It's Sunday, the Bears game is on at 3:15. And it's not just any Bears game, it's the Bears v. Packers game, and I'm a Bears fan :-) What does this have to do with English or education? Absolutely nothing. So now it's time to write something provocative. Okay, I'm waiting....I'm waiting....
I've got nothing.
To be honest, I can't get my mind off of practicum. It starts tomorrow! I just drove to my placement today, I'm really bad with directions so if I'm going get lost I'd rather do it today than tomorrow morning. This may sound silly to some of you Iowans, but I've never had to drive past corn fields and cows to get to school. It was such a weird experience for me! When I called my mom and told her, her first reaction was to ask me if I actually got the right directions and didn't just end up at a big church. No mom, not unless churches have suddenly removed the crosses from the roof and replaced them with light up signs and yellow buses.
After I got over the fact that my placement isn't like what I'm used to- suburban landscape filled with strip malls, sprawling parking lots, and green squares of playgrounds- a new fear crept into my mind: what if the teacher I planned to be isn't the teacher that is right for the new setting I'm in? My whole life I have grown up in a democratic suburb with democratic suburban teachers. I feel like my understanding of what a teacher does and who a teacher is has been shaped by my educational experiences in my home setting (I know shocker, right?). But now I'm in a completely different setting, does that mean I have to be a completely different teacher? I know that I'll have to change my curricula or some teaching methods and tools for each class I teach (even within the same school), but now will I have to change myself too?
I guess I am realizing more than ever that the group of people who taught me, and the group of people who were in class with me, tended so have some of the similar thoughts and values. Again, what a shock I grew up in a certain culture. I guess the shock is that I never realized until now that northwest Chicago suburbs was a culture. Now that I know that, the bigger question- which I've been dancing around for the last 500 plus words)- is where do I fit in in this new culture of eastern Iowa City ruralness? What values, ideas, concepts do they all, for the most part, share and accept. Maybe I'm thinking to much into this, or maybe I'm still jostled from the fact that I passed by the street for my school three times before I could get a good look at the sign. After all, isn't part of school confronting ideas, or ideals, that you naturally accept in order to broaden understanding maybe even shift some of those ideas you believe in?
I guess I'm in for more learning than I thought this semester. I think though, that as long as I have my students' best interests at heart, and I show my passion for the material that I'll be a-okay.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Where did the imagination go?
I'm currently seated at my kitchen table reading the chapter titled "Unforgettable Language" in Fletcher's book (yes we were supposed to have it all read for Friday, but oh well), and reading the part about Adamisms make me realize how great children's language is.
Think about it, at four years-old you are bombarded with thousands of words a day, a lot of which are new. In tangible terms, it would be like unlocking the door to a Lego store, and telling a kid "You have to build something, but you can use everything and anything you want in the store." This is what children are doing when they are learning how to express themselves with new language: they have a bunch of word Lego pieces- some familiar some strange- and they have to put them together to construct meaning. Sometimes the final construction looks odd and topples over after the builder removes their hands, other times they build a veritable Empire State building of a phrase like, "Stop it, you're tickling me with your voice." Whether the child knows it or not, they have combined the sensory (tickling) and auditory (voice) worlds together in one small phrase and it works beautifully.
So how is it that we move from these beautiful, and sometimes messy, phrases of childhood to the fridgedness- almost sterility- of words in adolescence and adulthood? We undoubtedly know more words, and know what they mean, so shouldn't we have even more beautiful language?
I think part of the problem is that as we grow up we learn that there is a "right way" and "wrong way" to use language. Instead of being congratulated for playing with words, and their meanings, students are penalized for "failure" to use words "correctly," rather than being congratulated for thier attempt to create something new. For example, how many times in high school, when reading outloud for an English class, did some of your classmates skip over words saying, "Uh, um...that word," for fear of embarassing themselves infront of the class and the teacher? Better yet, how many times did students in that same classroom boldly ask what a word means?
I think it will be part of any future high school English teacher's job is to allow kids to expirement with words; show them our own interest in words (some of my favorites are poignant and fuscia) to let them know that language does not need to be tied down once you get into high school. At fourteen, and even eighteen, years-old we don't expect them to have a complete grasp on the English language, and words were meant to be molded and reshaped. Better yet, you can question words and the way they are used, and inquisitiveness is a great thing!
