Reflection-Van+Hoose

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Dear Reader,

As a child, I used to say I wanted to be a teacher, but I never considered ever becoming an English teacher until much later in life. English was always something that came easy to me, and it was a subject that I looked forward to in school, though it could be argued that my teachers were the ones who made it enjoyable. In high school, they did their best to make learning fun. They let us write stories, and through writing these stories, I believe my true passion for English was ignited. My teachers supported me and helped me become a stronger writer. In Creative Writing, we created portfolios and actively worked to improve through workshops.

Yet, there was still an air of traditional English classroom about. We were forced to read books written in archaic sounding words by people long since dead. We were bound by the cannon and many of my peers simply did not want to bother. Reading was a struggle and a chore. At the same time, another of my teachers had us read outside of class on whatever we wanted and had us reflect on our reading experiences in journals. We were free to write whatever we wanted to, and we kept logs of the stories that we read. It was more fun, granted it meant we were reading double because we still had to fit in the cannon.

It is my teachers and the classes I took at Eastern Michigan University that helped shape me into the person I am today, and they are the reasons I strive to become the type of teacher I want to be. Classes at Eastern helped show me that there are many contradictory ways to teach English and it is all a matter of personal preference as to how I teach. The important part however is in choosing //why// I want to teach the way I want. Every decision I make is one that I must have a reason for doing, and it is my hope that this portfolio will help illustrate my core beliefs for teaching English and why I believe what I believe.

In order to discover my beliefs, it was imperative to look at my own experiences and myself. It was important to think of my future students and in my own professional development in order to picture what I wanted most out of my classrooms. In reflecting on these things, I learned what I truly believed and more importantly, it helped me understand //why.//

It seemed logical to start with my own notions of language, literature, writing, assessments, and the other elements of my own literacy first because they are most likely going to create the foundations of my beliefs. I realized a few aspects that I believe will make me a great English teacher. First off, I am an avid fan of literature. Books are something that I have always loved and they are something I continue to enjoy. I use reading as an escape, which I talk about in my journal on my favorite book (**found in My Literacy – My Favorite Book: The Worst Question Ever)**. As I reflected on the types of books I read, I realized that most of them do not coincide at all with the literary cannon that English teachers so often push on their students.

In Children's Literature class I took at Eastern, we discussed giving students a choice of what to read and what merits young adult literature had. I realized in that class that what we read isn't as important as simply reading. Students are reading all sorts of things outside of class, whether it be a Facebook message or a novel. As teachers, we need to hone in on that desire students have to read and let them read what they want to read. Students should be allowed some freedom in choice. In one unit, I explored using a book entitled //Alt Ed.// In the classroom and justified my reasoning for using it in my **Book Rationale (found in My Literacy – Book Rationale).** The units I created in English 409 also happened to use books that I thought students would enjoy more than simply the cannon and each one contains a rationale as to why I used them (**found in Student Literacy – Summative Unit & Preliminary Unit **a collaborative work with Erin Basgall, Erin Blanchard, and Joseph Schimmel**).**

I also realized in exploring my own views of literature and my own literacy that a good reader is one who practices by reading. Readers improve and become better readers by constantly reading. Like the old adage says, “Practice makes perfect.” It is my belief that we should encourage students to read outside of the classroom and inside. I came to this conclusion in a journal I wrote (**found in My Literacy – Good Readers Read)** for English 409. I included it because I believe that it demonstrates the importance reading and the environment in which we read had on myself and my brother. We had two very different experiences that made us become very different in regards to our comfort levels in reading. I had not really considered the importance a safe environment plays on our students reading until I reflected on my brother's experiences in which he was made fun of because of the difficulties he had reading. I will strive to make my classroom a safe environment for students to read as best as I can. This is especially true since I will need to most likely have different reading levels in my classrooms since not all students are at the same reading level.

Upon looking at my own tendencies with reading, I also realized that I too do not like to appear as though I am dumb or stupid, much like my students will most likely feel during reading. Often we come across words that we do not understand, and I know that some students may not feel comfortable addressing these in class. I know I did not as a student, and that is why I included the journal article **Inferring Meaning (found in My Literacy).** It explains the process I go about when I come across a word I do not know in literature or in discourse. I think it is important to educate students on how to infer meanings based on context. It is a helpful tool in reading and in communication as well as social cues in general. Had we not talked about language in English 409, I might not have even considered this aspect. It is just one of many ways in order to help students understand what they read more.

I honestly believe that most students never bother to look at the dictionary for words they do not know. I know I did not, and part of the reason was because I honestly did not care about what I was reading in school. As I investigated my student's literacy in English 408 and 409, it became more clear to me that students should be given more choice in what they read. In English 408, I tackled this by creating a unit of folk tales to help illustrate that there are more ways to write than just persuasive and expository essays **(found in My Student's Literacy – Folk Tale Unit)**. I think this unit helped show that writing and language is used to convey stories and meanings to others and really showed the art behind it. I think it was also a nice way to get out of the traditional type of student writing and help illlustrate that audience is key because they read very differently from an essay in the way they are made. It is my goal to use different genres in my classrooms to help embrace student individuality. As I realized in my own literacy, I have a preference in genres that most traditional English novels do not satisfy, and I'm sure my own students are the same.

As I created my **Summative Unit** (**found in My Student's Literacy)**, I took into account that students enjoy various genres as well. In an attempt to include students who are usually left out, I used the graphic novel //American Born Chinese// as the main aspect of the unit. I could have included any book, but I believed that including it would help students who were more visual or who enjoyed comic books to become more engaged in what they reading instead of trying to force them to read a traditional novel.

