1996 Heather Would Be Proud of Me

Let's Reflect...

My 3rd graders in Hangzhou, China

I have been waiting my entire life to make it to where I am now. I remember in middle school thinking student teaching was so far away. So, how would I reflect my experience in methods? I think I "made it." As my blog title indicates, I did not think I would make it through methods. But, before I began methods, there were many questions buzzing through my mind as to how I address myself as a teacher. Then after receiving an "R," I began to question whether I was fit to be an English Teacher. Like other English majors, I am excellent at English, but just because I preform well in my English classes does NOT mean I am a good teacher. My conceptual unit suffered because I was not capable and successful at writing a rationale. I never fathomed that teachers would have to explain themselves in formal rationales! When we were students, we assumed teachers knew their material and taught it to us in a loving and forgiving way. In addition, the principal was not a "pal" at all, but the big wig of the school who called our parents and scared us anytime they saw us in the hallway. After making the distinction between what I assumed teacher did and what they actually do, I began to understand the profession a lot more than I did the previous semester. Working with my cooperative teachers really provided me when the reality of teaching and important things to think about before stepping into the teaching world. My coops supported me in the classroom when I taught my extended lessons and I am so glad they did because I was discouraged after having that "R" placed on my forehead. Having an "R" on my forehead felt worse they having an "L." :(  The benefits on this dreaded "R" though I feel were not realized until I made my revisions to the assignments Dr. Shannon suggested. They turned out three times better and contained the focus I had been missing. I even recall texting Dr. Shannon that she would enjoy my student learning map post-revision because I had that much confidence in my work. Confidence was on of the main goals I had hoped to accomplish through my time spent in methods. I believe I had a reality check which included: understanding not everything I submit will be perfect, it is okay to revise, and there are people who can praise and criticize you. Through this reality check, I lost my confidence and spirit as a teacher for a brief amount of time. It was through the revisions, advice, guidance, and support that I regained my integrity. I know right? What a heart-warming reflection! 

Post-methods, I feel that I am prepared for student teaching. I have finally accepted that teachers do not know everything about their subject and that is okay. We know how to teach, but we can also learn along with our students and teach something we have not read before. As I said in one of my earlier blogs, I want my students to learn something about themselves and express this to me. Teaching English is not just about literature and grammar, but about living life-this is one philosophy I will continue to stick to when asked the question, "why do you want to be a teacher Heather?" I want to be a teacher to help students find and discover that they too can be successful in school and in life. Watching students' eyes light up, when they understand something or are inspired by my teaching, really does make teaching worth it. This is why sometimes I hated leaving for the day after I spent time with my coops. I was enjoying my soon-to-be job and did not want to leave just yet. I know you may think, well this feeling will get old, but I disagree. The more I am immersed in a classroom, the more I find things I love about teaching. I enjoy the challenge and feel amazing when I make a connection with my students. I promised myself when I was a little girl that I would become an amazing teacher and be the friend who listens to my students when they just need someone to talk to. I think my childhood Heather would pat me on the back and say I will make a fine teacher as long as I have the passion in my heart that I do now. Methods brought back this passion and I want to thank Dr. Shannon for this. This class, along with my coops, has changed and strengthen me as a teacher and I am excited to begin student teaching in the spring. 

Childhood Heather

We don't take pictures of our books...we take pictures of our students :)

Teaching Grammar

    Every student hates when they hear the word grammar and it is my job has a teacher to develop a unique strategy which encourages students that grammar can be fun. So, how would I do it? Well of course by allowing student to access their strengths and by this I mean adapt a grammar lesson around their preferred way of learning. I would feel horrible if I sat through a class which was completely auditory. This is because I am visual and kinematic learner. I can't imagine student becoming interested in grammar if we solely teach it to them in "one direction." (Oh boy, I did just reference One Direction in my blog...where has my mind gone). Therefore, I would like to enable my students to learn grammar through pictures, sounds, and movement. One way I have seen pictures or comics used to teach grammar/vocabulary was by my middle school Coop. He used comics as a link to the meaning of the new word or phrase. For example, one of the words for the last unit was "efface." Its link was "erase." There was a pictures of a person effacing a picture and a sentence which described the picture using the vocabulary word. My Coop then had some students read the word, link, and sentences below the picture. I think one reason for doing so is because sometimes students need to hear the word to remember it and also because if you hand a packet to middle school students who says they are actually going to read it. Haha. One I idea I have to spice up this lesson would be to include some form of physical movement. Like, the activity Nicole and I did for our brushstroke teach. We had students act out the action verbs through a game we called "What Are You Doing?" I am sure everyone enjoyed this...especially Evan. Haha. I am almost positive students would have enjoyed this activity over the one we found in the book. When teachers use activities to make grammar fun then I think students actually enjoy learning. For example, this small comic I included in my blog made me laugh. It encourages students to use correct grammar through the use of a  funny ninja. I think students would remember this comic and probably ask to see more comics like it. I thought about using comics like this also as maybe a free write activity or discussion activity before class starts. My purpose in using this comics would be to lighten the mood before a grammar lesson or have a mini lesson on grammar before the main lesson begins.
 
