My final project

I can't remember all the questions I was supposed to answer in this, but here's hoping I'm comprehensive enough to answer them without realizing it! Here is the plan:

I am going to design a unit plan that will focus on language as identity. Doing a very basic google search turned up this: http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/filsoncurriculum.php To quote Andy Dwyer, "Awesomesauce!" Obviously there will be more poking around, find out what's being taught and what I would want to do.

I want this unit to get high school students thinking about language and how it is used. Some of the things we've done in this class could be brought into a high school setting. I think looking at pieces of dialect literature would be able to help students get an idea of how language is a part of an identity. By looking at these pieces of literature, the students could infer where the author (or speaker) is from, their race, possibly their social class. I think there could be some writing involved. I really enjoyed the activity we did in class earlier this year about writing in a dialectal style. I think that's something students could do at the high school level. It may be a formative assessment to see if students are getting the idea that 1) dialects have rules and 2) dialects can relate to identity.

I was also thinking of having the students look at their own language. Take note of what they say to their peers, to their parents, to other authority figures, and see if there are differences.

Because I like the idea of having a companion novel, I was thinking I'd teach Huckleberry Finn. In a different unit I'm designing, I am reading the novel first and then taking a look at some of it's themes in the following week. I'm thinking a similar format might come into play here, where the class would read Huckleberry Finn, paying attention to how language is used as an identity, and then over the next week or so having them explore that idea more in depth.

I've chosen this topic because I think that it is something that not a lot of people think about. We use different language in different situations without thinking about it. I feel it might be interesting to high school students to take a look at this phenomenon. It would give them an idea of how powerful language can be. I think this could also very easily tie into the question that some others are wrestling with of "how do you accept dialects while teaching Standard English?"

There are several different ways to go with a unit like this, but I was thinking of focusing more on how language can define race and class. If students wanted, they could focus on how language defines other aspects of their life such as gender, age, or social group.

It was suggested in my group that a website might be an interesting way to format this project. I think it could be an interesting way to put the information out there, but I'm not sure if it's the direction I'll take. Perhaps it will depend on how quickly the research goes!

Your feedback in the comments is always appreciated. I'll do my best to reply.

Write me a letter
And post it on my refrigerator door,

Alan

Thoughts on discussions

A few things that I noticed during the class discussions:

~ There was a lot of "half-thoughts". A student would say something and then trail off a bit at times. Perhaps through their actions they conveyed their point, or were only wanting the teacher to realize what their point was, and once it was established that they had gotten their point across, they'd stop talking.

~It happened on a couple occasions, but I enjoyed when teachers would add in something that had nothing to do with the discussion, such as "did everyone sign the reading list. I wonder if there was a point to throwing in this bit of class business in the middle of the discussion. Maybe to get the attention of people drifting off or maybe to make sure those that are really engaged don't forget to do something simple and not get credit (that has happened to me).

~I think you could really tell when a teacher had a goal and when they didn't. Teachers could really steer the conversation to where they wanted it to go, but at other times teachers were just content to let the class figure things out. Something that I've started to notice my professors saying is "I'm not looking for one answer", to help keep the conversation going and encourage more participation.

~I felt that the high school transcripts displayed a lot more familiarity with one another than the few college transcripts we had. Students and teachers knew each other better in the HS setting and it showed. I thought the conversations flowed better there than they did at the college level.

What I want from discussions:

I want discussions in my classroom to be a way for students to learn. There are days that I like to just sit back and listen to what fellow students are saying so that I can get a handle on their thoughts. It can help me analyze a text better, for example. So I want my students to feel that they can learn in these discussions. I want to explore the issues in literature that we've read and help students make sense of it.

Now, how does one make sure that discussion is worthwhile? I think developing that report, getting students comfortable with talking in class is essential. It takes time, I would not expect great discussions right off the bat, but I think that as students get more comfortable in the class than they'll be more likely to take part. From that discussion would come the generation of ideas, and that becomes part of the learning process. I think it would be important to guide conversation when necessary, but other times let things ride. Knowing when to do which is probably a skill honed over the course of several school years, but I think its an important one to develop so that students get the most education out of class discussions.

