Closing Statements

While looking at the paper that was provided for us before the final exam, I had a lot of time to reflect on what this class actually meant to me. I had learned a lot from the text and other students in this course and it was very inspiring.

Looking back at it, I would have to say that You Gotta Be the Book and Clearing the Way were my two favorite, and most inspirational texts from this semester. I had learned quite a bit on how to approach grading papers written in class, all the way to interpreting texts and how to come to a conclusion as a class. With these ideas all in my head I was able to implement them now, as a teaching assistant, and hopefully later on as a teacher of English. This course had created a very beneficial basis on which I can build my future off of.

I think one of the coolest things I have taken from this course is ideas and solutions to certain issues we may experience in the classroom. As a class, we were able to discuss alternative possibilities and solutions and I feel everyone had amazing input and I would be able to put all of this to use later on. On top of class involvement, there were also other texts, like Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, that provided us with future lesson plans. I don't know about the other students, but I definitely plan on keeping this book around for my future teaching exercises.

All in all, this class has brought me nothing but important and beneficial lessons for my future classroom and I look forward to implementing them. It was a pleasure to be in this class, especially with the few people we had. I felt it was efficient, helpful, and very productive. I hope to have more classes like this in the future.

What I Notice Now

While sitting in class today it was great to see what lessons the class has come with so far. It is fun to be able to build a presentation for everyone and teach about something we are passionate abut as future teachers. With that in mind, I thought it was interesting how we were all able to build off of each other in a way.

I saw today that many of us had some of the same ideas as to how we could incorporate all of these with a lesson plan in the future. It seemed as if Linda Christensen's Reading, Writing, and Rising Up was a good book to refer to when it came to lessons. This book, in my eyes, is one that we should try to keep around for our futures. But why is this book so popular for teachers and why is it so effective? It seemed to me that a few of us referred to Where I'm From today and I'd love to expand on that.

I looked into a book called Cultural Competence: A Primer for Educators, by Jean Moule. In this text, Jean refers to the "where I'm from" piece and expands on why it would be beneficial in a classroom setting. "The idea behind this activity is to use two themes: Our Foundations and The Journey" (149). In this she is saying the foundations make us consider things like beginnings, family and friends, community, values and other things. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the journey. The journey is you being prompted by words, identity development, pain and healing, joy, dilemmas, and a lot more that the individual has experienced.  There is more on this at this Link.

I feel like, to many teaching professionals, Linda Christensen provides us an awakening experience with this project. She isn't only laying out lesson plans for future teachers. She is teaching us how to teach with joy and serve justice while doing so. With this book and hand, we are able to teach in a way not many others are provided a chance at. She provides great guidance for us all.

Teacher as A Researcher

As a teacher, we will constantly have to be the one to evaluate and grade our students. In some subjects it is very easy to grade, like math for instance, but in english it can be a tad bit more difficult. According to You Gotta Be the Book by Jeffrey Wilhelm, teachers serve a role as a researcher in the classroom. "They are continually evaluating, interpreting, and making decisions- or they wouldn't survive two minutes in the classroom" (196).  In this, Wilhelm makes it a point to show how necessary it is for teachers to follow their "researcher" role. Without doing so, we basically fail as teachers.

In sum, he is saying that as a teacher we have to be so observant and it is critical for the students. We have to provide appropriate criteria and observe these students progress through class work and discussion. In many cases, this could be a hard task to accomplish due to spark notes, and  also you could give credit to someone who doesn't deserve it. We constantly decipher those who are preforming at a regular pace and actively involved in the class itself. We kind of become experienced as the ones who assign the text and in that, we are the ones to gather the right answers and information and make sure the students match theirs to ours.

Another way to look at all of this is when Wilhelm says, "Teacher research has helped me reimagine my role as that of a democratic worker: reading and learning with my students in collaborative fashion; helping to establish a community where we listen to, value and learn from each other; and establishing democratic values and processes as we read and learn and work toward better was of being, understanding, and acting both as individuals and as a community" (196). I think Wilhelm has one of the most appropriate views as a teacher, and it is one we should all adapt.

With the perspective of being a researcher, we are able to see educating as a whole new process, which isn't taught by right and wrong answer. We approach teaching by a community action, we come to a consensus of a solution and work along together to determine what the text (or assignment) means. I believe this approach would be very beneficial to the teaching population. I would provide a link but if you simply google "teacher researcher" on google books, the results are amazing and endless!

Reading Creates a New World

After reading a part of chapter three in You Gotta be The Book, by Jeffrey Wilhelm, I came across a section about relating to characters and the story itself. It made actually rethink of some cases where books had actually made me cry and I read stories thinking as if I was the lead character. In the world now, most students don't get to experience this as often as they should. With technology being a major role in every day lives, in and out of school, I feel as if the students are deprived of this experience. The recent upcoming of technology everywhere has put serious withdrawals on the creative mind and the love of literature has decreased drastically. Because why read a book when there is Facebook, right?

Wilhelm shares accounts where his students have wrote about how they related to a story and it had brought back so many great feelings that literature has brought me throughout the years. On page 80, we read of a girl named Cora and how reading The Wreck of the Hesperus had effected her. She says while reading she wished she would be able to just follow the characters around, but instead, she imagines herself as those characters. I think this makes a very literal interpretation of "You Gotta Be the Book". Once you begin reading, you get so caught up in the text that it almost consumes you and you become whoever you are reading about and live the very same situation through them.

Not many people think this way, and maybe some have never personally experienced it, but I believe if you were to read a book this would be the way to do it. Text allows the mind to travel in so many different directions, and this is a quality that technology deprives us of. Yes, there are some thought provoking technological instruments, and some made for that very purpose, but I think many of you can agree that it isn't the same. Your eyes follow the words and the minds grasps the story so perfectly in unison that you can't seem to veer away.

Here is a fun link of how reading can benefit our lives! Enjoy!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/12-scientific-ways-reading-can-actually-improve-your-life#.euWyKLPOD