I am still a little nervous about teaching grammar because student may find it boring. I will strive though to make it as interesting as I can and I will also ask other teachers for advice. I guess we will see how it goes when I have to teach some grammar during student teaching. :)

Write Right? Oh the Joy of Homonyms

Is there such a thing a writicide?

After reading "The English Teacher's Red Pen: History of an Obsession," I would say Zemelman and Daniels would agree that writicide does exist. For instance, how many middle school and/or high school students write for fun? Probably not too many right? This is because English teachers have lowered students' confident. I can't blame students are not wanting to write - who would like to be told they are not good enough? The famous red pen has placed this crime in our hands now. The trouble is though, we evaluate students extremely different than other subject teachers. For example, when I was in high school I hardly did any writing in my science classes. We did lab reports, but we were not graded on the same criteria which we were in English class. Instead, science teachers searched for our understanding of the lab and the results we were able to obtain. They were measuring what we learned from the activity, not what we had previously known. Do I think there should be more writing in other subjects? Yes, of course! This would limit the expectation that English teachers have placed on their shoulders, so instead of spending their entire weekend fixing grammar mistakes, they can concentrate on content, organization, and focus. It is sad that "our obsession with perfection in mechanics" actually causes us to lose "fundamental aspects of composing [like] content and clarity." I hope in my classroom to focus on focus...meaning I don't want to weigh the papers heavily on conventions. Yes, I'll be frustrated when I see reoccurring mistakes in a paper, but I will only mention the mistake twice. If a student lack focus that is a much bigger problem than misspelling a word.

In my classroom, I want to take the same approach as the piano teacher. Like her, I want to read the paper and not stop every sentence to fix mechanics. We would never have great music if we stopped musicians when they made one mistake! Also, if possible I would like students to meet with me to talk about one problem I may have found in their paper. I would be curious to see what problem they would say they have when writing as well. I will emphasize to my students that writing is a process and grammar will improve as they continue to write. If they need further help with conventions/mechanics, I will help them too. As Smagorinsky reccomended, I would like to instead incorporate grammar alongside reading and writing activities (165). Another reason I would employ conventions alongside other activites is because I don't want to bore my students. My middle school Coop uses this method, so it is nice to actually see it in action too. Student don't want to learn about grammar, instead they want to talk about things they interest them. I find my Coop's daily journal entries way more helpful than an entire period spent on grammar.

So, to reflect- there is not a right way to write. I think is it sad that English teachers are expected to evaluation students as if they are polished adult writers. Also, there is not a right way to evaluate writing either. It really depends what you as a teacher appreciate in student writing. I would definitely say that I appreciate a well-developed clear paper with a few convention mistakes rather than a flawless paper with no content or direction. Writing should not be about being "right," it should be about how you express yourself. This is a message I will pass on to my students. I would, however, be tougher on student writing towards the end of the year because I would have expected students to have improved their writing conventions.

Side Note: My friend, who is a freshman in college this year, sent me a paper to look over. He asked me to give suggestions on how he could improve his paper. I have not read over the paper yet, but I would be interested in bringing it in to class to show everyone. We could compare it to the WFYIS paper we read in class. The reason I find this paper interesting is because he is a friend of mine from China. He is attending Chinese University of Hong Kong and his classes are taught in English. His conventions therefore are not up to par, but I think his focus his there...so how would you evaluate it? After reading these sections on writing evaluation, I think I have a better idea of how I will approach his paper.

Text Satellite

My Prezi!

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton became my central text because it is a Bildungsroman. I wanted to have a text which focused on the coming-of-age theme so my students could relate to the text on a deeper level.

