Reflection on the NYSCATE Experience 2006 - Final Project

Here's the URL for those of you who would like to check out mine and Tracie's website reflecting our experience at the NYSCATE seminar.

I definitely became more adept at working on a website and was able work with iMovie and iPhoto more. Most importantly, I learned how crucial and timely the conversation is that we have been having in 506. Though many of us have not seen a lot of these technologies and ideas in action in classrooms, I think that time may be coming soon...even if we are the ones to introduce it!

I would like to learn if there is a way to compress an iMovie to fit on the web, without making the Quicktime viewer only a few inches big. I would also like to learn how to filter out background noise in movies when you only have one integrated file from a digital camera. Is that possible? A few of our movie clips were a little hard to hear/understand because we could not find a way to separate the audio to delete other people's voices and/or background noise.

I can see any student creating a website to reflect what they have learned in almost any given unit. It would be a nice alternative to a poster or paper as a culminating project. They could work on it throughout the unit to use it to solidify their understanding of the topic. They could also link a blog to the site, which would facilitate communication among the students and teacher. A website can be tailored to suit so many different purposes and needs, the possibilities are almost endless.

I would like to add more examples of how each of the workshops' tips could be tailored to the secondary ELA classroom. As we discussed during our presentation, a few of the workshops seemed more applicable to the younger age range, but I am sure that if we put our minds to it we could find ways to alter them to work for us and our colleagues.

Not that this is possible now, I wish that we had taken more pictures and more footage, but with technical difficulties it was impossible at the time.

Let me know what you guys thought.

P.S. Larissa, the grant page was just for you! There appears to be a lot of assistance to be had, as long as you know where to look.

Undergrad in English or Education, pros and cons

Hello All,

I just wanted to thank those of you who saw my post regarding the ATS-W and offered kind words of support and encouragement. Karen made an important comment regarding the background information that is assumed we have: "Some of the areas of uncertainty you share here would typically not be addressed in an MAT program w/a focus on Eng. Education. These topics are often addressed in intro to ed courses on the undergraduate level".

Up until this point, I was glad that I did my bachelors in English, and not Eduction. But now I am not so sure it was the smartest thing. With all of the discussion we have had regarding the death of literature as we know it in the classrooms, all of the content knowledge that many of us have gained through our undergraduate studies in English may have less value than we hoped. Though I loved my time at Ithaca College reading a wide variety of classics and modern pieces of literature, I am wishing now, about to embark on my student teaching experience, I had more knowledge of the foundations of education. It is ironic and sad that we have all taken a course of this title, yet feel like we know almost nothing of the subject!

Are there any key resources you know of that I should check out to acquire this base level of knowledge that I would have received if I had been an education undergrad?

Final Reflection

An Increased Sense of Conflict

Upon reflecting on my experiences in 506 and various classroom settings, I have only felt the divide increase between what I have learned and what is practiced in schools today. As technology expands our possible audience (the entire world) and avenues for meaningful discourse (multimodal, global classrooms), I have realized the power the study of English has to reflect, analyze, and evaluate the state of the world as a whole (including ethics and politics). Though these realizations have changed what I believe the study of English has the power to accomplish, I have not seen these opportunities being explored in the classrooms I have observed and substituted in.

The mere presence of the discourse included in the three articles from CITE is encouraging, yet the discussion still feels like it is only being held by a chosen few and is still in the process of being disseminated among the common populous of educators (both student and teacher educators). The simple fact that 506 is the only class where technology is incorporated in our education reflects the fact that this mode of instruction is not fully accepted and endorsed by the educational world as a whole. Why are teacher education programs shying away from this essential component of teacher education? Similarly, why aren’t in-service teachers required to attend professional development conferences that endorse technology use to develop and enhance (multimodal) literacy skills?

When will we stop merely discussing the value technology has to offer education, and actually live what we have been theorizing? This brings me to the recent developments on Chris’ blog. Though I question the timing and mode of raising the essential issue that Chris posited in his letter to his colleagues, the defensive response that they (supposedly his colleagues) took exemplifies the discomfort that many in-service teachers feel about the ‘new breed’ of educators that are about to enter or have recently entered the field. Instead of embracing the new appearance of effective pedagogy, many are taken aback that current methods are in question. As history suggests and as we are experiencing, change is never comfortable or easy.

