Mini-Lesson Response

Mini-Lesson Reflection

            I think my lesson on An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian on the theme of social issues for Native Americans in the text was a good lesson for 9^th grade students and went well. I wanted students to think critically on the text finding both themes of explicit racism (toward Junior form both Indians and whites) and themes of implicit racism such as alcoholism and poverty. Working in small groups, I was happy to see the students found these themes. I also think I successfully connected the lesson to the community for the students. This was helped by the regional text written by a local author. I was able to successfully allow students to connect the issues of the novel to reach world issues. This allowed me to promote some social justice within my classroom and allowed students to develop their own ideas, with a partner, in order to create new ways to solve social issues. This required students to think critically and implement problem solving in the real world. I think the main goals of this lesson were successfully met.

            If I were to redo this lesson there are a few things I would change. I would begin with having students change the learning objective into their own understanding. This helps students develop metacognition when they are participating in the lesson. I wouldn’t change the overall structure of the lesson, but if I had more time I would have students come up with more social issues in the book and more way to solve the issues in the real world. I would also take the time to get some informative articles for students to go over on both the social issues of Native Americans and of ways people are trying to help them solve these problems. This would bolster students confidence in their ability to attempt to solve social issues, since a lot of the ways they thought about solving the issues are a lot of the ways being implemented currently.  Finally, I would be more tactful when working with the group on alcoholism. There are a few reasons for this, there may be students that could have negative prior experience with alcoholism and I would need to be careful when talking about this theme in the novel. I also need to monitor that group, and every group for that matter, to make sure they have an appropriate response for solving the issue.

            For the feedback portion of the class period I was grateful to get both positive and negative feedback. I know that I could have displayed the object better for my students. If I were to fix this I would make them write the objective in their own words. Another issue brought up was having group selected, not student choice, although some people so this as a pro. My reasoning for doing this was to save time. I would keep it in my lesson because students need a lot of time to try to solve the problems of Native American issues. Finally, it was brought up that I could use more technology. When I was reflecting on the lesson I thought if I had more time I would get students an account from a Native American on social issues affecting them online. I think this would help with connecting them to the real world.

            Overall, this was beneficial to my development as a teacher. I enjoy teaching lessons to my peers and getting feedback from them, both as fellow teachers and their role-play as students. I learn about, not only the facets of my own instruction, but also its effectiveness. It is helpful information I can use when building lessons in the future. It helps me add to my teaching tool belt for effective teaching for myself and for my students. Mini-lessons are beneficial for us as students of education. It gives us practical knowledge that we can actively participate in and utilize, rather than simple studying of pedagogical skills, or discussion in the classroom, while those are still valid modes of learning, I always learn a lot more about myself from practice and critique. 

Forgot Research

Hello all I just realized I forgot to put the research for the basis of my lesson into my lesson plan so here it is.

The grounds for this lesson comes from the British Journal publication, "Social Justice, Educators, and Schooling: Some Philosophical Issues" this article states that we as educators have a responsibility to be the ones who help our students develop an understanding for social justice. If we do this than students will become greater citizens who are more likely to question authority and take a stand against injustice. We need to be the ones who help students give a working definition of social justice since it can be an ambiguous statement. It also opens up a chance for students to develop some critical thinking.

Alexie Lesson Plan

TPA Lesson Plan #___1____

1. Teacher Candidate	Tyler Schoening	Date Taught	3/6/15
Cooperating Teacher	Matt Messick	School/District	DPHS
2. Subject	AP English 1	Field Supervisor	Beth Philips
3. Lesson Title/Focus	Exploring Themes of Racism	5. Length of Lesson	20 min
4. Grade Level	9

6. Academic & Content Standards (GLEs/EARLs/Common Core)	RL.9-10.2: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support the analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
7. Learning Objective(s)	Using the text An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, students will be able to discover the theme of racism present throughout the novel and analyze how it effects the story, by discussing the negative forces effecting the character and connecting them with real life Native American issues.
8. Academic Language	Theme Social Justice Culture Ethnic Identity Social Setting Students will first be asked to define theme briefly to make sure everyone has an understanding of what it is. As we progress through the lesson and come across the terms social justice, social settings, culture, and identity, I will give brief descriptions of each term.