While the "What I Want to Do" conversation is a lot easier than the "How I Want to Do It" conversation, I hope that realizing that I want my students to realized the vivacity of language might make the "How" come more naturally. Until then, I'm open to suggestions :)
Think about it, at four years-old you are bombarded with thousands of words a day, a lot of which are new. In tangible terms, it would be like unlocking the door to a Lego store, and telling a kid "You have to build something, but you can use everything and anything you want in the store." This is what children are doing when they are learning how to express themselves with new language: they have a bunch of word Lego pieces- some familiar some strange- and they have to put them together to construct meaning. Sometimes the final construction looks odd and topples over after the builder removes their hands, other times they build a veritable Empire State building of a phrase like, "Stop it, you're tickling me with your voice." Whether the child knows it or not, they have combined the sensory (tickling) and auditory (voice) worlds together in one small phrase and it works beautifully.
So how is it that we move from these beautiful, and sometimes messy, phrases of childhood to the fridgedness- almost sterility- of words in adolescence and adulthood? We undoubtedly know more words, and know what they mean, so shouldn't we have even more beautiful language?
I think part of the problem is that as we grow up we learn that there is a "right way" and "wrong way" to use language. Instead of being congratulated for playing with words, and their meanings, students are penalized for "failure" to use words "correctly," rather than being congratulated for thier attempt to create something new. For example, how many times in high school, when reading outloud for an English class, did some of your classmates skip over words saying, "Uh, um...that word," for fear of embarassing themselves infront of the class and the teacher? Better yet, how many times did students in that same classroom boldly ask what a word means?
I think it will be part of any future high school English teacher's job is to allow kids to expirement with words; show them our own interest in words (some of my favorites are poignant and fuscia) to let them know that language does not need to be tied down once you get into high school. At fourteen, and even eighteen, years-old we don't expect them to have a complete grasp on the English language, and words were meant to be molded and reshaped. Better yet, you can question words and the way they are used, and inquisitiveness is a great thing!
While the "What I Want to Do" conversation is a lot easier than the "How I Want to Do It" conversation, I hope that realizing that I want my students to realized the vivacity of language might make the "How" come more naturally. Until then, I'm open to suggestions :)
Monday, September 12, 2011
What is writing and how do I write?
Lately I have been writing more in my own journal. Maybe it is because I now know that it is writing that counts, or that it counts as writing (which are two different statements I believe). No matter what it is, I feel like lately I have reached a new state in my writing: self-discovery.
Being a girlfriend for the first time in my life (1 year anniversary this past Saturday!) I've found myself writing about my boyfriend a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I found myself getting frustrated with myself, because in reading journals of a few great authors I saw all these genuine and wonderfully intellectual thoughts they were scribbling down. It was almost aggravatingly effortless. I thought, "If someone reads my journal years from now they're going to think I'm some character plucked from a bad Judy Bloom book."
Reading Zinsser's book on memior and Fletcher's What a Writer Needs makes me realize that, although on the surface I might just be talking about how I a mad/happy/in love with/frustrated with my boyfriend, underneath there is some self-discovery going on: I'm learning how I carry myself in relationships, what I think is fair, what parts of my past affect the way react to emotional stress...Aside from learning about my personal self, I am finding out my voice as a writer: I use the word "so" as a transition waaaay too often, I am pretty witty (almost downright hilarious sometimes), I tend not to completely finish a thought but let one idea stem into another like a frame story, and when I am describing a scene or something that happened to me that day I have to tell you every detail (sometimes to breaking point of my own patience).
So that's me writing about my writing. I'm metawriting. Hopefully I don't ever write about metawriting. I don't even know what I'd call that.
Being a girlfriend for the first time in my life (1 year anniversary this past Saturday!) I've found myself writing about my boyfriend a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I found myself getting frustrated with myself, because in reading journals of a few great authors I saw all these genuine and wonderfully intellectual thoughts they were scribbling down. It was almost aggravatingly effortless. I thought, "If someone reads my journal years from now they're going to think I'm some character plucked from a bad Judy Bloom book."
Reading Zinsser's book on memior and Fletcher's What a Writer Needs makes me realize that, although on the surface I might just be talking about how I a mad/happy/in love with/frustrated with my boyfriend, underneath there is some self-discovery going on: I'm learning how I carry myself in relationships, what I think is fair, what parts of my past affect the way react to emotional stress...Aside from learning about my personal self, I am finding out my voice as a writer: I use the word "so" as a transition waaaay too often, I am pretty witty (almost downright hilarious sometimes), I tend not to completely finish a thought but let one idea stem into another like a frame story, and when I am describing a scene or something that happened to me that day I have to tell you every detail (sometimes to breaking point of my own patience).
So that's me writing about my writing. I'm metawriting. Hopefully I don't ever write about metawriting. I don't even know what I'd call that.
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