This brings me back full-circle, and supports my feeling that I have only become more apprehensive about entering the field, since completing this course. I am worried that I will have difficultly maneuvering the treacherous terrain between maintaining the status quo as a “survival strategy” and remaining true to my vision of what English can be, do, and offer to every student (Kelly 64).

An appropriate aside; even Microsoft Word does not acknowledge that there may be several different types of literacy (it insists that ‘literacies’ is a typo)! The acceptance of multiple forms of literacy, which has only increased with the prevalence of technology in our society, has not reached many areas of popular culture.

Is common sense enough?

Hello All,

Were there any other of you (besides Jack, Tracie and I) that took the ATS-W yesterday? If so, I don't know how you feel, but I think that test was atrocious! I went into the test feeling completely confident (especially after doing well, at least I think, on the LAST in the morning) about the situation. But after about 10 questions on the ATS-W, I felt like I was going to have a panic attack! There were so many questions where at least two of the answer options seemed right, and could have easily been justified responses. I wish I could get a copy of this test, so I could see what everyone else thought or would do about these possible situations. I am worried that so many of the real-life situations that we will encounter in the field have not been addressed in the program (dealing with ELL's, conducting parent-teacher conferences, dealing with administration, or realizing after the fact that your lesson plan was 'boring', etc.)!

Luckily, the essay addressed strategies that could be used to satisfy a district's requirement that students learn to use technology effectively and appropriately! I was sure of that (thanks to 506) but the rest, I just don't know. I am terrified that I either did well (a lucky guesser after narrowing down to two answers) or have failed, and I have never felt that way about anything in my academic career!

If you guys have already taken the ATS-W, what did you think about your exam? Did you feel prepared or did you feel the same as me, that many of the responses were appropriate, but you can obviously only fill in one bubble? If I do fail, will it go on my academic record FOREVER, or will I just have to retake it? I am just feeling horrible, because I even did the practice exam and did well!

If I do pass, how will I ever learn the 'right' response to the many situations posed in the exam? It scares me that I may enter the field with only common sense in my arsenal, when I would really appreciate a foundation of theory or at least best practices. HELP?!?!

I love ESL!!!

Hello All,

Wednesday night I took a job to fill in for an ESL teacher at IHS. Though I was anxious about my abilities to actually help this very diverse group of students, their high level of respect and dedication reassured and comforted me. Here's a brief rundown of the day:

2nd period: CAS (content area supervision) class. There were about 7 kids in this class, all with different levels English speaking ability. I spent the period helping each student with homework from their other classes (math and history were the main subjects I needed to help them with). All they needed most of the time was for me to reword or describe a question for them. They understood the work, but just needed help understanding what the teacher wanted them to do. I helped explain the concept of ratio and also helped a student with the Pythagorean theorem (I was proud that I even remembered that stuff). A great period!

3rd and 4th period: ESL III. These students were almost fluent, but were still working on complete mastery of the language. We completed a game of jeopardy on Romeo and Juliet (which they had just finished reading). This class had such an attention to detail - they created the questions themselves and one of them asked how many teeth the nurse had...and they remembered (4)!?!?! They had so much fun trying to define and identify the part of speech of obscure Shakespearean words. Some of the sentences they came up with for these words were so funny (most the time correct, but still funny). It was great and they all really enjoyed it, all the while proving they really understood the play (and the language).

6th and 7th period: ESL I. This was a class of students who were at the beginning levels of using the language. There were two sisters from Burma who had only been in the States for 1 month! I cannot even imagine the frustration of going to a school where you have hardly any idea of what is being said and being unable to even communicate confusion! These students are so brave and courageous to be coming to school everyday, trying to learn in a language that is completely foreign to them. Luckily for the two sisters, there was another girl from Burma who had been in the States for almost two years and she helped serve as a translator to ensure understanding. This class was fabulous and they were all so understanding and compassionate! We spent the two periods working out of a workbook similar to those I used to learn Spanish. After we finished the tasks the teacher had planned, we still had few minutes left and I asked if they would mind sharing their stories with me. They were delighted to do so. There were students from S. Korea, Burma, Japan, China, and West Africa (none of them spoke Spanish...the only other language I am sort of fluent in). Many of them had been in the country for less than 1 year. Most came to the States for education...for their parents, many of which attended Cornell. They liked the States and many said they had no desire to move back to their native countries.