9. Assessment

Students will be assessed formatively on their ability to remember the facets of the story that displayed the theme we will be studying. We will be doing small group and full class discussion. During this time I will be able to observe each student’s ability to articulate their knowledge on racism in the story whether or not it is stated explicitly or implicitly within the story.  Having the students discuss what they can do to change racism in their real lives will also help me see their understanding of the theme and their ability to think critically about how it appears in their lives.

10. Connections

Now that we have finished reading the novel this lesson will help students synthesize their knowledge of the story. It will force them to think critically about one of the stories major themes and make them put it in the perspectives of the real world. It will also build on the students growing ability of group work and collaboration we have been working on throughout the quarter. This lesson will lead into the final examination on the novel. Students will have to write a short essay on one of the key themes of An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, using the discussion from this lesson they will be able to formulate their essays at the end of the unit. When we move on to later stories and novels in this class students will be better equipped to analyze theme and its appearance throughout the story.

11. Instructional Strategies/Learning Tasks to Support Learning
Learning Tasks and Strategies Sequenced Instruction
Teacher’s Role I will begin instruction by asking students to define theme. I will also give a brief introduction of in which I will define the other words in academic language. I will engage students to come up with the different facets of racism that appear in the book. I will write as many as we can come up with on the board, so the students will be able visualize them as the lesson progresses. I will engage students in a discussion asking them if they think these issues are real in our own society today, and if they are as severe. I will then group students into small groups. I will prompt students to work in small groups to come up with a way to help Native Americans with one of the issues of racism we came up with on the board. I will return the class to full group instruction and ask each group to share their methods to help fix the issue of racism against Native Americans. I will write each groups ideas on the board.	Students’ Role Students will participate when prompted and write down any definitions they did not understand form the words I went over during the beginning of instruction. Students will work with the teacher and their peers collaboratively to come up with all the facets of racism that affect the society in the novel. Students will help develop a list of those facets of racism to be placed on the board. Students will respond with their opinions on how racism affects Native American in our current society and if the book is a good example of the troubles natives face. Students will work together to come up with a solution to one of the facets of racism we found in the novel. In small groups they will develop a way to help Native Americans to remedy racism and the issues they face to share with the class. Each group will share their own ways of fixing racist issues that Native Americans face in our society, and how we can help them stand up to those issues, to be written on the board.
Student Voice to Gather During the first set of full class discussion when we begin connecting each piece of the book to racist issues Native Americans have to face in the novel I will be able to develop an understanding for the students to be able to understand one of the themes where it is stated explicitly and implicitly throughout the book. Knowing where they picked up on the issues of race will help me plan for the next part of instruction and help me understand where each student stands on analyzing the novel. Using the later discussion on how we can fix issues of race against Native Americans in our own society I will be able to see if students have developed a level of understanding for the text that allows them to think critically and implement the knowledge the gained into their real world issues. This will help me understand their understanding of the core issues of the novel.

12. Differentiated Instruction

The students in advanced English 1 are the top 30 students in English coming up from 8th grade. Luckily, as far as instruction goes, there is not a huge difference in the skills and abilities of each student. There are no IEPs in advanced English 1 and there are also no 504s in the classroom. This story will mostly benefit auditory and visual learners. The auditory learners will benefit from the full class discussion and the discussion in their small groups. The visual learners will benefit from seeing the classes thoughts displayed on the board. This lesson on social justice was done to help the students develop an understanding for the themes of racism in the Native community in the real world. This is especially effective since the novel takes place where they live. This will help put the story into context.

13. Resources and Materials

Teacher Materials: An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Whiteboard Makers Student Materials: Pen/Pencil An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

14. Management and Safety Issues

The students in this class are generally focused. If they are off task in their groups the students may be moved from group to group to help maintain the flow of learning. Students who remain off task will be forced to write their response rather than work on it with the class. The topic can be somewhat controversial when talking about issues of racism. If the classroom gets heated I will remind students of democratic discussion tactics and how we should maintain a respectful classroom environment. There should not be any safety issues during classroom discussion. Most students will be safe during this activity though if some injury such as a fall or trip were to occur I would try to remedy it with basic first aid, and if it were to severe for that I would notify the school nurse or 911.

