Reflective+Letter+-+Basgall

 Erin Basgall  ENGL 409  Monday, December 12th 2011

**__Reflective Letter__** Dear Reader,

 The pens and pencils scratch at the bleached lined paper, and you can feel the thoughts being ran through the 25 plus minds in the room. If you closed your eyes you could hear the breathing filled with excitement, thoughts, emotions and even those who stopped breathing as they became stumped. Can you imagine this being a classroom full of teenagers who are actually excited about writing, that they use their whole body and mind while they go through the writing process? This is the exact scene I imagine when being three quarters of the way through a semester teaching English Language Arts. I don’t expect my students to right from the start fall in love with reading and writing like they were some angels fallen from the sky, but that I foster and nurture them enough throughout the semester that they have come to grow and obtain an appreciation for this subject of English Language Arts.

 Stereotypically English classrooms are known for their devoted traditional approach by using strictly novels and essays. I want to stray away from that and be the one teacher who goes left when everyone goes right. It is my philosophy that students will be engaged if they are interested in the material and will learn/see something completely different from what they already know. I will be student teaching in Monroe next semester and find that the classroom that I will be doing my work in is one I would picture for my future classroom. The classroom I will be working in is filled with diverse students from various racial/ethnic backgrounds and contain various grade levels with a majority of the classes focused on 9th and 10th grade students. With this group of students my goal is to implement more arts and humanities into the classroom. I believe that students are more engaged with literature if they can easily identify or recognize what the content is.

 With the classroom I will be in I would like to think past more the routine labeling of Romeo and Juliet as being just Shakespearean text. I want to bring in artifacts that can relate to the play, I want to delve into the history of that time period and I want the students to know why these families fought against one another. Also I want to include media such as a movie depicting certain scenes from the play that may prove difficult to picture when just reading the text. It would be ideal for me to actually take the students to a play put on by the community or to put a play on ourselves as an English class where students could interpret the play in modern times and use their creativity and advanced knowledge of technology and implement that within their learning experience. By letting students be in control of certain aspects of assignments and of their own learning helps them become decision makers and lets their creativity expand in various ways.

 English 409 has introduced several ideas I can apply to myself as a future educator and to my future classroom. What I take away most from this course is that I can use a novel, or any literary text for that matter, to introduce new concepts with students. That, for instance, we don’t need to stop everything to teach students about punctuation but instead we could integrate it into our lesson plans. My professor, William Tucker, gave a reading by John Gaughan called //Cultural Reflections: Critical Teaching and Learning in the English Classroom//, which introduced three different teachers who have their own unique teaching styles. When it comes down to it, I most relate to Mr. Rosewald, as he has learned that “his students become more engaged in his class when he gives them the freedom to express themselves orally and in writing.” I also believe this freedom of choice is important to implement within the classroom because if we, as teachers, make all the decisions for our students how will they learn to be creative and imaginative within their own thought processes and their own writing? Additionally, Rosewald has students go through the writing process where they build and grow upon their writing in assorted stages and levels. I believe that if students can’t walk away from my class listing off a few things they’ve learned the entire semester and can show others what they’ve learned then I have failed that student and myself.

 When thinking about how I will plan curriculum for writing I think back to some of the course readings we have done in English 409 with Tucker. One of the readings that stuck out to me was called //A Writing Invitation// with the use of an excerpt from the novel __The House on Mango Street__. This activity stuck out to me because we were asked to read a small passage and underline anything that interested us or stuck out to us most. Afterwards, we would share what we came up with and then go into writing a small paragraph, poem, or anything about our very own names and how the reading sparked our interest. With my own writing about my name I found a new way of thinking about who I am and my overall identity, and just by reading a small passage I was instantly inspired. I have confidence that this activity could be applied to any novel being explored in an English classroom and could be the start to a memoir, a poem, or even a project for the classroom. By getting students interested with the use of literary texts to build off of for their own writings is what I consider to be an important aspect of teaching writing about literature.

 Randy Bomer, author of __Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classroom__, makes it a point to recognize that English class is not just about reading and writing, but rather called those two aspects just ‘literacy’ which should be applied outside of the English classroom. To grow as a reader and writer it is important for students to use literacy in other places such as outside of school. Examples would include social media, religious novels, and even person-to-person situations are being read. Literacy is around us all the time and is in connection with communication. I believe that Bomer is right, that we should ensure students are constantly developing their literacy skills outside of the classroom, and bringing those skills within the classroom to develop. By bringing in outside experiences and examples of literacy, students have a broader range of topics and ideas to pull from when writing and making personal decisions on what they would like to read and learn more about within the English classroom.

