She believes that the young people of today will influence our future and she is right. We need to make them aware of what is really going on in the world and where all our stuff comes from.

What she does is called “A week of immersion in the real world”. During this time she shows them the conditions of a sweat shop where most of their jeans come from. She also shows where bottled water and soda comes from. Through these observations students can learn what is going on out in the world beyond their everyday. We need to make an impact in a child’s life today with showing them what is going on in the world today. Maybe these kids can find a way to break free of what is going on in our world and bring it to a new way. A new way of living and a new way of thinking would change the world as we know it.

Critical Pedagogy

It is important to use visuals in the classroom to help get the point of a lesson across to the students. Visuals can help illustrate something that students are having a hard time understanding. With race you can show specific situations and things from history. Also you can use movies to show different interactions and reactions to specific situations. Using movies or videos in the classroom can give the students another way to interpret a specific work. It also shows students what can be changed in translation or even lost in translation. Like if you watch the Harry Potter series and you did not read them then you would have no idea how much difference they had between the two.

A difference in time will also change how the story will be interpreted. If you read something that was written during the civil war now you would have a harder time understanding it from our view point with out closer observation and study. With greater study we can see the difference between thought now and then but if you just tell a student to read a book about life back then and leave it with little discussion and visual observation the students will lose something in translation.

Critical Pedagogy Reader

What time is the right time to say something and when is it time not to say anything at all? If teachers don’t talk about important topics that students are hearing about everyday then how will they think of the teacher? If the teacher talks about politics every day and tells the students what their opinions are is that not tell the students how to think? I think that it is important that teachers talk about some topics with their students; however, there are some topics that should be left out of the classroom. If a teacher can talk about a topic without making their personal feelings about the topic evident than it would be ok for the teacher to talk about it to an extent; if a teacher ever starts telling the students how to think and act then the teacher needs to move away from that topic.

This connects to teachers being oppressors. If a teacher pushes their ideals on their students then they are oppressing the students from pushing out of what they are being taught. We should encourage students to collect lots of information from lots of different sources before settling on one point of view. Without allowing the students to obtain more information we are telling them their there is only one set of information is correct and that all other opinions are not worthwhile. Students are teachers and teachers are students. We all are learning every day and sometimes we can learn from each other in a deeper way than we even thought was possible. A teacher can give or take away a passion for learning, but a student can give a passion to teachers that they did not even know about in the first place. It is important for there to be common ground between teacher and student.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed Number 2

In the education system we are moving from one type of teaching to a new type. The old type of teaching would be classified under the “banking concept” and the new way of teaching would be classified under the concept of growth in each person. The “banking concept” draws from the lines that each student is a vault that must be filled up. The teacher is the one giving the information to the student. The student is given no room to learn for themselves or to grow off of what they have been taught. The student is being oppressed into thinking what is called the “norm.” The students are told that what they are learning is what everyone else is doing and there for should not try to build beyond that. This way of teaching is oppression. The teacher believes that they are doing well by teaching the students the ways of the world but in reality the teachers are hurting the student’s growth.

If the student and the teacher share in the role of who is the teacher and who is the student then each will be growing. Growth means life and when each person is growing and learning then they are pushing to be free of oppression and to be who they want to be. Oppression means death and if the students do not push to become more than what they are told to be then they will stay as they are. Growth is something that should be a huge part of education. The new way of teaching allows the students to grow off of what they already know and build new foundations for later in life. This new way of education is humanistic and will allow growth in the world. The “banking concept” is trying to be pushed out of education and it takes all of us to make sure that it will stay out of education.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

In the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” I learn about characteristic of the oppressed and the oppressor. The oppressed are people who allow other people to control their actions and behaviors. The oppressors are the ones holding people back and telling them how to think and act. In a way a person can be both an oppressor and the oppressed. When you are oppressed you hold yourself back from reaching your full potential. In this way you are stopping yourself from moving past what you have always been told and you stay under the control of someone else. Your mind is telling you that you cannot break free from the oppressor because you don’t know what to do if you did. In a way each student is oppressed. They are told by their parents and other people who surround them what they should think, say, and do. It is impossible for them to break free without help.

