the big one

Imagine, if you will, swimming in the ocean for the first time. Sure in your childhood, you may have flirted with the surf; ebbing and flowing along the beach, playfully smacking at your ankles. Maybe you even splashed in the waves a bit, going out just far enough that your feet still felt the comfort of terra firma beneath them. This experience i liken to the speech classes and small presentations and menial research papers i have written in high school and early college. It was nerve-wracking but not anywhere close to actually swimming in the deep. I know that eventually i will need to leave the safety of the familiar, i will need to venture into the deep, i will be a teacher, a true bonafide educator. Still fearful, reading up on rip tides and sharks, trying to believe inspirational stories of the joy that is waiting; i similarly read of horrid statistics and dooming financial woes, and tried to cling to the reports of teachers who not only taught information, but inspired. What i value most from this class was the way our professor led us as a group into the deep, gently encouraged us to follow her example and then, in finding our confidence, she encouraged us to venture off to find our own techniques. Furthermore, the bonds within this class made the fears diminish and, with all the splashing and carrying-on, i soon forgot that this experience once seemed daunting.
                                                           I've learned from this class that there are many ways to teach: lit circles, stations, socratic discussions, etc. I've seen how some styles work better than others, but none are the best. There is no one way to teach, infact exceptional teaching requires a varied program. The approach you take should be based on what you are hoping to accomplish and what your students respond to, and it will always be a work in progress. Teaching will involve some bad classes and failed attempts, it's simply a matter of recovering. It requires the understanding that there is no flawless plan, but also the realization that a missed mark does not doom a semester.
          This class has also helped me develope a more demensional view of the classroom; that is, being able to see it both from the eyes of teacher and student. i have seen my lesson plan crumble and have been forced to chew on key points i never got to mention. i have felt the difference of being discussion leader and of being a distraction. i have enjoyed assignments i never thought i would, and have felt the misery of poor instructions.
My job is to teach my requirements and have students pass their standardized tests. My passion and goal is to reach the minds of my students, to envoke their hearts, to develope their ability to understand others and to express themselves. I cannot think of a better way to do this then through English/Literature. I feel that reading is only dull when the material is unrelateable. i feel that reading is only difficult if you lack drive. i feel that the life of a teacher is to inspire; i know i have the compassion and desire; what i lacked was the ability. This ability has been strengthened through this class by the encouragement to criticly-think, to speak up, to realize the importance of self, and to have the daring to take a risk.
 i am still honestly anxious about the real deal, but i no longer dread, i no longer doubt that this was the right choice. this class has pinned me with a merit badge, handed me a bag of tricks, and sent me off with an incredible support-group of peers. thank you, everyone!

TOO MUCH ! AURAL FIXATION and information overload! (don't read this unless you really, really want to know)

 i hope that i am not pushing the line of "appropriate" too far. (please follow the links to hear  the songs)

Song #1: "SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS)"  MARILYN MANSON

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6VojYGrnpg          

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
I wanna use you and abuse you
I wanna know what's inside you
(Whispering) Hold your head up, movin' on
Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up, movin' on
Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up, movin' on
Keep your head up, movin' on
Movin' on!
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
I'm gonna use you and abuse you
I'm gonna know what's inside
Gonna use you and abuse you
I'm gonna know what's inside you

ok. here we go. this was my high school anthem and continued to be a masochist security blanket for years to come; through heartbreak, misunderstanding, drinking, drinking, more heartbreak, piercings and hair dyes, drug abuse, depression, a dash more heartbreak, some more drinking, self-hatred, hatred of the world, cutting, a bit more depression, a few more drugs, and honestly just a lot more heartbreak. this is the first time i've listened to this song for a long while and i'm covered with goosebumps and have a cold sensation in my core where it feels like my soul's fire has been extinguished and is now cowering away somewhere deep inside, in a dark, dark place. i can remember spending hours, sometimes not sleeping at all, just listening to this song on repeat, tearing and slicing through my headphones at the loudest decibel i could stand... you may have noticed i have a slight crutch of reading lips and eyes  or tilting my ear towards someone to be able to decipher what someone is saying especially when there is background noise. i think i identified with this song so much because this guy did not fit in, and he didn't care. he had such an off-putting recklessness and style, that just being a known fan gave you the elbow room and sense of power that others got from popularity or physical strength.  shall we move on?