When they were sharing their stories (at many times struggling to find the correct words to explain their feelings to me), I was awestruck by their perseverance and willingness to tell me everything. I do not think I would ever be strong enough to completely immerse myself in a country where I would essentially lose my voice due to language barriers. Voice is so closely linked with identity and it would be terrifying to be unable to communicate concerns, questions, desires, interests, or any basic level of communication. When I apologized for being so new at the situation, they went out of their way to say I was doing fine. They were very concerned with how I felt, when really they were the ones who were going up against great odds in pursuit of education. They were a wonderful group and I would be honored to be able to work with them again. It was one of the best days I have had yet and I miss them already. I am going to investigate opportunities to volunteer to help ESL students and adults - I think I may have found my calling.

These classes increased my disgust and concern over testing ESL students in English after one year (see post from earlier in semester). I doubt that any of us would be able to perform well on a test in a language we had only been introduced to the year before. Have any of these legislators even tried to empathize with this population's experience?

Trudging Through...

So it is officially almost the end of the semester and I am as tired as ever. Having recently realized that I have blogged nowhere near enough, I am making a last chance attempt at recovering my grade. I have worked so hard in this class (iMovie, in particular) and would hate to receive a less than stellar grade just because of my blogging habit (or lack thereof).

Tracie and I spent an entire day over the break trying to sift through everything that we experienced at the NYSCATE conference. After almost 8 hours of work, we have only partially completed 2 out of 7 pages. We tried to upload a Windows Movie Maker file of the interviews that we conducted while at the conference, but after a very long time of attempted uploading, we gave up. The file was not very large (only about 4 minutes), so why would this happen? Is it possibly a flaw with wmm? I used iMovie to do our falls movie, so I am a complete novice when it comes to wmm. Any suggestions? As of now, we are just going to use iMovie to try to overcome this obstacle.

Encounter with Technology --Social Studies 9th Grade

I was a Social Studies teacher today and the 9th grade classes (there were two doing this today) were working in the library Mac lab. I was stoked to hear that a subject commonly thought of as removed from technology (much like English), was utilizing the power of the web for learning. My hopes and dreams at the possibility of this beautiful junction were quickly shattered. A detailed account of my crash follows:

There were about 25 kids in each class. They were working in groups of 4 or 5 and each had a specific task they were to complete before collaborating to complete the project (a brochure for a country in Africa...hopefully more detailed and nuanced than a common tourist would want). Each student claimed they had already done their part...and proceeded to surf around on the Internet. There was no academic focus visible! I literally spent all of my time in these two periods walking around the computer lab making sure they were doing something at least partially academically related. There was no collaboration evident, though I reminded them that this was a group assignment. Out of each group, there was one studious, dedicated person who was assembling the information that they and their group had gathered on their specific country. In addition to forcing them to steer clear of sites that they were clearly not getting information from (web games, searching iTunes for a song they wanted, or viewing the latest upload to YouTube) I had my hands more than full trying to keep them from playing bumper chairs!

I am seriously hoping that this level of disobedience and lack of excitement about working in the computer lab using technology to learn, was simply due to the fact that I was a sub and therefore, didn't need to be respected. With the way that we have been talking about technology in classroom, I was really expecting that the kids would be chomping at the bit to research and learn on the web. But all they wanted to do was waste time and differ responsibility.

I guess that it does all come back to if they actually WANT to learn whatever the subject is...and apparently, they had little to no interest in learning about the countries in Africa. This teacher's idea was pretty cool and allowed the students a fair amount of creative freedom, but the kids were still not incredibly responsive. How can we as teachers instill in the students a sense of responsibility over their own learning, especially when we are allowing them to take more control?

Can any of you share your experiences with this sort of project and/or situation? Do you think they were being crazy difficult simply because their "real" teacher wasn't there?

P.S. Luckily, I had three other classes that went very well and I was also able to listen to a very interesting political debate during two of those three, or I would be thoroughly bummed.

