Final Course Reflection ENGL 493

Overall this class was challenging and exciting. I learned more about being a teacher than I ever expected and spent time having quality discussions with others who want to go into the same field as myself. As a future teacher I think one of the most important and simple ways to encourage student learning is by having peer discussion and in this class peer discussion was our main form of learning. Being presented with new ideas or being asked to reflect on preexisting ones helped me grow in my critical thinking skills, which I believe is the most important thing a student can get out of an education.

One part of this class that surprised me in how much I enjoyed it were the book talks. Discussing literature is one of my favorite things to do and being able to listen and discuss books that people were very passionate about reading themselves and including in the classroom made for meaningful discussions. It also gave me numerous ideas about possible material I can use in my own classroom if I run out of ideas or draw a blank.

The most difficult aspect of this class was the three-week unit plan. Having never done a project like this even on a smaller scale increased the level in which this project challenged me. However, the overall quantity of time and effort put into this project would be difficult at any level to some extent. The feeling of pride and accomplishment at the completion of the unit plan can only be compared with few other projects I have ever completed in my college career so far. I know there is much I can improve on as a teacher and specifically with the plan I created but now knowing how to start and complete a project like this will only make the next one easier.  

Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel’s Night was a heartbreaking story of the realities of the Holocaust. This book was a short read and quite the page turner but to call it an easy read would be to ignore the emotional impact it has on the reader. Often times books get picked up, the words get read, a story unfolds in the readers mind, and the book is finished and put down without a second thought. This was not the case for Night. This book is one that guarantees a lasting impact on its readers who have any compassion for humankind. The heartless actions and the numbness that are retold in this autobiographical text take careful pondering and reflection to process at every page.

While this text was difficult to read in terms of processing the content, I found it to be an easy book to read in terms of being an active participant in the words rather than a passive consumer of them. I believe this is because of how passionate I am about the inclusion of Holocaust narratives, or even just the teaching of the horrific event in general, in curriculum. History has a tendency to repeat itself when we forget about the actual horrors that have occurred in our global past. The inclusion of the Holocaust in curriculum should be treated no different than that of slavery, Native American genocide and mistreatment, or any other people group that has been categorized and mistreated over the course of our earth’s existence. While this is not the only genocide that should be retold and remembered I believe that as one of the most widely known issues it is a gateway into remembering that humankind is not always good, and that true evil does exist in the world. Night offers a less widely heard of retelling of the Holocaust while still revealing the horrors that occurred and how they impacted human life.

Secondary Classroom Management Pt. 2

In this article, the authors focus on the “winning of students hearts” as a central focus in order to successfully present content to a student. Engaging students’ personal interests in the classroom helps them want to be more engaged. This all starts with building personal relationships with each and every student. Classroom management and student relationship should go hand in hand and be the main focus in “managing” a classroom. As the author brings up, “One of the keys to effective classroom management is the development of a quality relationship between the teacher and the students in the classroom.” As we’ve been learning in our class this quarter, relationships are such an important part of forming classroom culture.

            Knowing your students will help you in all aspects of teaching. Coming up with lesson plans will be easier if you know how to differentiate instruction best for your students and how fast or slow to teach certain things. It is common knowledge that students learn best when they are in a safe a comfortable location. It is the teachers’ job to make sure that each student feels comfortable which starts with building relationships with them to understand their background and their daily struggles.

Another aspect from the article is that of recognizing negative attitude or actions as something that can be reframed in a positive and productive light rather than trying to eradicate it entirely. Students often have strong will and their own desires, as they should upon nearing adulthood and going out into the real world. This article talks about how to take this stubborn attitude and use it to your advantage. Appreciate students who are attempting to assert their independence and try to channel that attitude into a productive leadership position or by giving them a general assignment and letting them take the reigns on how they want to learn about something. Even this starts with building relationships with one’s students in order to know how to best equip them for their future.

Beaty-O’Ferrall, M.E., Green, A., & Hanna, F. (2010). Classroom Management Strategies for Difficult Students. Middle School Journal

Into the Wild By Jon Krakauer

Krakauer’s Into the Wild is a story about human adventure and experience in nature. Some of the main themes point to a desire to be self-reliant, the unpredictability of nature, and the difficulty in escaping family problems. This story reflects how impossible it is to actually run away from your problems no matter how badly you wish to escape from them. The elements of nature in this story show that life brings unexpected twists and turns to our lives. This story is formatted in a unique way in that the author acts as the narrator and even inserts himself into the story as a character from time to time. This unique reading experience adds layers to this story that students might not be used to and engage their thinking.