15. Parent & Community Connections

Parent: Students have been updating their reading with their parents throughout the unit. At the end of this lesson they can let their parents know that we have finished our reading of the novel and are now discussing its key issues. They can ask their parents if they know anything about the local Native American tribes in the area or if they have done any work with them. They could also ask their parents if they know anything about Native American issues that students could later share with the class. Community This is a great lesson for the community. Students could go to local schools (both native and public), tribes, public offices, and any other resources that work with Native Americans.  They could do some research to see how modern racism effects these communities and what is being done to help these people out or what is being ignored that should actually be focused on.

Never Let Me Go Page 2

• Rationale

             I chose Never Let Me Go because it connects so well to students lives. It is a coming of age tale that most young high school students can relate to. I would probably teach it to 10-11th grade students. They would most likely identify with the characters and their inner-struggle to remain close friends through the troubled years of puberty and sexual discovery. I also find that the book is quite complex; it leaves a lot of from for students to be asked some serious ethical/philosophical questions which could spark great conversation if prompted correctly.

• Obstacles

            There is quite a bit of sexual discovery in the text. Although their are not overt pornographic scenes that are descriptive in nature. The characters often talk about sex casually, the speak about partners, looseness, they browse pornographic magazines, etc. These themes would be very troublesome for parents. I would like to say that I could persuade them by saying their students are going through the same issues, however this could get me in a lot of trouble since most parents want to ignore that aspect of their child's lives. It also may be difficult to talk about the issue of cloning and the ethics of it. Although this debate has left mainstream medium for the time being undoubtedly many parents will still have an opinion on the issue and I am sure a good amount will be negative. Due to the sexual themes I don't think this book will ever pass a school board, administrator, or parents to become part of curriculum, although it is an amazing modern piece of literature. At least not in the districts I am familiar with.

• Teaching Ideas

           1) My first teaching ideas was to have students to an anticipation guide with the story. The first section is very ambiguous about what is actually going on in the world. Students could attempt to analyze that as best as they see fit with the minimal amount of information the author gives. This would open up to good discussion about why students think the author omitted parts of the novel from them when we begin discussing the harsh themes of the book.

          2) I would create a structured controversy for students to discuss the ethics of cloning. Placing students into groups of four I would make them role-play as medical researchers, organ transplant patients, religious protesters, and human rights activists. This would spark great discussion about the rights and wrongs of cloning. Leading students to argue for or against it. They will build arguments based on articles they have read about cloning and then have a discussion between the two for groups and two against. Finally, it would culminate with a debate between the 2 sides.

         3) My final thought was to have a simple film analysis. The film is both good and bad for the book. It omits quite a few things that are very important to the story, but it portrays the human emotion of the characters in an amazing manner. Having students analyze, compare and contrast, and write a summary of which they think is better and why, would be a great way to help them develop multiple interpretations of a work of fiction. It would also show that movies aren't always worse than the book and vice-versa allowing students to give an opinion on either work.

In short, I would love for each of you to read Never Let Me Go Kazou Ishiguro is an amazing author who has a way with language I have had yet to encounter. It is one of the best books to come out of the 00's and I think there is a place for it in the classroom. It connects with students lives better than most books I can think of which will keep them engaged and wanting to read, but it also has incredible themes that will make readers question their own beliefs and philosophy. Truly, a great piece of literature is one you can connect with on a personal level, but one that also forces you to be critical of yourself. 

Standards Based Grading Response

I have some experience with standards based grading although I cannot remember the criteria at all. I just remember parent/teacher conferences in elementary school. All of my scores were based on a 1-4. There were no zeros, but like I sad I don't remember much more than that. I have always liked the idea of standards based grading for numerous reasons that I will attempt to fit in here.

First of all, standards based grading seems to be the most beneficial way for students, parents, and teachers to evaluate students progress toward objectives. We can clearly say, here is what we are shooting for, this number is based on how close you are to achieving the objective. A five means you are proficient. Let's move together toward making that a five. Giving the parameters of what matches a 1-5 will help students know what they need a work on to achieve their goal to become a 5 in this standard. We will then know when to move on with instruction. While an argument can be made for grades doing the same thing, let's speak on grades and what it means to students.