In keeping with the student choice mantra, I also allowed them to create a multi-genre project at the end that allowed them to express their identity, the overall theme of the unit, in a way that was as unique as them. I plan on making sure that my classroom in the future also keeps the uniqueness of my students in mind. I want to use young adult novels in my classroom to help engage student interest in reading.

I did a similar thing in the unit I collaborated on with Erin Basgall, Erin Blanchard, and Joseph Schimmel (**found in My Student's Literacy – Preliminary Unit).** We believed that the topic within the story reflected themes that the students in our classrooms would identify with and then created a multi-genre project at the end to allow students freedom to explore the issues in their way. We also addressed the importance of audience because the audience for the project was more than just our classroom. It is my belief that writing and language change based on the audience it is intended for, and it is my goal to help instill this on my students.

It is for this very reason that I also believe that the teaching of Standard English is not the primary goal in English classes. I fully believe that students should be introduced to the concept of Standard English. It is my belief that Standard English should be taught so that our students understand that there is a societal prejudice in favor of those who use it against those who do not. However, I also feel that it is vital to respect everyone regardless of their speech. I also do not believe that students should have their writing centered on correctness of grammar. It is my belief that grammar is something that supports writing but is not the central goal of writing. To me writing is a way to convey meaning, and I believe that writing is a process that we must embrace in our classes. I explored this topic more throughly in an English 409 journal topic **(found in My Student's Literacy – Writing is a Process).** It is my goal to create workshopped based classes with final portfolios to practice improving my student's writing in my classes. I gained some insight into how to do this in my teacher interview. I also expanded on my own methods of the writing process in great detail in a reflection I wrote for English 408, which was a portfolio based class **(found in My Literacy – My Writing Process).** I think it is important as a teacher to show students my own writing process in order to help them perfect their own style. Not everyone writes in the same way, so I will need to be able to present different methods of the writing process to my students to help them see which way they will like best. As a teacher, I will continue to write and reflect on my process to illustrate how it changes too based on the project so that my students can see that it is an ever changing thing based on the topic, the audience, and project.

Along with pertaining to audiences, using grammar, and using Standard English, it seemed important to address the concept of technology's impact on the English language. The students in my classroom are going to have grown up in the digital age in which technology has always been around. As I think about my previous English classes, many of them did not intertwine technology as well as they could have. In English 328, I realized the full scope of technology's power when I watched a video entitled, The Machine is Us/ing Us. It demonstrates just how much Web 2.0 has changed the meaning of ownership and copyright as well as how it has changed the very way in which we communicate. That video reminded me of another video, entitled “Shift Happens,” in which the creator discusses how much the world has changed in just a few quick years, mainly due to technology. It is an overwhelming concept, and I bring it up solely because I believe we as teachers fail to take into account that technology is a strong and very real aspect of our student's lives. How can we hope to truly engage them when we do not make use of the power that technology puts in our hands?

In previous classes, I have used technology to create blogs and wikis to help bridge the gap. However, technology comes with it's dilemmas and many teachers will be adamant about the dangers of texting and the Internet. In my blog for English 328, I explored this topic in a post entitled **Media and Language (found in Student's Literacy).** Though many frown upon the use of text-speak and other Internet-based communication because it is “destroying the English language,” I cannot help but disagree. I believe all methods of communication are valid; however, they are to be used in certain settings. Writing a research paper in text-speak is not going to be a good idea because the intended audience and medium are both wrong; however, texting your friend using the language is completely allowed. I think it is up to us as teachers to once again educate our students that we come across certain ways based on the ways we talk or write.

As I reflected on the literacies of myself and my students, I realized there was still room for growth. Like writing, teaching is a process that needs further polishing and reflection. In English 409, I was priviledged with the opportunity to attend conferences on teaching English at Eastern. I went to these conferences and learned a great deal. I reflected on these in **Conferences (found in Professional Development).** I also spoke with the cooperating teacher I will be working with in the Winter of 2012 and found that there are several professional development opportunities that I will be able to attend. Each Wednesday is a professional development day that is district, school, or staff based. I am pleased that I will be able to go to these and expand even further on my knowledge. It will be great to see how others think and teach.

I also took the opportunity to interview my cooperating teacher on her methods of assessment to figure out her opinions of the use of technology in the classroom as well as others opinions as well (**Interview – found in Professional Development).** I think it is important to continue to interview my peers in the teaching field to see what methods they use in order to imporve my own instruction, so this was a great starting point. Lastly, I included two **annotated bibliographies** (**found in Professional Development)** from two different projects to show how important it is to do research and cite said research. Students are immersed in a sea of information, yet too often they plagiarize because they simply do not know they need to cite or do not know how to cite. Furthermore, I know that as I continue on in my career that I will need to do research to determine the best methods of teaching my students.

It is my goal to help students see that there are so many aspects to English that are exciting and worthwhile. I do not want to have the classroom that students dread going to. Instead, I want to change their perceptions of what English is. I want to show my students that reading should not be a chore and that it along with writing are integral concepts of our lives. Everyone comes across literature and writing in their lives, from the business executives to the fast food workers. It matters not where your career takes you. In today's society literacy is everywhere and it is important to me to help my students succeed. I want the best for them, and it is my belief that the core values I've come up with in doing this portfolio are the ones that will best help my students pursue whatever dreams they have in today's literate society.

These reflections of my literacy, my student's literacy, and my professional development illustrate just how important I find English to be for my students, and it also helps show how dedicated I am to them. Too often I think we forget to reflect on why we are doing what we do, and that is why this portfolio is so important to me. It gives me the chance to remember why I want to teach English and what I want my students to know. It helps me see where I came up with my ideas and helps cement them in my mind and validate them. I think these constant reflections will help make me a better teacher and help me become the teacher I strive to be.

- Tina Van Hoose

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