Having Fun Substituting

Hello All,

As a few of you know, I have recently begun substituting for the Ithaca City School District. Today I had my third job since receiving Board approval. I must say that this experience has only solidified my belief that I do want to become a teacher. (HUGE sigh of relief!)

My first day I subbed for a music teacher at Dewitt Middle School and worked with 6th-8th graders and I had a blast. Everyone was very well-behaved and were more than helpful and receptive to the assignment that I was instructed to complete with the class. It was a journal assignment requiring the students to reflect on a Navajo Indian performance that they had seen earlier in the week. I was very impressed with their willingness/excitement to do the assignment. And it was writing! I know that many of us, myself included, have become a little jaded with the amount of actual work being done in the classrooms, but this music teacher has her stuff together! They are even working when a sub is there. When I first started thinking about becoming a sub, I thought that all I would ever do was be a study hall monitor type of person in the classroom, but to date, I have had actual lesson plans to follow (which is a heck of a lot less boring)! YAY!

My second day was not as great. I took a chance and accepted a job to sub for a high school physical education teacher. It was horrible. There were no plans left for me to follow if the weather was bad (it was raining all day) so I had to impose on other gym teacher's classes and sort of piggyback. Everything seemed chaotic. By the end of the day, I had my own gym space and had the students play indoor soccer one period and handball the next. The class that played handball was crazy! It was a bunch of upper class students and they were so aggressive and into the game that there was actually some blood shed (this totally reminded me of the aggressive behavior in Raising Cain). A kid had his finger nail ripped back! He was very calm, got a band aide and came back to play with even more ferocity! It was unbelievable!

Today was the best! I subbed for a 6th grade math teacher who also has one reading class (?). The plans were great and everything went soooo smoothly. The kids were funny, cooperative and all-around-great. And, plus having worked a few days (and survived) I felt more confident and I think that the kids could pick up on this. They did their classwork (review in a workbook for a test in a few days) and didn't do anything crazy or deviant. It was wonderful. The reading class was pretty fun. We did some vocab (definitely not Masselink style, but from a traditional workbook), and then they read aloud. At the end, they were to write in their journals about their reactions to the chapter we read. After they had written everything down, I asked them to talk to me about what they had written. They were very excited to have the chance to talk about it and were incredibly vocal. So overall, the best classroom day yet!

I would strongly suggest that, if possible, everyone try subbing. It has helped me gain confidence as a teacher and it is just fun to be in a classroom again. Here's to many more great classroom experiences!

Reflections on Podcast

Thinking back about my podcast and its creation, I am quite proud. I was able to successfully learn (at least the basics) about a program (Garageband) which I had never even heard of or used before. This in itself was a great accomplishment. At first I was a little reluctant about having to use a Mac, mainly for convenience issues, but now I am at peace with travelling early to class or even an extra day to work on the Macs. They have proved to be much more user-friendly than I anticipated and would love to own one of my own someday.

The actual creation of the podcast was a learning experience as well. I had never used a mic to record myself with a computer and had definitely never used Audacity or LAME. Luckily, after a little frustration, I actually read the Help instructions at the LAME website and was able to convert my audio file to an MP3. A down side to using LAME was that it automatically compacted the separate audio files I had created when recording into one larger, contiguous file. If I were to revise my podcast, I would definitely like to figure out how to keep some of my audio files separate during the conversion process. I wish that I had had little chunks of audio interspersed with music, instead of music only at the beginning and the end.

I loved finding pictures to use to enhance my podcast and its content. I found so many pictures that it was at times difficult to choose which ones to use. For this reason, I ended up with quite a lot of photos (around 50), way exceeding the minimum requirement. While the pictures were probably the most fun part of the process, they were also a little bit frustrating. Each time I put a picture in the queue, Garageband would automatically stretch it out to fit the entire length of the podcast. So each time a picture was added it needed to be shrunk down to the appropriate size. Not a big deal, just annoying. The many pictures were well worth the hassle of repeatedly shrinking down, because I believe that the visual aspects of the podcast greatly supported what my audio was saying. Being such a lover of print media, I had never really taken much time to think about how images can enhance any topic all the while making it more interesting and pleasurable to study.

Now after seeing James and Larissa's iMovies, I wish that I had been able to use this application instead. At least I will be making a snazzy movie soon. The transitions available in iMovie are far superior to those (or lack of) in Garageband.