Grades are an issue in all of our lives. As a student I am worried about my grades and how it will effect my future, as are my students with their grades. As a teacher I am worried about my own instruction when my students get bad grades, as are their parents. The difference between traditional grades and standards based grading is the latter can be changed. Let's say a student gets a C on an assignment on their final. That C shall be stuck there and it will be a grind to get the grade back up. Now lets same come finals that student reaches a 3 in their standards based grade. We can grow that three to a four or five and the students doesn't have to worry about making up for that three like they do the C. Standards based grading removes a lot of stress from the students, which they desperately need since students are becoming busier and busier creating more stress.

Standards based grades are easily to analyze on a student to student basis. Most of my students are at a 2 with this objective lets you know that you can get them up to a five. It helps us build what we need to work on and what we can move on to. It builds a mastery focused classroom, rather than a grade focused classroom. This builds for an environment focused on learning and achieving goals, which makes for better students and better teachers.

Assessing and Evaluating Student Learning Response

Two of my greatest downfalls currently in my learning to become  a teacher are wait time and creating assessment. Creating assessment is an incredibly difficult and a daunting task. I also do not get much practice when it comes to creating assessment. I have only created assessment a handful of times and it wasn't too difficult. I am not sure if I am good at it or not, but every time I have created it it has been the most difficult part of my lesson plan. This article has been pretty helpful for creating assessment for me. I like the idea of making it relevant to the students. As we have been saying, this is the most important thing we most keep coming back to. Making students learning relevant to themselves and helping them find out how they learned it is arguably one of the best skills to teach them, not only to keep them interested in learning, but to make them better at it. I love her ideas on all of them being response based and written out to assess students understanding of not only simple terms, but also bigger concepts like tackling major ideas from novels. However, I find one issue with this that maybe I do not understand. The amount of time it would take to create, read, properly asses, give useful feedback, and understand each student’s ability enough to change instruction to help them would be incredibly time consuming. I know that this is the best way to help our students and that is what we should always be striving for, but I feel like the amount of work that would be spent going into evaluation could hinder time building dynamic, engaging, and relevant lessons for our students. This would be a great task for teachers who are well set in and understand their unit and lesson plans to a T, but to someone like me, a new teacher still developing strategies, developing myself, and trying to maintain a relationship with my students this amount of assessment would take up a lot of time I spend doing those activities. I will however keep this in mind in my future assessment creation. I will learn a lot more from my students writing than responses to multiple choice or fill in the blank. It will be a great resource to help build my assessment tool belt. 

Readicide

A lot of what Kelly Gallagher was saying in Readicide really struck close to what is currently going on within my district. Deer Park is going through a lot of SBAC preparation with their students, so that is basically all the English Department has been preparing for. We are making a lot of students read informational text over and over and drilling them with continuous note taking strategies and response development. It has become so bad that the moment I tell students we will be doing circle charts their is an audible grown heard around the room. I am sure the English department is committing Readicide with their students and that the students a growing a hatred for reading. We definitely aren't making "expert citizens" a concept I really liked on page 13. I find it really hard to teach students like this. They immediately become disinterested in the articles I give them and no matter what I seem to do to try to make it exciting the either 1. don't do the work or 2. go through the motion and don't synthesize anything they are reading. We have also phased out a lot of our literature instruction, which is something much easier to get the students into reading. Although many claim to hate reading literature they often enjoy the stories we read and are way more engaged when it comes to these texts. We were about to begin moving into a new novel, but students are not doing SBAC prep and we have to either push our novels back or completely remove them. My master teacher was going to allow me to teach the unit of Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck is my favorite American author),  and let me know a few days ago it may have to be cut for test prep. I understood, but was sad I'd miss the opportunity to teach one of my favorite authors to my students. This brings me to my final point on Readicide. The practice of teaching to the test, or test prep, not only negatively effects students, but also negatively effects good teachers. A lot of the passion we had coming into the subject gets taken away for test prep, which we can be passionate for for our students, but it often feels false or disingenuous. A lot of our love for reading and literature gets pushed out for writing and preparing for tests day to day to try to make some higher power happy, meanwhile students are frustrated, disengaged, and left behind. Students that display these struggles make us as teachers feel like we are not doing our job correctly leading people like me to be less confident in my instruction, lesson planning, and student interaction. In short, a student that passes a state test frustrated, annoyed, and hating English, is less valuable to me than a student who fails that same test, but loves reading and writing and comes from an environment where they want to work on those skills to improve and do better next time.