CCR (ENGL 338)

So, what does it it mean to be "College and Career Ready"? It seems like it should be such a simple definition. As teachers we must make sure that our students are ready for their next step in life, whether it be going off to college or entering the workforce. This doesn't sound as much of a common core requirement as much as it does a job description for teachers, so in reality it must be a bit more complex than this.

The trouble that I have with this requirement is that it makes it seem as if our students will know for sure what they want to do with their lives after high school. I, for one, am getting my second degree and working towards my second career. Who is to say that our example student in class today, who is going to be a mechanic and work at Jiffy Lube for his career doesn't have a change of heart later on and decides to pursue something else, possibly higher education. If we only focus on making him career ready, have we not robbed him of the skills or confidence he needs to make a change? Yes, we will develop relationships with students and their families and maybe everyone thinks that this student needs to only be so proficient in something, but I think this definition of "College and Career Ready" opens the door to short-changing some students by not believing that they will or want to go onto careers that require a high level of literacy.

For my Assessments class, we listened to an episode of "This American Life" that talked about how students learn and succeed. One of the things that I took away from it was that there are several "non-cognitive" skills that factor into a students' success. As they say in the program, we consider a student who passes their GED to be on par with a high school graduate intellectually, but students who get their GED's tend to not find much success. It becomes apparent that there is something other than getting the right answer that factors into someone being "college and career ready".

I think getting students "college and career ready" must be more than simple academics. I think it might be related to pushing students to be their best, to challenge them. It might be to help them develop these "non-cognitive" skills that will help them succeed later in life.

My writing fear

National Novel Writing Month is coming up in 19 days and I'm debating whether or not to take part in it. This really shouldn't be a debate. I'm taking 18 credits, 3 lit classes and have more to read and write than I could possibly ever want to do. But, I really, really, really love writing so there is that.

("But you can write on your own time whenever!"someone is surely saying. To which I say, "shush")

Quite possibly the only thing that is keeping me from fully committing is that I don't know what I want to write about. My previous two successful attempts had a game plan (of sorts....as close to planning as I get. Outlines are for suckers!) I knew what story I wanted to tell, the themes that I wanted to convey, and then I let things take over from there. I have three half-baked ideas for my next attempt to half-write the Great American Novel.

1. An urban fantasy story which combines a wee bit o' string theory in with the land of Faerie.

2. A fictional account of a person who grows up in a country that has recently seceded from the United States, paralleling their experiences growing up with the new country gaining its footing in the world.

3. A revival of my lone failed attempt at NaNoWriMo in which a small town bartender learns the value of working in his community, and to not overlook it just because its small.(He ends up becoming a teacher, for the record)

And here's the thing: those brief notes are about as detailed as these stories are right now. They aren't anything more in depth than that. #2 may be the most thought out of the bunch, honestly.

My fear, which I suppose is shared by a lot of writers, is that these ideas will never be more than ideas. I rarely get fixate on the right word or sentence in a story, but I will lie awake at night trying to coax the other half of these ideas into existence to make the story whole. There are these ideas that get inside your head and for whatever reason they stay there. They won't go away. (and if you ever see me scribbling furiously in a notebook during class, chances are I'm working on one...I never was much of a note taker) For me, it is a fear that these ideas that stick in my head won't flush themselves out.

Maybe these ideas need to be written down to achieve that. Maybe I need my fantasy troop to go out and find Higgs Boson to figure out why this idea has any significance. I don't know if it is just a matter of sitting down and seeing where the story takes me. Perhaps the reason why my last two stories aren't completed is because I had the end in sight. Maybe I need to start from the beginning and just write till these stories finish themselves. That may be the only way I ensure these characters don't die inside my mind.

Maybe I need to stop saying "maybe".

I'll keep you posted.

