Tovani's Access Tools

After Tovani’s chapters 6-End, I chose to look at the Double Entry Diaries. I love this technique. This is a great way to build discussions and individual understanding. I personally am a huge classic literature fan, and just started reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. For books like this one, or other classics like Pride and Prejudice, it is easy for students to have comprehension issues. The language and the customs of the time are very different than our own.

That’s where the double entry diaries come in handy. By writing down direct quotes and page numbers, they can take a part that they are struggling with and focus down on it. Then, in the next column, they can write things under “This reminds me of,” “I wonder,” “I’m confused by,” etc. This allows them to not only locate the content they are struggling with, but to also have ways they can remember the meaning of the quotes. They can relate it to things they know and understand from their own lives.

We always annotated our books as we read them in high school. It was supposed to keep us on track with our reading, and we had an assigned number of annotations we needed to have. I really disliked them and would fake my way through them, seeing as they weren’t always thoroughly checked. I believe these diaries are a much better way to get students involved in what they are reading. It also helps clearly identify to myself as a teacher what my students clearly need help with.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

First and foremost I want to say how relevant this title is to anyone who has ever taken a difficult class. Even in college now, there are times when I read things for classes over and over again, and I just don't get it. I hate it.

But then again, let's be honest with ourselves. How many times have you waited to do the assigned reading, and instead skim through and b.s. your responses? Often. In high school that was the competition in our senior AP English class. Though we were all intelligent kids, we were lazy and faked our way through most assignments, be it reading or writing. This "fake reading" is exactly the kind of thing Tovani discusses in these chapters.

I have always been a great reader and loved reading most everything I could. I don't think I have ever truly "fake" read anything, except for maybe textbooks. It's hard for me to comprehend why some people do not like reading. I never would have believed that a lot of it has to do with students not making a connection. For myself, a math book or a dry science or ed book have been hard for me to just skim through. I can't do it. But when I really sit down, i generally gain some sort of knowledge from it. So how do you help your students who are legitimately trying but not understanding?
I enjoy that she really tells a story as she goes along, and that this isn't just another dry textbook. I feel like she understands that we need to not only see examples on how to better our teaching, but also that it needs to be communicated in a better way.

This reading was one that actually really had me interested from the get go. I like the idea that as readers we are trying to expand our horizons and make connections whether or not we are consciously doing so. The example he gives is Romeo and Juliet, which is fitting since this is a play that we have been assigned for this course. He really explains the emotions and thought process the reader goes through when trying to relate to and understand the characters. I also really like that he gives us goals and guidelines as teachers to help establish better learning in our classroom. This allows us to focus on what we find important, but it also gives us some guidelines to follow to help keep our students, and ourselves, on track with the lesson.

I think as a teacher, I should really be incorporating these things, emotions of characters, how relate, etc. into my lessons. Maybe it's something as simple as asking my students to explain how they felt through out the chapter or the entire play. Or, maybe it can be a more focused lesson on the emotions of the characters, how they could have handled things differently, and how the time period played into their actions.

Of all the articles we have read so far, I think this has probably been the most useful one to me. It helps to lie out guidelines and structure for students, while still asking them to focus and work hard to expand their knowledge. It opens their minds up to new ideas on reading, hopefully making it more enjoyable to them, while helping to create new possible directions for lesson plans for us teachers.

Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom

In this reading of popular culture in an urban secondary English classroom, they bring up the fact that they do not just teach classic canonical literature, though that is a big part of the English classroom. One of my favorite ideas from this text is that some texts, “offered more insights to the American psyche than most United States History texts.” This is true for a lot of books even outside of the US, and I think that it is an important thing to keep in mind as a teacher.

I also really loved that they took poetry and poets and were able to get students to make comparisons to hip hop artists that they listened to. I really think that this gets them more involved in their learning and gets them excited to work on the lesson that you have assigned. They use concepts that they want to talk about in their lessons, such as racism or heroism, and they take a book that can be used as an example of these topics.

By incorporating things that students can relate to, a teacher is showing she knows her students and knows they might need something more “recent” to get them to understand what they are learning. I want to be able to do this as a teacher; be able to know what my students are interested in and be able to use it as a tool to catch their curiosity. I don’t think that kids anymore are spending enough time reading, instead opting to play video games or spend their time online. That is all good and well, but I want to be the kind of teacher that doesn’t “force feed” their students literature, but instead encourages them to enjoy it and ask questions. If that means that I use a rap or pop artist to relate to them, as long as their music is appropriate, I will do whatever I possibly can to get them to enjoy reading.

Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts

In Peter McLauren's Critical Pedagogy, I found, first off, that he was much more easy to understand in comparison to the previous articles we have read.
I really like how he goes into the idea that knowledge is socially constructed. He explains that this knowledge comes to be when people of a the same race or social class agree. It is interesting that groups of people can look at a situation so differently from one another, like women's viewpoints on things verses those of white men. I love that his idea of critical pedagogy asks why knowledge occurs like this.
I also really loved his topic of hidden curriculum. My understanding is that this are the things that get taught, whet ere or not they were meant to, outside of a normal lesson. These can include rules and regulations in the school. But it also includes behavior, and the way that the teacher teaches and reprimands her students. He talks about how boys generally talk more in class or do not raise their hands to answer, but girls are the ones who get in trouble for this things more often. I think it is interesting that as a society we preach that men ad women should be treated equally, and yet we still subconsciously except different things from each gender.
I am very interested to see how our in class discussion plays out, especial since I feel more confident in this reading.

Chapter 1: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

If I thought that our last reading was dry or difficult, I was mistaken. I really struggled to read and understand this chapter.

My basic understanding is that what he is discussing is bullying. How it happens, and how it keeps happening. The oppressed (bullied) he demoralized enough that instead of rising up to defend themselves, they oppress others to feel better about themselves; they know that people are feeling the same things that they had felt. With this in mind, it is interesting to see who I believe he describes as the oppressors/the bullies. The teachers, who are supposed to be molding the minds and lives of their students, are the oppressors; their students are oppressed.

Overall I still have a hard time fully understand what he was trying to get across in this chapters. I think discussion will really clarify for me what he was trying to emphasize, but without it I would be completely lost. I have not had such a difficult time with a reading piece in a long time.

Discussion in a Democratic Society

In the excerpt from “Discussion as a Way of Teaching,” it talks about the importance of teaching in a classroom, and the allowance of students to speak and discuss their beliefs. This allows students and teachers alike to have access to a broader range of opinions, and to think, defend, and maybe even have their viewpoints changed.

            I love that the teacher, Steve, admits that he came in with a specific view on the issue of DNRs, that he is happy when his students have the same views as him, but then he is surprised by opposing view points. Instead of telling students they are wrong, he lets them have their own opinions and explain their reasons why. By doing so he allowed students to grow in his classroom.

            This is not always the case in classrooms. In all my experience as a student, there are always teachers who will tell you what you believe is wrong. It doesn’t matter what school type you’ve been in, parochial or public (I’ve been in both), there is always that one teacher who, if you don’t share the same opinion, they argue against you, not allowing a discussion. I want to be the type of teacher who allows open discussion in her classroom. I want to encourage participation in these discussions and to show my students you can have different opinions with out it being the end of the work.

            As a teacher, I do not think that my personal opinion should trump those of my students. I should be able to direct discussion and keep them from arguing, but yet still be able to allow everyone’s opinions to be heard, whether or not it is the same as mine. I should not come into class with unrealistic expectations of what my students will say, but instead to allow myself to be surprised and/or impressed by what they have to offer.