These are themes I found important in this novel:

• Isolation (being an outsider)
• Violence
• Hope
• Friendship/Love
• Loss
• Right Vs. Wrong
• Hope
• Discovery

One of the first connections I made to The Outsiders is to Jane Elliot's "Blue Eyes Vs. Brown Eyes" experiment. I used the YouTube video of her actual experiment. My purpose of including this media is to show students how we create isolationism in society. This specific example would should how racism serves as a vehicle. Next, Romeo and Juliet is a tragic play which highly reflects violence amongst others. The Montagues and Capulets have a fight scene in the play which I would like to focus on and how their rival prohibits Romeo and Juliet's love affair. I figured also students would enjoy watching the actual scene because it provides a better understanding of Shakespeare's work.  From there, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants serves as the complete opposite. It is mainly about the friendship of 4 best friends as they leave high school and attend college. This is an ideal novel because it relates the to relationships of the main characters in The Outsiders. Furthermore, Tuesdays With Morrie is documentation of an author coping with the slow death of his friend (an old professor). This relates again to the relationship of the main characters in The Outsider because the characters experience the loss of their friend Johnny.  Since I am such a Robert Frost fan, I had to include a piece of his poetry! Nothing Gold Can Stay fits perfectly into the themes because it is actually a poem used in the central novel. It demonstrates that someday there will be an end to all good things (which relates to loss). There are many quotes included in my text satellite as well. The quotes touch on friendship and hope-all of which I think are cute alternate texts. They help mimic the importance of the themes I have chosen to study. "Some Nights" and "Gone with the Wind Theme" were chosen because both songs relates to the central text. "Some Nights" is a song about a person struggling to understand the world. Through life we begin to ask more questions and through experience we discover the answer. Also, "Gone with the Wind Theme" song is an instrumental piece based on the novel Gone with the Wind. This is the book Johnny was reading in The Outsiders. My decision to add this to the text satellite was because it would give a little insight of what kind of story Johnny was reading. The actual novel would be a good secondary source too. The music and the novel Gone with the Wind give us as readers a better understanding of Johnny as a character. The last two texts I thought would be a nice connection were American Born Chinese and The Scarlett Letter. The Scarlett Letter embodies themes of isolation and right vs. wrong. American Born Chinese deals with an American Born Chinese student who feels he is an outsider because he is unsure of his ultimate identity. Also, his fellow classmates can only seem to focus on his Chinese heritage and make fun of him.

Assessments

Reflection:
Where to begin...I can honestly say I enjoyed making the Student Learning Map. I found it easier to generate the lesson essential questions than the actual overarching unit question. As for the assessments, I think I prefer making alternative forms of assessments. For my SLM my alternate assessment allowed students to expand on their ideas in a blog. The short story I chose for my students to read was, "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe. The blog was used an an alternate assessment of this story short because it enabled students to discover and evaluate what they found in Poe's text. Their blogs focused on the language, structure, setting, and message of the short story. So, students would be able to express their findings in their blogs (which would identify to me what they learned from the unit), but also they could be creative by adding pictures and videos. Creating the rubric for the alternative assessment was not as hard as I thought it was going to be actually. I think this is because I have had prior experience making a rubric for my group teach in Teaching Adolescent Literature. I remember working alongside Nicole, Travis, Bethany, and Arlen designing a rubric. All of us struggled, but with the guidance of Dr. Shannon we were able to make a pretty great rubric in the end. In addition, my objective assessment for my SLM was complied of multiple choice, true or false, and short answers. It was difficult to make multiple choice questions to address the questions I wanted the students to be able to answer at the end of the lesson. This is where I found making the alternate assessment easier to design. In the end, I am not exactly sure if my objective test is the best measurement of student knowledge...well at least for my short story unit, it was not.

Questioning Assessments:
I once had this amazing professor that challenged me to think about assessments in a different way. For example, she asked my class, "Why do students need a grade to determine what they learned?" I'll admit, I struggle with this as well. Shouldn't a student know if they learned something valuable? It is frustrating that teachers determine what students "value" with an objective assessment. Really? Come on, really? Objective tests do not measure what students value. They may measure the background knowledge a student  learned from reading. But, it does not challenge them to critically evaluate the themes and apply the skills they have learned. I hope teachers continue to design alternate assessments which give students choices and freedom of creativity. When assessments become fun and educational, I will no longer question them. :)

Future:
For my future classroom, if I had to design some objective tests to see whether students are reading the material, I will include an alternate blank next to the multiple choice questions. The blank would serve as a space for students to tell me what they do know, if they do not directly know the correct answer of the multiple choice. I am certain that I am a very forgiving teacher and will give students partial credit for their attempts of showing me what they have learned. I will encourage my students to show me what they absorbed from their reading. By accessing prior knowledge of the reading, I hope to help students answer our lesson essential questions with my guidance. Just because they do not know the correct answer on an assessment does not mean they cannot convey that they learned. For example, students may know how Poe uses descriptive language in his short story, but may have trouble explaining how this relates to other forms of Gothic literature. Along with creating alternate assessments, I will strive to provide my students with a comfortable classroom environment. When a teacher provides students with a comfortable learning environment, students tend to have more confidence in their work. Therefore, they are more willing to discuss instead of being afraid they are wrong.