edTPA response

Every time the edTPA is talked about in any of our classes they make it seem like a daunting and terrifying task upcoming in our schooling. I am not the sort of person to get riled up until I get to the task itself, so I often wonder why they are making such a big deal out of it. If anything I am more worried about the NES than the edTPA simply because it is closer. Many of my colleagues are very worried about the edTPA even though we have been told it has a 90% pass rate from this university. I think a lot of the confusion comes from the ambiguity and how unclear it is. After being given these two handouts I have found that it is not as scary and daunting as every has been making it out to be. It is incredibly straight forward what they want from you and what they want you to show, with very little ambiguity to be seen. They ask and make clear everything they want you to give them to evaluate your performance as a teacher. Although I am not without my worry on some things, there are so many things that go into the paper and video for the edTPA I am worried I will not meet all of their needs. This will easily be one of the longest papers I have ever written and they ask so much I am worried I can’t hit it all. I am also worried about technical issues with the video. I want to make sure I get a good enough clips, audio, and visuals to help my evaluator best evaluate my teaching. I am not so worried about the process of doing the edTPA, but the mechanical issues that could come along with it. I have been working a long time in college to get to this point and I am excited to continue on. Like all majors I have to face some difficult task to finish my degree, but as long as I keep viewing it as another hurdle and not a major road bump I am confident I’ll make it out just fine. 

I Read It But I Don't Get It

Cris Trovani's "I Read It But I Don't Get It" was an incredibly insightful read for me. With her use of real classroom stories, in-depth descriptions on the reading process, giving tools on how to model that reading process, and keeping it both instructor and student focused the book was interesting as well as informative. A lot of the difficulty I face with my students is helping them understand why we are reading what we are reading. I try to inform them that we are reading for enjoyment, information, and to become better readers, but generally they feel as though they have been at the same reading level all of their lives. A lot of my students are restive readers, and word callers as she calls them.

I love a lot of the activities she poses to students throughout the book. They will certainly be used in my own classroom. I especially liked her ice breakers that involved reading. Generally we get the carbon copy ice breakers (stand up say name, favorite _____, dream job, etc. or some name game) in her English class she opens up with the books that affected her the most and then tells her students to bring in theirs. I would love to use this in a classroom; it not only allows for students to voice their own love/hate for reading, but it opens a collaborative classroom environment to the student and teacher, and makes the students more comfortable with sharing in class.

Her focus on modeling was also quite in depth and gave me a fresher view on modeling than I had previously held. I knew how important modeling was, and I use it with a lot of my lessons, as a good teacher should. I, however, did not see modeling in such a broad spectrum. Trovani states that we should even model our thought process whilst reading to students. Until I had read this I didn't not realize how useful it could be for my students to see an instructor working their way through a story and coming to conclusions audibly with the ability for them to see the thought process unfolding right in front of them. Although it may seem goofy to the students at first they will see you modeling good reading habits and be able to incorporate it into their own reading.

There are so many more incredible tools in the text as well. I will certainly be coming back and borrowing many ideas from it as I go on teaching. Sprinkling some of these activities into my lessons and helping my students craft a stronger reading toolkit will prepare them for states tests, college, and their future life that lies ahead of them.