 By exploring the life histories of literacy with students in my classroom I can gauge where to begin and expand rather than going off of an assumption and having to repeat information that they already have a good grasp on or drone on about subjects that are not interesting to the class as a whole. Not only should this be explored with literacy but also with writing. In order to develop an approach to teaching students about writing, I would like to have students fit writing in with “things they already do and care about – [such as] music, friends, TV, nature, spirituality, politics, family, sports, games. . . because writing itself is often confusing and laborious,” (Bomer 57). By using things they already know and care about within their writing students can develop an appreciation for writing, thus further down the line they create a spot in their lives for enjoyment of writing. Making students have to write about a certain subject or topic that is not interesting to them can throw them off and make the motivational level of those students become non-existent.

 When it comes to teaching language study or grammar in the classroom I definitely don’t want to be the teacher with the red pen marking down a paper just because of a few punctuation or grammatical issues. I have been through several English classes in grade school and college where teachers and professors don’t care about what I wrote about but instead went straight for the kill in covering my page with misplaced commas or one or two misspelled words with the addition of deducting me severely for these minor issues. I understand that it is important for students to learn the proper way to spell and punctuate their writing, but to focus on that one aspect of writing is one way to have students just completely give up on writing and reading altogether. By implementing a process for students to go through after they have completed a paper or any writing can help students comb through their writing. They can also learn techniques in spotting any issues early before they publish a final draft to turn in. I believe that too many students are not given a process to follow to ensure that their writing is the best they can make it to be.

 When writing it is expected to have drafts that are rough and raw, that is why students learn how to revise and polish their writing. A lot of times students don’t necessarily want to go back to review and refine what they have written, but from my observations that is the problem with writing. If students don’t go back to revise their writing then they get marked down and it takes time to write, revise, and perfect! Even famous authors spend months revising and correcting their writing to improve what they have to be published to the nation. I like what Bomer says in Chapter 12, “it’s important to be explicit about the criteria by which the grade is determined, though that doesn’t mean circling or correcting every nonconventional mark on the page or filling the margins with comments meant to justify the grade. The criteria should be clear to the whole class, and they should be exactly the few things the teacher has been discussing over and over in mini lessons and conferences,” (Bomer 219). I agree that it is important to communicate to the classroom verbally and through having a rubric so students understand what an A paper entails and what they would be missing if they did not receive an A. I also really like Bomers writing cycle on page 220 where it starts with students bringing in their personal history into the classroom, then collect the writers notebook, then passes through brainstorming and selecting a topic and design of the writing they’re doing, and then goes through the revision process. “The fact that the notebook is always there waiting means that no one is sitting idly once she is “done,” because what the class is about is constructing an ongoing writing life, not finishing an essay and turning it in,” (Bomer 221).

 Bomer reminds us that writing, reading, and language study are not just elements of an English classroom but are tools that students take with them throughout their entire life, especially outside the classroom. In order to be a participant in a democratic society it is important to prepare students to know that they will be needing to read and understand what they read throughout their daily lives. An example would be, writing an essay in high school is equivalent to writing a resume when searching for a job out of college. By not preparing students and thinking of each student as a student who will be attending an ivy league college we are failing as teachers, and I want to be a teacher who succeeds with her students and they are more than just prepared for the next year, but are prepared for the rest of their lives and develop something outside of the classroom. Expectations in my classroom will be set high for every student, and even those who are struggling with special needs or disabilities will not be discriminated against, but rather fostered and nurtured even more within the classroom and spent extra time after class is over.