This is where a teacher comes in. A teacher is supposed to be the “humanizing pedagogy” and allow the students to break free from oppression and find their own independence. In a language arts class we can encourage students to read new books and to write what is in their heart and their head. We can show the students what it is like to think what they want and to find the ground to step out on their own and stand up against oppression. Teachers are supposed to encourage students to find their own voice and break free of oppression. Together the student and teacher unveil the world and release the writer and reader inside each student. Without someone to show them the way the oppressor will find no way to break free. Who better to teach someone how to break free from oppression but someone who was once oppressed.

Common Core Standards

The Common Core Standards hold so much more than I thought they could. They cover information from citing information to analysis and that is only with the reading. I picked 8^th grade standards to look at because I am considering high school along with middle school and 8^th grade is close to high school. I looked at a couple different standards within the 8^th grade standards and I found it very interesting that they give key ideas and details that you should be focusing on but then give you information that shows you how it corresponds with college and career readiness. It is important to instill in our students that the skills that we are teaching them will be used later in life and that we are not just giving them information that we want them to have. It is important to understand how you will use these skills later in life.

When we get to college or career we need to know these skills and some people get to college and they are not sure of how to cite or find the key ideas and details. These are skills that then have to be taught to the new college students. We need to get these skills taught to the kids so that they can excel when they get into college or if they want to just go straight into a job. When we read we need to understand the meanings of what we are reading. Even if it is just a book we are reading for fun or if we are reading a training book we have to be able to understand and apply what we read to our real lives. I think that the Common Core Standards are giving teachers an outline of what should be taught and asking teachers to build off this and help their students to learn more.

Discussion in a Democratic Society

Discussions are very important for growth and learning. In the article it says “discussion is a particularly wonderful way to explore supposedly settled questions and to develop a fuller appreciation for the multiplicity of human experience and knowledge.” To me this shows that without discussion we think we have a great understanding of the world around us, however, this is closed minded and we really have no way of looking at the world other than what we know. When we spend time with others and talk about things we think we know then we learn all sorts of things that could help us grow. However, it does not just take talk to other people because we also have to listen to what others have to say. We all have the right to express our views but we also need to listen in order to grow. By giving knowledge you also need to open yourself up to knowledge being given. It cannot just be you talking and then tuning out when the other talks.

When we grow up we all have someone taking care of us in some way. Now as adults we are the ones “taking care of us” but without that person taking care of us we would have died long ago. This applies to discussion because you need other people to share their knowledge and experiences to help you grow more. In a way they are “taking care” of our knowledge and intellectual growth.  It is also natural to share what we know with the people that are around us. If we didn't share than we would not be communicating with anyone. It is so much fun to talk to people and to learn from them, even if at the time of the discussion you don’t agree with what they are saying you should still listen and maybe you can change your mind or learn something new. Personal growth is about learning.

Introductory Letter Assignment

My name is Candice La Vanway, also known as Candice Lindner. I am a student in the class Teaching Literature to Adolescents. I am currently a teacher candidate. I am looking forward to spending more time in the classroom. I have not been placed into a classroom yet. Most of my observations in the classrooms in watching people I know who are teachers work their classroom. I have not spent a lot of time in the classroom yet and what I have is just observational. I have a small fear of talking in public and I am hoping that I will be able to overcome that fear quickly and easily. I am hoping also that I will be able to make my students as excited about English as I am. This course will help me find books that are good for older kids and will also help me find ways to get kids reading. I also want to find ways of making assignments and discussions from the books we read. Ever since I was in the 10th grade I have had a passion for books and reading. I have not always been a good reader but I have always wanted to read new book and love to find new stories. I find that the way to get to know someone is to find out what kind of books interest them and why. You can pick up a book and read it but not get excited about any part of it; however, you can pick up another book and find that you love the story and the plot. Each reader has spent time finding books that make them excited to read and I can honestly say that I don't have just one favorite book because I have many favorite books. I am always willing to read a suggestions from someone I know. I love finding new stories to read.