Social Justice

The article I chose to read on social justice was “Social Justice, Educators, and Schooling: Some Philosophical Issues,” done by the British Journal of educational studies. They explained in great detail the true meaning of social justice. They found that the fundamental problem with the social justice was a blanket term that many people used, but that there was no fundamental definition for. Policy makes would often make new rules or laws for education that were focused on improving social justice in the classroom, but that often meant simply changing diversity, or effecting low socio-economic status. They made a clear distinction that one or the other was not the case. The researchers stated that social justice did not involve diversity or the status of one’s material wealth. Social justice involves the individual’s quality of life. Social justice needs to occur in a community where an individual or multiple individuals are have serious or negative impacts in various aspects of their life. This may include their overall happiness, quality or life, or standard of living. Social justice is not just difference in diversity or income, but it is when these facets negatively impact their life that we then need a call for social justice. The issue then becomes how we teach students the true meaning of social justice. There are many different ways we can teach social justice in the classroom. One of the ways these educators used was to use the context of other countries to make analogies in their classroom. They should students New Zealand’s goals for positively effecting social justice by encouraging their citizens become active members in government. They made sure that the underprivileged were aware of injustice and could articulate ways to change it. Giving students this example then bringing it back to the injustices in their community could be a great way to bring social justice to their classroom. Using this knowledge of a strong definition for social justice and having a way to present to your classroom is a good way to get students interested in social justice and social change.

Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom

The paper “Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom” was an excellent read for, and my favorite out of all of our readings so far. It was nice to read some classroom based observation of the new skill we are learning about and real puts into context how to use it effectively and how beneficial it is for students and for teachers alike. I love the idea of this type of classroom. The students working together to develop discussion, working toward effective and meaningful life skills, and being passionate in the classroom sounded fantastic and highly desirable. The section that meant the most to me was involving pop culture in the classroom and the ideas on pop culture as a whole. While reading about elite culture effecting pop culture, I saw it leading to counter culture. The paper then mentioned that pop culture was both for and against elite culture. I found the entire aspect of the culture sections amazing. As for my current placement, many of my students are involved in pop culture and they often feel that school is disconnected from their own lives. I place they are forced to go that is not their “style” and is actively against it. Some of my best lessons have involved students and pop culture they were interested in. (Speaking on movie posters after going over the To Kill a Mockingbird posters from around the world the students questioned why movie posters were so bad now, we then went through posters and talked about art.) My students also are very into hip-hop culture. I had once mentioned I liked Kendrick Lamar and students were very excited and wanted to know more. If I could do something like their poetry unit, which used both rap and classic poems, I think my students would be much more interested in that than a regular lesson. I plan on using the things I learned about pop culture and its effectiveness in including students’ lives into the classroom. Having a connection exponentially will increase the otherwise vehement disinterest. 

Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts

My life was surrounded by subcultures growing up. Poetry Slam performers bashed American societal norms, punk bands playing late night dive clubs screamed everything wrong with today, and liberal parents loved Eastern philosophy. Everything McLaren presented in his chapter on “Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts” was something I could connect to and be familiar with. The same things that the artist were shouting about society and culture controlled by the rich to belittle the poor, education as a tool of manipulation, and a push for self-promotion/empowerment were all present in this chapter. I think it is incredibly valuable to teach students in this way. Emancipatory education is a dangerous route to take however. You want to give students freedom and the knowledge of the control of wealth and power in society, but you do not want the school system to collapse into anarchy. The school board/principal could find out you were teaching, what might be worded as “radical ideas,” to students and upsetting parents and faculty. On the other side of the fence, teaching students about power and oppression could belittle your own ability to teach them effectively. They could easily see you as the dictator and shift into thinking that you are a teacher therefore you are the tool of the oppressors putting these social pressures on them. Teaching “radical ideas” can be a very fine line and as I was reading all I could think of is how dangerous it would be for someone to teach emancipatory education in an affluent white school district or a low-income minority population. Putting a mirror up to society may sometimes release a dangerous beast that is out to get you. McLaren speaks on the dominant cultures ability to attempt to oppress any subculture and make everyone subordinate, complacent, beings under its control, so teaching in a dialectical nature is a skill we must be very tactful in using. That being said, I love the chapter McLaren takes what Freire says about the oppressed and makes it much more understandable and penetrable, at least for the background I came from. It is much easier to understand Freire after seeing this from a prospective of our own society and would love to find a way to implement at least some practice of dialectic education in my own classroom.

