Foot: I (heart) Novels & Publish or Perish

Foot: "Hall Pass"

I recently had the opportunity to go to the movies for the first time in forever. My life has been consumed by College, so it is always good to do something for simply pleasure. I had never heard of Hall Pass, but my friends really wanted to see it and after watching the trailer, I agreed this movie was a must see! The plot of the story revolves around two married couples who are friends. The two wives have become fed up with their overly curious husbands who long for attention from younger women. The wives have decided to allow their husbands a week off from marriage, they are able to do absolutely anything, no questions asked.

This comedy became symbolic to life. We tend to always be intrigued by the things we know we cannot have or pursue and when the opportunity arises for us to capitalize on these things, they do not seem as appealing. Okay, maybe I thought way too deep about this parody, but I am a future educator and it has become second nature to find hidden messages in all texts. I suggest everyone who enjoys a good life to go out and see this movie.

Foot: Firestone Experience

I really enjoyed our last visitations to Firestone High School. Tutoring for the Ohio Graduation Test taught me a lot about my future students and the preparation that needs to go into making lesson plans. Not all students learn the same way and at the same pace, by infusing multi-modalities into test preparation students would be able to learn more effectively. During our tutoring sessions, I was able to use technology to better assist myself and my learner with her vocabulary acquisition and critical thinking. There was a lot of vocabulary that my student just did not understand and instead of me giving her my definition of terms; I used my dictionary app to allow her to read the definition. After she read the definition, I asked her to put it in her own words and try to use it in a sentence that is meaningful to her. By doing things this way, she was able to construct her own knowledge and now she has a better chance of it being stored in her long term memory. I also used  a lot of television shows and movies for examples when we were going over essay prompts. Whenever I could not get my student to critically think, I asked her to apply the question to something in popular culture. By applying these questions to the world around us, my student could better understand the content.

Now that I am reflecting back on the experience, I would have wanted to incorporate different multi-modalities that I was not able to at the time. One of the things that I wish I could have utilized was a smart board. I believe if I was able to tutor in a more hands on way, than just sitting at a desk going over a booklet it would have been a little more effective. We could have both worked on the smart board solving math problems and even brainstorming for the writing prompts. Also, I wish we were able to have some small group tutoring instead of just one on one. I believe that my student would have benefitted from acquiring knowledge vicariously from her peers. Sometimes when students are not completely motivated, other students can serve as motivators. Multi-modal literacies are relevant to every aspect of teaching and learning; therefore, I strongly believe multi-modal literacies should be incorporated with test preparation and standardized testing.

In the case of just tutoring one student, I believe the OGT booklet was the most effective. I liked how it gave the students a breakdown of how each section of the test was scored and multiple test variations. I also looked up some alternative testing practice online and a lot of the practice tests were listed on the Ohio Department of Education site. I believe that using these practice test provided by the state will help students the most with actual practice. As a tutor, it is my job to give my student good test taking skills and get them to understand that all of these practice tests are going to resemble the actually test. By familiarizing the students with what the state is looking for, they are better able to know how to respond. While I do believe it is possible to infuse multi-modal literacies into testing preparation and I definitely think it would be useful for students, I do not feel as though teachers would actually do this. Standardized tests, such as the OGT, creep up on students and teachers and time is very limited when it comes to making sure that students are fully prepared to take and pass the test. Like I previously stated, it is more important in the eyes of a teacher for students to understand content and know the types of questions that they will be required to answer, rather than being able to engage in testing preparation in a more innovative way.

The difficulties that I witnessed students face while I was observing at Firestone High School was quite alarming. I was told by one of the teachers that vocabulary acquisition was a school wide issue and every English teacher was focusing class time on this problem. Moreover, I noticed that a lot of students were not able to properly apply the writing process. They did not know about making an effective outline before they began writing, so they could begin the writing process through its first step, brainstorming. This is a place where multi-modalities could make a tremendous impact on student's success. For vocabulary acquisition, teachers can plan for interactive modules on the smart board for vocabulary lessons. Students can write in journals using all of their vocabulary words. They can maintain a blog space where they can practice both writing applications and vocabulary acquisition. There are so many different approaches that teachers can to take to better their students' comprehension and activation of long term memory.