While I found this story to be interesting I am not sure how I feel about using it as a teaching tool. While there are unique literary elements that would be interesting to show students, it does not offer as wide of a range of teaching strategies as I would like to see from a book. The themes in this story are relatively basic in terms of literary analysis and I would much rather use a book that has a deeper layer of themes along with the ones mentioned so plainly in this book. I know that students get overwhelmed with the amount of reading they are expected to do and it either stresses them out or they don’t actually do the reading and I want to try to limit the number of texts I use and utilize them longer rather than do a significant amount of reading and cover the same number of topics. However, I think that this book would be an interesting one to recommend to students who have a desire to do more reading outside of our actual class assignments.

Edgar Allan Poe in the Classroom

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a mysterious drama whose outcome will shock the reader greatly. The short story discusses ingenuity and analysis and the importance of creativity and thinking outside the box. Poe’s work is an invaluable tool in the classroom as an example of exciting classic literature. Many students are often intimidated by classic literature and use the excuse that it is boring, uninteresting, or too confusing for them to want to read. While it is true that classic literature has the tendency to be linguistically dense and advanced, it is anything but boring. Poe brings in mystery and action into his writing which has a tendency to attract readers, even those in high school.

I believe that any of Poe’s work could be used as a building block in the classroom. Some of his works are easier to grasp than others which makes the grade level of when appropriate to use his work vary slightly. Specifically, for “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” I would not bring this story to any classroom below 11^th grade. This is most only due to the density of the language used and the advanced reading skill set it takes to dissect such types of literature. This story would pair greatly in a unit about mystery as a classic example of a still popular genre of literature. This story could also be used when discussing good versus evil and human versus animal responsibility for one’s actions. There are a range of lessons ingrained into Poe’s works which can be utilized at various points and their allegorical meaning spans greatly, making it easy to include in a thematic lesson along with more contemporary pieces. Overall, I would suggest utilizing any Poe pieces one can in the classroom to introduce your student to classic literature in a way that would excite them rather than make them fall asleep.

The Round House By Louise Erdrich

The Round House is a story about morality and the line between good and evil. This story focuses on these themes through the lens of a thirteen-year-old boy as he struggles to decide his thoughts and feelings amongst all the wrong that was done to his mother. While this story has rather common themes it is the setting and context that make this story unique. The story takes place on a Native American reservation in South Dakota and showcases the legal structures of local, native, and federal law enforcement and how that comes to play in this case. This story offers representation for the minority Native American population and diversity in literature that can be brought into the classroom.

While this story was a different lens to a common narrative I am not sure that I would personally use it in my classroom. The Round House gives voice to the often unheard Native American population which is a rare occasion in most literature. However, the story does have some elements to it that I think are unnecessary to be included in a teaching tool. The explicit language and sexualization of females in some portions of the story are elements that I believe would make this a difficult text to get approved by administration. This is unfortunate because I think that the bulk of this book is something that is important to look over, not just for literary purposes but could be used in Social Studies to present the different types of law enforcement agencies that we have in America. Overall, I think that this book has potential to be a useful classroom tool, but I believe that the push-back when attempting to use this specific book could be avoided if another book on the same topic was utilized instead. However, I do believe that the literary discourse about the differing law enforcement structures is an interesting one and this book could be utilized well in teaching that if a teacher is passionate about bringing that to the classroom.

Secondary Classroom Management Pt. 1

In this article Hozian discusses eight classroom management strategies that she utilizes in her own secondary English Language Arts classroom. She discusses the importance in building relationships with your students and setting clear expectations on the first day of class in order to avoid misunderstandings and have your instruction be effective in teaching content to the students. She argues that relationships are the key component to success in the classroom and without that all the other components are extremely difficult to achieve.

This article echoed the main theme that we’ve been talking about throughout the quarter, that building relationships is important everyone’s success. I agree largely with this approach to classroom management because as a student I know the importance relationships have in my connection to the teacher, content, and the overall class in general. I believe that a relationship-based classroom is the only foundation that truly benefits both the teacher and the students. Building those bonds with each of your students individually as well as creating a classroom culture that is built on interpersonal relationships helps students actually care about what is going on in their class and becomes a personal investment rather than just another class period they have to sit through.