 With this portfolio I have taken some of my best work and evolved it to show you, the reader, my thought processes when it comes to teaching and how my own writing and passion for reading shape who I am as a reader/writer. I begin my portfolio with a look at my literacy by including a few journals I developed when thinking about my beliefs and ideas about teaching certain aspects of literature. With my first journal I write about how I change my language and communication style based on context of the situation, I would write an email differently according to whom that email is addressed to. An example would be that I would not write the same way I write to my best friend to my professor. In my second journal I write about how important it is for students to have choice and also to form their own opinions about literary texts. Finally, in my third journal I write about what entails a good reader and how students can grow into being literate throughout their everyday lives. I believe the journals I wrote about show a unique side of me that contain my thoughts on certain subjects that this letter might not let shine through. I continue providing artifacts of my literacy by taking a look at the book rationale provided for the first unit we planned within the English 409 class. The novel I did my rationale on was __Alt Ed__ by Catherine Atkins, which takes a look at a group of struggling high school students and forces them into meeting with each other and working together to find support and understanding. And my final artifact containing my literacy is a look at a curriculum class that I took last year where we were required to work with another student in a different subject area and come up with a unit together incorporating our major focuses. I was paired with a Social Studies major and we developed a great unit focusing on the affects of social media on a global basis. I put together the Rationale on my own based off of the work we did together with the lesson plans and assessments.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The second aspect of my portfolio is taking a look at my students’ literacy. Within this aspect I provided artifacts that directly relate to how I would like my future classroom to be run and how I would provide information to those students within that classroom. My first artifact is a unit plan proposal composed for this English 409 class where I focused an entire unit on poetry and various aspects of poetic forms and styles. My second artifact is actually the unit plan from the first containing the entire poetry unit with lesson plans and assessments. I believe these two coordinating artifacts are a great representation of how I would set up a unit within a future classroom of mine and ensure that handouts are relevant and that I kept lessons interesting and engaging with the students. My third artifact of my students’ literacy is a couple of lesson plans that I created for a group project we did at the beginning of the semester with English 409. These lesson plans were designated to me to create and I believe they show how I incorporated the reading of the novel into the daily lessons provided within this unit. I believe it’s important to include a writing journal within an English classroom as it provides an outlet and a creative way for students to think and brainstorm without having to be deducted points or judged. Having writing journals within the English classroom is a way for students to take away something from the class to use in their daily lives and as such makes them literary writers.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The third aspect of my portfolio is looking into my professional development. The first two artifacts contained within this selection are correlated with one another. The interview with a teacher really made me gain some insight into how to incorporate writing and reading of literature within the classroom from a former teacher that I use to have in high school. The annotated bibliography provides great resources to studies I found that are compatible with the interview I had. The third artifact is a review from two professional conferences I attended and obtained amazing information from that I can apply to my future classroom and ways of teaching. I absolutely loved the Holocaust portion of the workshops I attended because I was exposed to something that I had never been taught before and I found a spark of passion to include that material and learn more about it with my students.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The group research project I engaged in this semester in English 409 was interesting and eye opening. I figured that group work would have been okay to get through as it was the very first project of the class and everyone’s motivational and commitment level to the class should have been good as it was just the start. Unfortunately, I realized that it was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be to work with the group. Only one other member was on top of her work while the other two lacked the motivation and work ethic. This effort might inform me as a teacher that group work might not always be the most ideal situation to put students in. But I learned that in the end everyone is going to need to learn how to work in groups, nonetheless the teacher should recognize who is putting the most effort/work into the project and who might be slacking. Thus, grade according to work input rather than the final product. It’s important to have groups divided up according to work styles. Having a group of students who is full of students who are naturally born leaders might not be the best outcome, so a teacher should get to know students enough that they can make proper judgments when putting groups together. This group project additionally informed me as a teacher by giving me the tools to ensure that reading, writing, and speaking are all included within lesson plans. That when having students read a novel it is important to have them engaged in some way by speaking with each other or the class. It is also important to have the students speak and write about what they are reading because they need to express their thoughts and opinions they have formed from reading the novel. One student might connect with a certain character on a certain level that is special to them, while others might not have that connection with that character or may just connect with other characters.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The professional event that I attended was two workshops from the Eastern Michigan University Writing Project. The first workshop that I attended was Narrative Writing and Common Core Standards. I attended the portion by Rian Burke called Common Core Standards and learned quite a bit about what not to do when presenting and also how to implement the new CCSS into my curriculum. That just because the standards are new and different that they are not as scary as one may think when trying to apply them to lessons. Learning about standards of course is one of the most important things in our field of teaching, but the way that it was presented made it hard to completely grasp the ideas and methods that were being discussed. As for the second event that I attended I was extremely engaged and interested in the subject matter as it was something new to me and I was able to make a connection with how they presented the stories that they did. The workshop was called Writing about Social Justice/Holocaust Education. I attended the Holocaust Education portion by Chelly Eifert and learned so much not only about the Holocaust but about how to teach that within my classroom. I wasn't exposed to much literature within high school but found that it has helped me to keep an open mind about various texts and subject matters that I could include within my classroom and curriculum. The Holocaust was never taught to me in high school, but being able to implement a unit on the event with a novel such as __The Diary of Anne Frank__really inspired me to want to put together my own unit and use the material discussed at this event to provide great insight and understanding for students to gain from this historical event. Overall, it felt great to be surrounded by educators and learn from the ones that will someday be my fellow co-workers. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> __ Works Cited __

Bomer, Randy. //Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classroom//. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011. 57-221. Print.

Cisneros, Sandra. //The House on Mango Street//. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1984. 10-11. Print.

Gaughan, John. //Cultural Reflections: Critical Teaching and Learning in the English Classroom,// Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 1997.