Foot: Video Games in the Classroom

I absolutely loved this article. This article is so relevant to a conversation that I just had with someone earlier today. A 35 year old deaf education teacher asked a group of young girls, as well as myself a very practical question. She wanted to know who we believed was to blame for the downfall of our educational system, is if family or educators? All of the girls believed that the lack of family involvement and motivation has caused our educational system to drastically fall, but I disagreed. She was beyond shocked that I thought teachers were the downfall of our educational system and she did not understand how I could say that beings that I am a future educator. I offered her an explanation that follows the theme of this article. I believe that too many teachers are too afraid or unwilling to change their educational approach. Lesson plans with technology and alternative, interactive activities motivate students to learn. It motivates students want to learn!

Al Doyle's inclusion of video games in the classroom is the epitome of a teacher thinking out of the box and creating a lesson that is relevant to today's digital learners. One idea that this article presented that I have never thought about before was the abandonment of education as we know it today. While I do believe our approach to education drastically needs to be reconstructed, I do not know how practical it would be to actually rebuild the foundation of our educational system, but is this a matter of practicallity or a matter of what needs to happen? The idea of a Quest for Learning is an amazing one. I could only imagine the enthusiam that would be produced if a student no longer had to sit behind a desk and listen to a monotone teacher lecture about World War I. Instead they are playing a video game, encountering the same obstacles soldiers did during this time. It gives them hands on and first hand experience. I definitely believe that this is a great idea and could be extremely useful to use video games in our classrooms.

Foot: Costanzo

Great Films by William Costanzo presented information that I never really thought about. In high school, I was never given the opportunity to actually study films. I remember a couple of teachers using films as a supplemental after we read the book version of the story, but never did we just watch a film and critique it. I strongly believe that giving students to opportunity to study film could be quite beneficial. Not only will studying films teach students have to think critically about different themes and offer an alternative way to do a critical analysis, it also would be a great motivator. It will spark interest amongst your students by infusing a different modality.

Costanzo offers different ways for teachers to approach utilization of films in the classroom and he also provides formats for film reviews. The film review formats that he provides could serve as a pre-writing activity after they have already viewed the film. It allows students to get all of the important information they have collected for the film on paper before they go more indept with it.

I definitely plan on using as many films that I can in my future classroom. I believe that students do not always have to read novels in order to acquire information to write papers or do critical activities. A lot of the films that Costanzo listed in his book are known as classics and some of the films are in book form. For example, To Kill a Mockingbird; the book version and the movie are so closely related because during that time period producers did not manipulate the storyline as much as producers do today. I say that to say, when watching classic movies students can still get the same message that they would have got from reading the book. I also believe that this is a more effective way of showing films in the classroom instead of using it just as a supplemental because students are getting more knowledge out of the activity.

Foot: I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You & You're Leaving a Digital Trail

When I first started reading this article, I became instantly annoyed. Honestly, I would completely fine with never hearing about the history of facebook again, but this article was different. The main focus was neither facebook nor Zuckenberg, this article focused on the "ambient awareness" of social networking sites. This article added a very different perspective of the reasons people use social networking sites and its positive effects. This article paints a clear picture of what ambient awareness is and what it entails. Clive Thompson writes, "It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye." Tools like Twitter and Facebook have become some sort of microblogging, through status updates, users are able to stay connected with their friends while never having face to face interaction. While younger users view this as an advantage, many older users see this as a problem for society. This has been a common downfall amongst older users, they believe people no longer have to interact face to face and consequently generations are missing out on real social interactions. I thought that this would be the focus of the article, but instead Thompson focused on the positive aspects of these social interactions online. Furthermore he wrote, "This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting." Thompson believes Twitter can help one know more about their friends than they would have learned normally.

I began to ask myself, "How can I use Twitter in my classroom?" In the article, Thompson shared his own anecdote about one of his Twitter followers, Shannon Seery. Seery explained that she used Twitter to get immediate feedback from her followers. She would ask questions about her taxes and accountants. Through Twitter, Seery was able to communicate with people who offered her a broad spectrum of information that was not available when she limited herself to her circle of friends and family. This portion of the article really stood out to me because I can begin to use Twitter to network with other teachers all over the world. I would be able to find other strategies of teaching and incorporate others' ideas into my lesson plan. I never viewed Twitter as a way for teachers or any other professionals to network, but this article birthed new ideas within me.