This strategy fits directly into the management tips we have been discussing throughout the bulk of the last few weeks. Being personable and authentic towards your students allows for that personal connection to be made and allows for real life conversations to take place in your room. While it is not impossible for a teacher to successfully teach content to their students while having no personal connection with them it is sure to make this job extremely unenjoyable. To have a successful impact on your students that stretches beyond content and into real world application you must at least attempt to build real relationships with each and every one of your students.

Hozian, LaToya. (2017). Taming the Chaos: Eight High School Classroom Management Strategies That Work. Edmentum Blog. Retrieved from http://blog.edmentum.com/taming-chaos-eight-high-school-classroom-management-strategies-work

I Read it, But I Don't Get it

Teaching students how to read. While most secondary teachers think that this is a responsibility solely in the hands of elementary school teachers this perception could not be more wrong. No, you shouldn’t need to teach most of your students the basic reading principals such as how to sound out words and such. However, every good reader knows that reading is so much more than just sounding out the numerous words on a page which increase in difficulty as the student progresses in their education. Reading for context and understanding should be the whole reason for any subject to assign any reading.

Students who “can not read well” can often “read” just fine in the traditional sense. They can read the words in a sentence and the sentences in a paragraph and so on until the story is complete. When it is all said and done the problem comes when they finish the text and have no idea what they just read. Understanding a text gets increasingly difficult as the student moves up in grade level, as it should, but students so often get left behind simply because they don’t know what tools they need to use in order to grasp the content that they are reading.

Secondary teachers, in all subject areas, should take responsibility in helping their students understand the content in every reading assignment given. Students should be taught how to find out what words mean, make connections to other things they have learned or already know, understand when they are confused and need to step back, ect. While these may seem like obvious strategies for some students there are still students who struggle to grasp content, not for lack of trying or not being smart, simply for the fact that they don’t know how to make meaning of the text they are reading. It is our job as educators to, not just provide the answers as an easy way out but rather, equip our students with the tools they need to become successful readers.

Book Talk: A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

 1. A long way gone is a first-hand account of the authors experience being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. The story details the authors first introduction to the war and how his personal involvement changes over time from just a victim of its horrors to becoming an active participant both in good ways and bad. From running from gunshots to firing on his “enemies”, 12-year-old Ishmael Beah recounts his war story and how his prospective slowly evolves from that of an innocent young boy to one of an experienced soldier. Through all the twists and turns that Ishmael encounters he becomes numb to the realities of the world in order to cope with the horrors that are all so true and personal for him. Through the help of a kind young nurse and music Ishmael eventually begins to reenter reality and become a functioning human outside of the realms of war but still holds onto his experiences of his abruptly ended childhood in order to make a difference and help those in the world around him.

2. This text is powerful on many accounts. This book is a real-life retelling of a tragedy that struck a young child. While most students of any age in our classroom will not be able to relate directly to the fact of being an active participant in a bloody civil war it is guaranteed that they will be struggling with some sort of horror, whether it is one we view as an actual horror is beside the point. The age range I would recommend for this book would 9th or 10th grade simply because the main character in this book is of a younger age. I would not suggest this book for a middle school/ Jr. high audience due to the sensitive content that is included in the text such as drug use, violence, and mass death. This book can be used for upper high school as well, but I believe it would have the most impact for younger high school students.

3. Incorporating this text in the classroom should be done in a sensitive manner and should be done in steps to check students’ individual responses before including it in a group. I think a good way to assess students individually would be to do a short journal entry response to the text and to see how they felt about it. Bringing this into a larger group setting I think projects would be good to incorporate. There are many issues in this book besides that of war and violence that would be good to address like drug use, child slavery (or slavery in general), comparative systems of government, ect. Dividing students into small groups of 3 or 4 to do more research on these different issues and bringing their findings back to the rest of the class would be a good idea. Creating textual connections to the issues in the book but also connecting the issues to other locations in the world or other texts can help give more understanding of global issues. Bringing this to a practical application standpoint, the students could all research areas of the globe or the country in need of some type of assistance. Whether it was a natural disaster, war, or some other tragedy, have students decide on one place as a group and look into practical ways to send help to this place. This could be a food drive, blanket drive, any other way to send assistance to a group of people in need. This could even be done locally at a food shelter or some other local charity.