I am very pleased that each of us were able to chose a topic that was important to us and relate it to the changes that are happening in the 'Flat World.' Parental involvement in children's education has recently came to the forefront of my mind since the birth of my niece. The connection that technology is allowing parents to have in their children's education is amazing and hugely beneficial to both parties.

The copyright issues that have arisen are quite surprising to me. I cannot believe that you cannot use an entire song when there is obviously no intention to sell the product or make a profit. But then again, I am a person who believes that everything should be open source. I miss the days of Napster and free legal downloads. I can say for myself, that I did not purchase any fewer actual CD's, but simply found more music that I would be interested in purchasing the whole album after browsing through a few of the artist's songs. I probably bought more CD's! Anyway, I am curious to find out what sort of repercussions might come of many of us infringing on copyright.

In summation, I believe that the podcast assignment was effective in learning a new technology and applying what we have learned in Friedman and Richardson while exploring an interest that is important to each one of us.

My Own Experience with Passionate Contracts

I know that many of my experiences may be similar to yours out there (you know who you are).

In the MAT program, for the most part, we are being taught very progressive ideas where we, as teachers, work to foster an environment where every student can learn what he or she is genuinely interested in. Through supporting and encouraging personal interests to promote learning we also strive to prepare our students to function in society as literate adults who can listen, speak, read, and write effectively (hopefully in many medias). So, I would say that the majority of our classes endorse a Constructivist classroom learning environment.

When I first entered a classroom, as an observer, I discovered that I was entering a different world that what I was expecting or preparing to enter. My first observation was definitely a 'teacher-centric' universe. The teacher I was observing taught 11th grade honors and AP English courses. She taught them...and they listened. There was no room or time for discovery or personal interest because the teacher was very focused on the tests that each student would be taking (either Regents or AP). Many days were literally spent doing old exams. Many assignments were old essay questions from said exams. Not only was there little discussion, there was no room for revision or growth. Everything was a one-time, here's your grade, now let's move onto the next question type of assignment. When classroom discussion did occur, it was incredibly structured, and I could tell that these incredibly intelligent students had learned how to play the game. They had the right answers and never pushed the boundaries of what a text could mean or what they felt about the text.

This teacher was in fact the teacher who taught me for 11th grade honors English and AP English the next year. I did well in the class, since I too was a student who knew how to play the game. Incredibly, it was the texts that we diligently read in AP English that I believe directed my life path of wanting to be an English teacher. Looking back after observing her teaching style, I am surprised that I do not shrink away from literature but in fact love and embrace it. I guess it goes to show that if you love something, you will love it no matter how it is packaged and delivered.

Now, onto my next placement. Last semester, I observed a teacher who graduated from Cortland with her MAT but for K-6. She was teaching 7th grade (how does that work with NCLB supposedly working so hard to ensure that each teacher is certified to teach the grade level and subject they are teaching?). Again, in this classroom, I saw little of what we were learning here in our program. Grammar-a-Day exercises were done to 'teach' grammar (literally correcting ONE grammatically incorrect sentence a day, completely going against everything we learned in Masselink's class). Few students, during my 50 hours, seemed to make any progress in this arena. The majority of the time I listened to the students stumble through Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. They did no reading at home...everything was read in class. This was so interactive that my host teacher even had time to knit while they read! I am sure this was because, like me, she was bored out of her mind after hearing the same scenes read that we had already heard three times before in the first three classes. If she was bored, how could she think that the students were not bored also? I cannot even begin to address how awful it is to read an entire text aloud in class. Time could be spent so much more wisely - possibly incorporating technology and personal interest/abilities, i.e. Shade's approach to Hamlet.

To her support, when I first began observing in her class she was finishing a unit on YA lit about the Revolutionary War and the culminating project for the unit was to create an iMovie. Sadly, it was little more than synopsis and a little author bio. The kids were able to add a little touch of themselves to what would have normally been a quite boring task. They loved it and were so proud to share their productions (reinforcing the need for an authentic audience). Thought this as the only example of technology being incorporated, at least she tried.