In all honestly after reading You're Leaving a Digital Trail, I instantly became extremely paranoid. I always knew the dangers of sharing information on the internet, but I never took it that seriously. I can truly say that nothing I put on the internet is in any way shameful if it did come up years later, but just know that there is a lack of privacy is quite alarming. While I know that even after reading this article, I will still keep my facebook and twitter account active, but it makes me think about my future students. Kids are not always the most responsible when it comes to censorship and know what is appropriate and what is not, so it makes me scared to think of how the things they place online today will impact their future. Also, as a future educator this always raises concern when it comes to different forms of technology that I want to use in my classroom. Before reading this article, I already was thinking about how parents would react to a teacher using social networking as an educational tool, but after reading this it drastically raises my concerns. And by all means parents would have valid points if they did not want their children to be members of these sites. I recently found some other educational sites that could be used in place of social networking sites that gives teachers more control of what is actually published by their students. Some of these sites are Glogster EDU and Penzu.

Pytash: Classics in the Classroom Ch. 5

How Poems Work:

While I always enjoyed poetry, especially in high school, I never recognized the need for poetry. I have grown to understand that poetry has many interpretations and there are plenty of methods critics use to analyze and critique a poem, but I did not learn this in high school. The thought of having to teach poetry in schools scares me. It would seem frustrating to tell a student that their interpretation of a poem is wrong and that they should have viewed the poem in a particular way. Teaching poetry in schools did not seem to be a concrete lesson because there is no right or wrong answer in my opinion when it supported with facts.

Chapter 5 was constructed so that teachers could learns meaningful ways to teach poetry in schools. I loved the way that Jago pointed out the need for students to learn poetry and that we are surrounded by poetry everyday. I also liked the way that she pointed out ways for teachers to incorporate the students' every day lives into the lesson. For example, she said we can take lyrics from popular songs as an illustration of poetry. Poetry is a form of literature that should not be looked over when teaching literature. By reading this chapter, I was able to identify the importance of teaching poetry and how many lesson can be formulated into a lesson plan. Jago says, "whether songwriters or students realize it or not - to tried-and-true literary devices: rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, figurative language, hyperbole, understatement" (75). This quote from the chapter really stuck out to me and it reminded when I was spending time at Firestone High School. The literary devices listed above were apart of the 10th grade curriculum requirements for the school district. During a specific lesson, the teacher used a poem for students to identify these literary devices. The poem she used was Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven." I never thought that this lesson in particular had any significance, but after reading this chapter I know that poetry helps students contruct knowledge and parts of speech in a meaningful way.

Pytash: Jago Chapter 3

Choosing Which Books to Teach:

Jago opens this chapter stating that the most important decision a teacher can make is concerning what books he/she chooses to teach. While doing observation hours at Firestone High School, I was told that a lot of districts structure what should be taught in specific grade levels, so each student in the district is learning the same thing. The teacher also told me that the teachers have the free will to teach these lessons using whatever text they choose. Before then, I had never thought about what texts I would necessarily want to use in my classroom concerning classic literature. In Chapter 3, Jago provides us with criteria for choosing books, which I feel is going to be tremendously useful when I have to start planning lessons.

Jago believes texts that:

• are written in language that is perfectly suited to the author's purpose;
• expose readers to complex human dilemmas;
• include compelling, disconcerting characters;
• explore universal themes that combine different periods and cultures;
• challenge readers to reexamine their beliefs; and
• tell a good story with places for laughing and places for crying.

The criteria that Jago lists are avenues for students to enrich their understandings and experience. She also went on to list the books that she reads with her classes the entire school year and the number of books they end of reading is very alarming. I never remember reading that many books in my high school career, let alone in one school year. I am however excited that she did share this information because it shows me that it is possible for high school students to tackle classic literature and at a pretty fast pace. Most importantly it is vital that I know as a teacher, a great deal of the success of tackling classic literature is my responsibility. My lesson plans and unit projects have to be well thought out and prepared. Lastly, one of the most intriguing facts Jago mentioned in this chapter was how certain titles of classic literature have become institutionalized in our middle and high school English classes. There have been findings that there has been little to know change concerning the texts that have been used over the years. I believe this information raises multiple red flags. While these texts are classics, I believe it is important for us to adopt new literature.