SONG #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-sP-DdMluc

Modest Mouse
The Moon & Antarctica (2000)
Gravity Rides Everything

Oh gotta see gotta know right now.                                                    
What's that riding on your everything?
It isn't anything at all.
Oh gotta see gotta know right now.
What's that writing on your shelf in the bathrooms and
the bad motels
No one really cared for it at all
Not the gravity plan.
Early Early in the morning it pulls all on down my sore feet
I wanna go back to sleep.
In the motions and the things that you say.
It all will fall, fall right into place
As fruit drops, flesh it sags
Everything will fall/right into place
When we die some sink and some lay
But at least I don't see you float away
And all the spilt milk sex and weight

It all will fall, fall right into place.

this was a phoenix song for me. this song found me near the end of  my coke period...i was finally feeling popular, wanted, sexually adequate, i was finally the asshole i always wanted to be, i was finally able to hurt people the way they hurt me, i was also dropping $50 a night on cocaine, $150 a week on weed, and racking up a huge amount of debt because everything in life had to be paid via credit card. i thought i was living in a dream... the only dreamlike quality it really had was that it was not reality. thank God this was a quick lived few months... i went from 0-60 like it was my life's mission...then He dipped His finger in the whirlpool and i was blessed with a daughter from a girl i had known for only a month. this obviously changed everything...habits, friends, every bit of this new persona i was building dissolved, and i realized i wasn't sad about it...at all. for the first time in my life i was ok. i was ok with me, the real me. i was ok with my mistakes. i was ok with not knowing what would be next. and this song aided the voyage(especially over the next few turbulent years). i truly believed ( and still do) that "all the spilt milk, sex, and weight [of life]; it all will fall, fall right into place"

ahh...time for the denouement...
SONG#3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07sokZ0kXzY

How The Day Sounds by Greg Laswell                                                 
Oh who would have ever known this?
Could be this easy
I was a long, long way off
Then just like that it was over
Everything I knew of loveI was a long, long way off
And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song

Thank you for opening the window
The sky is clear as my mind is now
I was a long, long way off
Join me in welcoming the sun in
It's much brighter than the night I hid in
I was a long, long way off

And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song
And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song

From a long way down.

Yeah, it's well worth the time that its taken to get here now
Yeah, it's well worth the time that its taken to get here now

Ba da dum...

So go ahead and bang a gong
Nothing can drown out the sound and the whisper of my love
And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song
And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song
Through this new song
Through this new song

And the blinds have all been drawn
I know where I belong, where I belong,
Where I belong
And the blinds have all been drawn
I know where I belong
Where I belong

And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song
And I think I like how the day sounds
Like how the day sounds through this new song

Oh, won't you sing along
Oh, my love won't you sing along
this was the first song, on the first mix tape my fiance made me. this song heralds the same new life, new meaning mantra i am drawn to and is particularly fitting that the girl who introduced me to this ballad is now my new song.

Oh, Romeo! Oh, Romeo, what shall i do with all the extra time?

This Manga Shakespeare is awesome! If i strain my memory hard enough, perhaps with the aid of a nirvana cd and a ratty flannel, i can remember being taught Shakespeare in high school. And if memory serves correct i had CliffsNotes*  to aid me along [read: in place of reading]. Oh, it was ungodly boring. Sweet relief came only at the end of all the assigned reading, when we actually got to watch the movie and it all began to make sense; and then i could pass the exam, no problem.  It seems a shame to waste Shakespeare in high school because the majority of students begin groaning when they hear his name, even if they have never read any of his works before. They expect it to be difficult, the dialect to be daunting, and they feel they already know the jist of the work anyway.... so why read it? Honestly, i would have to agree with them. Shakespeare's talent in intertwining characters for stage, IS a hinderence to the reader without being able to actively visualize each character to keep them all straight. Secondly, the dialect is obtrusive to understanding, after all we do not continue teaching Shakespeare in an effort to keep Middle English alive; it is because of his wit and cunning in storytelling. Thirdly, Shakespeare's works are so often imitated that students may get a false sense of security of knowing a text, to which they do not. What to do, what to do? MANGA Shakespeare! This is the complete tale, but with a modern spin on the language (which we would normally have to do for the students) and it comes with the visualizations that are in the play but not in a manuscript. It very nicely takes two or three weeks of reading and lecturing, plus the movie and squeezes it into a 193 pages and a complete understanding within an hour and a half. The only problem is, what will i do with all the extra time i've been given?