So after encountering these two environments and teaching styles that contrasted so greatly, I was naturally torn, and confused...and depressed. How was I going to negotiate what I thought English was supposed to be and what it appears, was the status quo? I am still working on this. How to you know what you can 'get away' with and what may cause too many waves? During my best, most confident moments, I know that all this requires is being able to prove the worth of what I am doing. And hopefully others will follow suit.

Suggested Podcast Criteria

Hello All,

Here are some ideas Joy and I had for a rubric for grading the podcasts:

1. Personal interest in subject
2. Addresses SOME aspect of the Flat World
3. Creative
4. Flows between mediums
5. Exhibits knowledge of iMovie/GarageBand

Talk to you later!
:)

Passionate Contracts by Ursula Kelly

This is a provocative article that many of us beginning teachers will be able to relate to. It discusses the pedagogies we are taught in our program and the conflicts we will (or already have) discovered in current secondary classrooms.

Some major points to think about and interesting excerpts:

• Education and change are political.
• "This chapter focuses on the contentious and deeply sedimented relationships of power, knowledge, desire, and identity, as they are constituted within beginning teachers themselves, as a means to examine how - and in what ways - change might be possible" (Kelly 57).
• "The dynamics of knowledge, power, desire, and identity [are] embodied relations" (58)
• Two current approaches to teacher education:
• A portfolio - "A technicist base and is developed to provide beginning teachers an array of 'methods' by which to implement the current curriculum" (58-59).
• An ideal - "Ignores the existence of curricular direction and professional practices, proceeding with advances in English as if the status quo did not exist" (59).
• Romanticized English:
• "How are such romanticized notions or 'impossible dreams' of English become ; dreams of the possible' within English" (60)?
• "We fall in and out of love with knowledge" (60).
• Geography of English
• The reasons we teach wanted to teach English - "rhetorical-functional, aesthetic-cultural, ethical-progressive, and political-critical" (61).
• "English is not a construct, not a given or an essence' and the construct of English is not monolithic" (62).
• "Contradiction is the fertile seedbed of change" (62).
• "These competing versions of English are deeply political; they are about relations of power and the extent to which they are sanctioned reiterated, and challenged through subject English" (63).
• Reconstituted English
• "Effectively sidelined by such foci, however, is a concern for what education is about and how its normative preoccupations and daily enactments, to the exclusion of other concerns, can be obstacles to visions and versions of change" (65).
• "Without the support to become the teachers they are learning they want to be, these beginning teachers of English may learn that there is little space in which to negotiate the differences such insights accrue for the classroom. In this lesson, desire begets vexation, and vexation erodes hope and curtains the spirit. No number of exciting new techniques for maintaining the very old status quo are of solace here" (65).
  

Finally, "Teacher education based on exploration, experimentation, and critical inquiry cannot flourish in such compromised circumstance - nor can the well-informed dreams of beginning teachers" (66).

I hope this article spoke to you and you could connect with the content of the article. How can we change our program (or simply our approach to the program) to brace us for the conflicting messages we will all encounter when we begin student teaching.

Addition to Previous Post on Testing

While skimming around NY Times online, I came across an article about testing procedures used to determine if a child is "gifted". Ironically, these tests are offered in Spanish, Urdu, Haitian Creole, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Bengali and Korean! So, we will judge if a student is gifted in their native tongue, but not if it is a federally mandated exam that will determine their progression in school and affect the score the school receives under NCLB?!?

Federal ESL ELA Exam Changes

I don't know if any of you saw this brief article on News 10 Now last night...but I was deeply troubled (again) by what the federal government is doing regarding standardized testing.

Quick recap of the article - Now instead of having 2-3 years of ELA instruction before taking ELA exams in English without extra time or assistance, ESL students are being required by the federal government to take these tests after just one year of instruction and immersion! To check out the article yourself, go to News10Now.com

I cannot believe that anyone would think that this is a good idea. English is a very large and difficult language to study. I think that all of us can agree that in Masselink's class we were learning things that we had never encountered before (or taken seriously). And we felt this way after growing up in the English language and being surrounded by it for 25+ years. How could a child from another country, who has never spoken English before, possibly succeed on a formal, standardized test after just one year of instruction!?!

How many children are we going to traumatize by forcing them to take a serious test in a language with which they are just learning? And how are we going to allow these test results to affect their progression/placement in school? Does our government read any research?