Pedagogy of the Opressed

“Pedagogy of the Oppressed” is an incredibly interesting philosophical read. It is not often that I get the chance to read philosophy, so it was nice to see some in an educational concept. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the ideas presented by Peter McLaren in this chapter of his work. I really enjoyed the analogy of “banking” as an outdated form of teaching. This phrase is a great way to convey teachers who simply “deposit” information while students memorize it and do not comprehend. I feel like I was taught like this in various classes throughout my career and I often hated them the most. I thought of the teachers as condescending and self-serving, and after reading the section on the teacher justify their own existence by depositing information to those who don’t know it to perfectly fit my old interpretations of said classrooms. The classes that I participated in that strove for “liberation education” or “problem posing education” were always more challenging and exciting to me. I would leave ready to learn more and often times head home and do more research to be more informed in class the next meeting. In a way I left high school for Running Start because in 10^th grade most of my teachers were focused on “banking” information rather than facilitating cooperative learning between teacher and student. I hated that year for not challenging me, but I feel like if more of my teachers had focused on “problem posing education” I would have stayed.

            The usage of oppressor is being used in a liberal sense from what I can see in this chapter, but from what I read I can’t help but see it as a dystopian sort of idea. Teachers are oppressors of education teaching this is what is right and how you do it, then sending students off to the next teachers.  All of it seems very mechanical pushing all students forward with no real though provoking work on their table. To remove the oppressor the teacher must simply remove themselves from the position of power and place themselves in the students’ situations. This way we develop a simultaneous teacher and student relationship with all parties involved. I liked the wording of “critical co-investigator” because it alludes to all of us working together to solve a common problem. The idea of “unfinished beings in an unfinished reality” really pushes the idea forward that we are all trying to make sense of our world and it is our job to help guide students as they guide us to make more sense out of it. Not to lead them in black and white about what is correct and what is incorrect, but to work with them and discover what is correct, question why, and develop a better understanding with one another. 

A Response-Based Approach to Reading Literature

If someone were to sit down and ask me, “Tyler what, to you, looks like the perfect English classroom?” My most simple answer would be the main focus of this research. To me, a discussion based English classroom where students are reading, building their own interpretations, discussing them, and then formulating more complex ideas from the discussion, is how the classroom should function. I especially liked the breakdown of Horizon of Possibilities (responding to literature through a human emotional/psychological connection) and Point of Reference (a sense of topic and the points being made) are not different, but are connected in our reading. These are great methods for building on discussion in the classroom, then using that to lead into critical thinking about the text. The importance of comfortable discussion is heavily focused on in the article because there is so much to gain from multiple interpretations of the text from students of various backgrounds and cultures. I especially enjoyed the section on maintaining a center of focus; as the teacher we must foster a community in which students are comfortable sharing their ideas, therefore we must validate their initial interpretations which, in turn, helps the students validate their understanding of the text. This will create and environment for thoughtful discussion and instruction based on response and help, rather than giving information. 

There were some issues I found with the research. I would like a more in-depth understanding on how one could teach literary concepts (setting, tone, ect.) to the class whilst maintain a community driven classroom. I would also like to understand what form of assessment would go into this type of response-based instruction. I assumed it would mostly be formative, since the class is so discussion focused, however there would have to be some summative assessment to help understand whether or not students are meeting standards. One other issue I was thinking of was the issue of students who are simply not interested, not reading or responding, and generally tuned out of discussion. Surely they could be brought in, but if particular members of the class are more vocal and more willing to give their interpretations other students me develop a feeling of inadequacy for their own ideas. These were all questions I pondered when thinking of how I could implement this in my own classroom. With my students this would certainly not work all the time, but I think they would enjoy response-based instruction much more than a teacher led classroom. 