seriously, which looks more appealing to youth?

I found an article about teaching Shakespeare and contemporary movies with reference to teaching Shakespeare, it's fun: 

Bach, Jacqueline. "One Size Does Not Fit All: Cinematic Approaches to the Teaching of Shakespeare." Changing English: Studies in Culture & Education 16.3 (2009): 323-331. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.

* SparksNotes, only with a trippy YELLOW cover

Image, Branding, and Computers

"Impressionable Minds, Indelible Images" was a good article, but where do we go from here? i suppose we could find ways of mirroring advertising tactics to those utilized in class presentations, arguments, and thesis statements. But that sounds boring even to me! Any ideas? Maybe i could create a brand of literature-based fashion and reward students with them and create some elaborate extra credit plan in which you are rewarded for wearing my lit clothes....

"Moving My English Class to the Computer Lab" was another good article. I was surprised by the survey results... i actually thought fewer kids would've read for pleasure and more would have been busier texting. Hooray, Youth! i really liked the example Tarasiuk offers with setting up a wiki-site; though i must admit i have no idea how to do this. i guess there's no choice but to learn, to offer these kids any assistance they need. i really liked the final project too. i think there are very few kids ( despite their apparent apathy ) who do not truly enjoy being creative. and this desire will often lead them to do double the amount of work they are required to do.

Whether it's fashion or sports or school projects i feel students are always looking for a way to be creative and to express themselves...even if that is creativly pretending that they are so bored with like school and like reading and all the like drama of high school and  then rush home to facebook, text, and watch Jersey Shore. And we think we as teachers have a tough time:)

Unit! Check this out!

Okay, it's Wednesday, and like most Wednesday mornings i've gone to Panera to have some coffee and among other things, to finish the novel for 426. i apparently need to stop doing this, or begin wearing sunglasses. this is the third time i've had to wince back tears in public due to our reading list... so much for street cred. but, god, what an interesting book! i would love to teach this book because of the way it relates to our ever-progressing technology, instant feed, and un-learned intelligence. i loved that it had its own vocabulary, kinda like A Clockwork Orange, yet a little easier to pick up( excellent for building comprehension skills). i especially think this is a great book for the character interaction with which the students could easily find themselves relating to... if nothing else this book could be seen as a manual for maturing. i can't even begin to explain how much my heart is broken over Violet. Anderson did an amazing job at getting to one's heart... especially with Titus- whom i wanted to hate so much, but couldn't, Anderson did a good job at telling the story unbiasedly, having reasonable arguments for Titus all well. Fortunately, there was time for Titus to still go back one last time, and though it is obvious that she is soon to die, i really like that it is ended with ambiguity...that she is not technically passed. The only discredit to this book is the language. And despite Titus explaining that the story is rated PG-13 for language in his time, there are far too many "fucks" in there for a similar rating in 2011. Then again, if kids are expected to read and say "nigger" without qualms, what are a few "fucks"? (Yes, i know, excellent transition. Thank you.)

I, before this article, never knew what the big deal was with Huck Finn. I had assumed it just had to do with the n-word, which i, like most minds in my mostly all-white ( a few Vietnamese and one Hawaiian) high school, thought was hypocritical considering the words use in rap music.However, now i can really relate to the main issue with Twain's writing. It is not the n-word  even though the defense of that was a euphemism of the time, is apparently invalid. it is the way in which Jim is presented as an adult-idiot and the implication that he is true of all Negros. this is ironic considering Twain's criticism of how James Fenimore Cooper presented native Americans in a parallel fashion. if i HAD to teach this book i would certainly help students to understand why there was so much controversy about it, and teach it along with another book like To Kill a Mockingbird or Native Son. However, if it was merely a CHOICE to teach this, i would pass on it. i have never enjoyed Twain, nor seen his supposed genius.