If he's not here, than where...

Alan

Defining literacy (ENGL 338)

It is a bit tricky to define literacy and literate, as a simple "able to read" doesn't cut it. I think it would be fair to say that this could tie into reading levels. Your class might have a certain reading level it needs to get to in order to be considered "proficient" and your students might have varying degrees of literacy.

It would also not be fair to call a person illiterate simply because they cannot read English. They may be highly proficient in reading another language (or braille, if you'd like to go that far.) However, with a rise in audio books, who is to say that someone who cannot read the letters on the page cannot pick out themes and meanings from the words that they hear?

I think in that sense then, literacy means being able to discern meaning from a text. I understand that this definition might create a bit of a problem if you had a beginning reader attempt to take meaning from a Dicken's novel, but I also feel that if you don't look at this as an either/or situation, and instead view it as there being degrees of literacy, then it isn't as problematic as it would seem.

Your take in the comments, I'll do my best to respond.

Grammar in the classroom, initial thoughts (ENGL 338)

When I was reading this article, a Douglas Adams quote popped into my head. "Isn't is enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Now, of course, Adams is not talking about grammar, but I think there's sort of a parallel here. Do we have to understand grammar in order to write well or understand a text? The answer, as the article shows over and over again is no. 

Picture posted solely because of the
Douglas Adams quote. 

I believed grammar to be important, but the article got me thinking about my own educational experiences. I did not have a formal grammar class until last spring. Last January was the first time I ever diagrammed a sentence. However, we understand what grammar is, and how English should operate in its standard form just by interacting with the world. Textbooks are written grammatically, newspapers and books follow these rules. The rules of grammar and language can be, it seems, learned by osmosis. We may need to clear up some points, and offer guidance, but I don't know that we need to have students work tirelessly at grammar. 

I would hesitate to say though that teaching grammar is not important at all. There are some students who will struggle with grammar, but I think the key is not overload them with the subject. Instead of seeing grammar as the foundation to good writing, perhaps we should look at it as insulation. It is important, but it isn't the biggest concern. Good grammar can help to make a good paper a great one, because good grammar won't distract from the paper's ideas like bad grammar will. However, as teachers (as was mentioned in class) it should be more important to focus on how a paper is organized and how its ideas are articulated rather than comma placement.

I think that another important thing to take into consideration is that no matter what your stance is on grammar, whether you believe it is important or not, as teachers we must be unafraid to teach grammar. Students will ask questions about how sentences are constructed and why we use I in some cases and me in others. We should be able to engage in these discussions. Grammar is a tool to use to write better and communicate better, and we should be able to help students with their grammar. At the same time, we must realize that grammar is not the only tool to be used to accomplish those goals and that each student may need something different.

Bedtime stories (ENGL 338)

So, I'm late to this discussion (sinus infections are just the worst for productivity) but I've been thinking about not necessarily my own reading experiences with my parents, but the ones that I have with my nephews who are probably my favorite people in the world.

Getting to read to my nephews is something I look forward to whenever I see them. I don't exactly know what it is about reading to them, but it is something special. But, reading to a child is so much more than just reading the words on the page. You use different voices to make characters come alive, different inflections to express mood, but most importantly you use the pictures to help the story become more interactive.

Many books that I've read to my nephews ask the reader to find something. Maybe its a mouse hidden on the page or trying to find 9 oranges. Or, you can pose the question yourself, "What is this?" you might ask, pointing to a dog. "What color is it?" The child will (hopefully) answer "a dog" and "brown". It is something so simple, but it is education at its most basic level. The child shows that they know what a dog is or what the color brown looks like and can relay that to you. (This becomes not so fun when you read them a book that they've seen 30 times and have pointed to the mouse before you can say, "do you see a mouse?")

So, while it is true as was said in class that nobody's family talks like a textbook, simply reading to a child helps facilitate the educational process. The child knows what to look for and how to answer a question, and that can give them a head start when they enter a classroom for the first time.