SIOP 8 Components and 30 Features

With many ELL students in in classrooms this article was both helpful and incredibly informational. It reinforces, more than ever, the importance of group work, the fact that it is not only the English teachers goal to teach English, and give numerous amounts of tools to help ELL students grasp the language and learn not only the subject they are studying, but the skills to become a better speaker/writer of English. I found the group configuration section very useful. It showed how a variety of group styles can positively affect the classroom, environment, the students, and ELL students. It helps model good English for students, as well as, positively effects all students’ abilities. ELL students benefit from group work in multiple ways including, building their speaking skills in the English language, helping them make points and clarify ideas, and most of all practice the English language. There are many great teacher strategies for full class instruction in the article as well. Sometimes we forget that ELL students may need words repeated, read to them/explained to them, or simply require additional wait time to build their own comprehension. Wait time can be difficult and I hadn’t really thought of allowing students to use think-pair-share before replying to the prompted questions. This helps ELL students formulate their point with a peer first and allows for them to work through language and answer the question to the whole class. This is one of the few strategies that can be implemented to help ELL students. Previously, I have just given my ELL students shorter sections for in class reading, or asked them to be the speaker of their group, but after reading the SIOP I have found a wealth of additional tools I can use to help my four ELL students become a bigger part of the classroom, become better English speakers, and feel comfortable as students of language arts and language development. 

“The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12: Origins, Goals, and Challenges”

Often times as students of English education we find Common Core State Standards to be cumbersome and difficult. Those of use with master teachers who are concerned negatively with Common Core may find even more opposition against it. It is a scary thing to face that can often times be frustrating and feel limiting, but after reading this chapter on Common Core in Language Arts classrooms it is much easier to put many of the benefits of standardized into context. Only recently have I learned about the necessity to teach to 21^st century students. That is to say we as educators need to adapt to the electronic world with our instruction as well as help students shape into collaborative workers, leaders, and group members working toward a common goal. I really liked the description of “passionate affinity spaces” A lot of the things this section touches a go with our discussion of group work as a valuable tool in the classroom. It takes in a lot of what we discussed on students each bringing their own varied experience to the classroom, and that we can all benefit from different outlooks and learning styles/abilities in our classrooms. The classroom is described as, “where people’s endeavors and interest in a common goal…a deep passion that results in commitment to achievement in that goal,” is the perfect example of the mastery-based student focused environment we are trying to create. This gives the students personal value in the, sometimes hostile, learning setting.  Although, the strict structure of common core, and the districts sometimes strong hold on curriculum can be stressful for teachers who wish to put their own flair in the classroom, there are many way we can adapt lessons and still put in personal touches to reach this focused classroom community. As long as we maintain our rational what we are doing, we can use research such as this to build classrooms that are not only meeting common core and district standards, but are also meeting students’ needs both as learners and as humans striving toward one goal.

Discussion in a Democratic Society.

From the first section of this reading it seems to me that the most important aspect for us to think of when facilitating a discussion based classroom is that we need to find a means to make all participants feel free and welcome to project their own values, beliefs, and experiences into the classroom dialogue. I especially found the sections on hospitality and humility helpful when developing ideas for a democratic society in the classroom. Hospitality helps create a realm in which every ones opinions are of equal value and can be refuted or strengthened in a non-aggressive professional manner. I also found humility incredibly helpful because it places the teacher and students in a place of limited knowledge, due to the fact that we all come from different backgrounds. I think it is important to keep this in mind in a discussion based classroom because often times I find my students, and even myself at times, arguing points without truly taking the other side into account. If we open up to humility we are more likely to take all opinions and learn from one another, placing the teacher role upon everyone’s heads, and creating a more equal community-based classroom rather than a simply teacher led experience.

            One issue I found with the few chapters we read is that it did not present much information on how to deal with classrooms when discussion becomes aggressive and belligerent. Although there are many sections on how to develop a classroom in which we can create a friendly environment there is no information on how remedy an environment that has or might become toxic. This is something that has occurred a few times in my classroom. The portions on not expecting perfect discussion were somewhat helpful in this regarded. It let me know that conversation will not be perfectly focused, collaborative, or even present during every single lesson, but that crafting the art of good conversation skill develop over time and that varies from classroom to classroom.

            Overall, I found these first two chapters amazing. I know discussion was one of the most important aspects of the classroom because so many students have so many different opinions and backgrounds, that there is almost infinite learning potential we can draw from one another. I never really thought of how to create good conversation and always just sort of went for it with my students. These chapters showed why it is important and good ways to implement it in a great environment.