Mark Twain on the Writing of Fiction

Edgar H. Goold, Jr.

American Literature
Vol. 26, No. 2 (May, 1954), pp. 141-153

Published by: Duke University Press

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2921828

Beyond Tolerance

"No, I don't encourage tolerance in my classroom, instead, curiosity and inclusion. I want students to find and embrace others, not merely tolerate them (22)." What a powerful article. I loved the way the teacher was able to see faults in her thinking (prejudice against Arabs) and was able to change herself and her class, including boldly visiting a mosque in Utah. It was not only the main point of the article that i liked it was the way she embedded in the students' minds the importance of voice. " I asked, holding up a photo of Tiananmen Square.'See that kid in front of the tanks? All he wants to do is say something. All he wants is for someone to listen to what he has to say. You have a voice. What are you going to say?' The students hunched over their notebooks and began writing, feverishly, in their journals (20)." YES! That is why i want to be a teacher. I want kids to find their voice; to capture their thoughts and recite them, insightfully to others. It is this power of words i wish to instill upon them, the way Max showed it to Liesel through "The Word Shaker". A final quote i really appreciated from this article is when Cook shares that she is still learning, as well. "I am proud of what I'm learning in my classroom. I am proud of what students are teaching me...(22)."

LIT CIRCLES

I must admit up to this point my mind was beginning to spin thinking about all the state-appointed literature i must teach, the literature that may or not coincide appointed by the school board which i should teach, what i want to teach, and what the students really want to read. I enjoyed the concepts of letting the students chose their own literature and experiencing the "joy" some authors talked about of learning from my students about a book... however, like a hangover, reality hit me after the high. Do i really expect all my students to value and respect the freedom given to them to chose any book they want, and do i really trust myself to trust them to give me a true and insightful synopsis of a book i have never read? Plus i already know from this semester, even sometimes with this class alone (not to mention the other three lit courses i'm taking this semester) that i simply will not have the time to read all the books a completely free choice would place at my desk.

Now it was time to read Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs & Reading Groups...and my intial thoughts were," More Choices, More Reading?! HOW?!" Of couse by now you may have noticed that i am realistic and prepared (read "pesimistic and cynacle") and maybe even heard the thunderous noise of my eyes rolling as i opened the book. Though the flipside to my condition was realized again, as i was pleasantly surprized by this text. Harvey Daniels does a great job at constructing a book that is entertaining, quick to the point, stays on target, offers solutions, work sheet examples, and plenty to resourses to aid in implementing all you have just learned. i liked the balanced approach of student-lead, teacher-managed small groups. i found it releaving and insightful that he recommends beginning lit circles in the classroom for a portion of every class, then weening them to once a week, then fledging them to outside of class.. it's good for the students as they get to become comfortable with the new concept... it's good for the teacher as we get complete involvement from the students in the beginning, rather than just a flopped extra-curricular activity... and it's vital to the longevity of the lit circle itself. I also liked the concept of offering 4-6 selections for students to choose from, each ideally having some tie to the in-class assignment. I also appreciated the suggestion of having students list there top 3 choices to give the teacher the ability to keep small groups each with a book they want to read and also the ability to [ i won't use the t-word ] construct appropriately mingled groups of like-abilitied students so that the burden does not on one kid to support the group. I liked the idea of assigning different task-leaders within the groups and i very much appreciated the honesty and inclusion of failed ideas that are listed with this too.  And i will stop there so i can save some thoughhts for my presentation...
 The Book Thief- Kudos to anyone who finished this book already! I am certainly not there yet, but hope to be soon. I can say at this point, i find this book intregingly written- I mean, Death as the narrator! This book is also filled with humor, heartache, love, and nazis... if there happens to be a ten-story monster and a quality restaurant review later in the story i may never read another book again!