Below is a copy of the NYS ESL Learning Standards:

ESL Standard 1: Students will listen, speak, read and write in English for information and understanding.

ESL Standard 2: Students will listen, speak, read and write in English for literary response, enjoyment and expression.

ESL Standard 3: Students will listen, speak, read and write in English for critical analysis and evaluation.

ESL Standard 4: Students will listen, speak, read and write in English for classroom and social interaction.

ESL Standard 5: Students will demonstrate cross-cultural knowledge and understanding.

From: NYS ESL Standards

I do not see how a child who has only been receiving instruction for one year prior to examination will be able to prove any of the above standards...especially in the nerve-wracking environment of a standardized testing room. Are things just getting crazier and crazier?

Standards & Class Warfare

I have been reading Class Warefare by J. Martin Rochester for my foundations class and have been deeply troubled by the light in which he is evaluating national standards for English established by the NCTE. Maybe I am just used to and supportive of the standards as they are today, but it seems like Rochester believes that what matters most in education is rote memorization and ability to regurgitate facts. I would be interested to find out what standards, if any, were in place 20, 30 or even 40 years ago.

Obviously this type of pedagogy differs greatly from our discussions in 506. In spirit of embracing the Flat World Platform, we are trying to make our subject as enlivened and as far from rote memorization as possible. As an English teacher, I do not believe it is our job to make sure that students can list off definitions and examples of literary devices. They do need to be familiar and comfortable with using these terms to discuss and analyze texts, but knowledge of these facts is not the end all purpose of the study of English. With this basic knowledge base, students can then move beyond the surface structure of literature and delve into deeper areas of discussion. I feel that we need to use the study of English and the language as a way to expand their horizons and see the universality of the human experience, all while providing them a forum to improve their writing and communicating abilty. In a Flat World, knowing literary devices will have very little functionality, so if we want to make sure that the study of English and literature continues well beyond the 21st century we need to make it as 'real world' applicable as possible.

Is this disparity stemming from the fact that our education at Cortland has thoroughly endorsed Constructivism as its learning pedagogy and Rochester seems to prefer a more 'teacher-centric' Behaviorist classroom? This type of pedagogy might (?) help students perform well on standardized tests, but how useful is a good SAT score in this ever flattening world? Do the abilities that this type of teaching enstills enable one to function and perform in this new era? I do not believe so. I am having trouble understanding why anyone would subscribe to this line of thought (the book isn't that old...it was published in 2002).

Thoughts, anyone?

Speaking with "Digital Natives"

I am invigorated and excited after reading both of Prensky's articles (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants and Listening to the Natives). I have long believed that we can and should learn from our students. Cooperative learning fosters a open, comfortable, and respectful learning atmosphere.

These articles immediately reminded me of a specific experience I had while observing at Dewitt Middle School in Ithaca. My host teacher had assigned the students to create a short iMovie as a culminating project. She was vaguely familiar with the program but wanted to experiment with what this new technology could offer. She did a tutorial herself and then instructed the class on how to use the program. The kids that didn't' know already how to use the program learned very quickly and those who already knew how to use it were more than eager to share what they knew. The environment was wonderful - everyone sharing and learning together...both students and teachers. These kids were so excited and proud of their final products that I called out of work to watch their movies with them (the viewing happened to be on a day I didn't regularly observe). It was so important to them and I was so honored to be part of it all!

If we can find ways to incorporate all that technology has to offer in our ELA classrooms, I believe that we can reach those students who never seem excited about learning (i.e. reading a bunch of old white guys stuff). We can meet them on their (higher) level and see how much we can accomplish!

This iMovie project was a great culminating project, but I am still mulling it over in my head how we, as ELA teachers, can incorporate these tools and techniques at every level of the learning process. Could we work to create a "choose-your-own-adventure" kind of program for books like The Odyssey or Gulliver's Travels? This way we could get the kids engaged with the technology while still imparting the basics of these classic, interesting, and I believe, essential stories. I do not believe that we should abandon all of the classics, but simply need to find ways to see that these works are fun and useful for our modern, digital students.

That's all for now, my mind is bubbling over with the excitement of this opportunity and trying to express how we can work at every level to incorporate all that technology has to offer us and our students in an ELA classroom.

Spinning with excitement,

Charm