Basically, as a teacher, I want to learn more about my students and not what their brains can memorize.

Playing Ping Pong with a Student in China

This is why I enjoyed coming to class!

Readicide

“Overemphasis on testing is playing a major part in killing off readers in America’s classrooms” (7).

I wanted to begin my blog post with a reflection of one of the first quotes in Readicide. We are overemphasizing the importance of student performance on exams. But, why does the test determine how smart someone is? I can completely relate to this issue. As mentioned I’m a math minor, and being a math minor I still do not score as well as I’d like on exams. This does not though determine how much I have learned from the class. Actually, I think I tend to score worse in math than I do in English because I have a lot of pressure on myself to do well in math. There is either a right or wrong answer, where as in English it is more about your argument for your logic.

I agree with Gallagher when she said, “Authentic interest is generated when students are given the opportunity to delve deeply into an interesting idea” (10). If we can provide students with the opportunity to stumble upon literature they like, then we will be able to teach with an authentic interest. One way I plan to generate authentic interest in my students is by giving them options to the literature. For example, literature circles are one way to give students options. I observed several classes at Mechanicsburg Middle School like this. The teacher gave the students the option of which book they wanted to read, but all of the focuses centered around culturally diverse literature. Some of the books were focused towards boys too, which would help to create authentic interest. I found that the students were very intrigued with the books they were reading and I was able to listen to some of their "findings" in each group.

Next, I wanted to mention the Michael Phelps anecdote. (Side note- I was surprised to find his name in this book haha). It said, "We put [students] in the 'race' (in this case, high-stakes tests) and ask them to perform well. However, there is a big problem: these student have not been in the 'pool' very much" (30). I believe this statement. Students are pushed to train for these high-stake tests, but because of the pressure many of them are still lacking development. Also, when asked any other information it seems they do not know anything about it. I think if students can discover things through our guidance as teachers they can teach themselves something on their own. Then with our help, students will be able to construct answer to difficult problems they encounter even if we have no specifically showed them the circumstance. 

Lastly, Gallagher says "it always amazes (and depresses) me that grown, educated adults can sit in a room and argue endlessly over whether a student's pants are too baggy or whether a student should be marked tardy if he or she is not yet seated when the bell rings"(31). After reading this quote I felt the same way. I can't believe teachers are arguing at faulty meeting about such small details. Why aren't they discussing the more important topics? To answer this I'd say...maybe sometimes teachers lose their direction. They forget why they began a teacher and need reminded. This is one reason student teachers are a good thing. They are fresh students straight from college with the desire that some teachers lose over years of teaching. Honestly, teachers should be embarrassed to fight about dress code for an entire faculty meeting...especially if student teachers are observing. I would like to attend a faculty meeting in the future and report my findings on my blog to see how they compare to what Gallagher said about them.

            

Introduction

Hello Everyone,

My name is Heather. I am a Secondary English Education Major with a Mathematics Minor. I wanted to introduce myself a little bit to you before I do my blog post. In my free time, I enjoy playing sports. I have played softball and volleyball. (If anyone is every getting a game of volleyball together, I am game). I decided to become a teacher when I was very young. Teachers help other people learn and strive to do their best and that is what I want to do. English is one of my favorite subjects. It is not just because I like to read and write, but also because I really enjoy the critical thinking aspect of the subject. So, you are probably wondering why I have a math minor. I wanted to become a math teacher when I started college. I decided to become an English though because, like I said, English is one of my favorite subjects. I have more strengthens in English than I do math, so I wanted to pursue this. I have a math minor in hopes I can pass the math PRAXIS and teach some middle school math class along with English.

Fast pitch softball

First Place slow pitch tournament

In other news, I am getting married after graduation ! I have been dating my fiance for 7 years now...since I was in 10th grade :) Then I will officially move to Shippensburg after we get married. :)

 One of our Save the Dates tells our story

Students visiting me on the last day of the Summer Camp

Shirts signed by the students and teachers

Lastly, I went to China for an internship this summer. It was a great experience. I taught English as a second language to Chinese students at the elementary and high school level. I highly recommend teaching aboard. The student truly appreciate foreign teachers (especially Americans). I want to use my experience in China as an advantage going into student teaching. I learned a lot about classroom management, planning lessons, and what students are interested in. If you have any questions I am happy to tell you how my experience went. Nice to meet everyone...I am looking forward to this class!

One of my 4 classes

:)