4. This book is fairly graphic, part of the reason I would not recommend that this text be used in middle school/ Jr. high. Even still, at the high school level I could easily see opposition to this text from both parents and administration for this text’s inclusion of strong violence, war, and substance abuse among other controversial topics. However, I feel that students having knowledge of both the good and the bad in the outside world especially in how it effects children is imperative. This text provides a happy resolution to such a tragic story, but I believe it is important for students to see that war effects children just as much if not more than it does adults. If this can be articulated, then I believe there will not be an issue in bringing it into the classroom.

Lesson planning and edTPA

Teaching performance assessment, or TPA, is both a lesson planning guide and a large project that showcases your work as a teacher. There are many steps in both aspects of TPA’s and each step was specifically selected to analyze how a teacher candidate thinks about the teaching process as a whole. EdTPA gives teacher candidates different aspects of the teaching profession to be analyzed on in order to make sure the candidate possesses the competency to be a successful teacher.

Planning, instruction, assessment, and reflection on student learning are the key components to the edTPA as well as to the teaching profession and are imperative to not only you personally but to the success of all your students. Time-management is a highly important aspect when it comes to being successful in the submission of one’s edTPA. Because the project is quite extensive it is important to set smaller achievement goals for oneself rather than leave the entirety of the project to the last minute. While the time-management portion is not required or officially assessed, your mentors will be assessing this fact as an important aspect of the profession. Along with your mentors, the professionals who review your edTPA will be looking for the best quality of work you can provide. This means that leaving time to review your work and revise it is crucial.

The teacher preparation program is an extensive one and the edTPA is just one of many checkpoints a teacher candidate must past in order to become a licensed teacher. The desire to be treated as professionals as well as the overall care and concern for the well-being and success of students is what causes such a need for mass amounts of assessment and preparation for every aspect of the teaching career. Making good decisions in what to include and how to include it into one’s edTPA is an important step for teacher candidates and for good reason. Teachers need to be as equip for the job as possible.

How to Make a Real Difference by Bringing Social Justice Issues into your Classroom

What is social justice? Social justice is often just an undefined blanked term that people use to graze over the topic of political and social issues but is never really defined or understood clearly. Bringing social justice into the classroom is something that is often pushed for and teachers are usually the first to rally for it but often times do not know exactly what it is they are rallying behind and how to include it in a classroom. A recent article I read on the matter gave an intriguing and clear definition that I believe leads to some form of clarity on the subject while also leaving it open to the teacher’s decision as to what to include in its discussion and inclusion in the classroom. According to an article from theteachersacademy.com, social justice is “dealing with problems of equality and fairness helps give students valuable experience in critical thinking, research, and respectful, meaningful conflict.” This definition helps to bring more specific terms to the broad subject known as “social justice” while also leaving it up to interpretation of some sort to the teacher of the said subject.

As teachers, we often hear and use the word “critical thinking” when discussing things we want our students learn from our class. Taking this aspect from a specific content area and bringing it to current social and political issues is the goal of social justice and the entire reason for including it in classroom discussion. This does not mean having separate content and social justice discussions but rather consciously intertwining the two conversations in order to make practical connections between otherwise isolated content and real-world issues facing our society. Social justice isn’t necessarily something that is taught but rather something that is discussed and built upon with the use of critical thinking skills.

Quote taken from: http://www.theteachersacademy.com/blog/how-to-make-a-real-difference-by-bringing-social-justice-issues-into-your-classroom/

Popular Culture and Critical Media Pedagogy in Secondary Literacy Classrooms

Popular culture and media are aspects of student culture that change from year to year but always remain an important topic to students. From music to new young adult books we see a wide variety of platforms in popular culture that students connect with and intertwine into their identity. As teachers we cannot be expected to stay up to date on all aspects of popular culture and the ever-changing tide of the media. However, in order to best connect with our students in the now, it is important that we know the things that our students are engaging in so frequently.

Understanding how to read different types of media is important for students to learn how to do. However, we must teach our students to be critical thinkers when it comes to reading popular culture. Digging for evidence and questioning the information that is presented is a necessity in becoming a well-informed adult member of society. Students must learn to think independently in light of the mass amounts of false information that is thrown at them on a daily basis. Critically questioning information while looking for the right answers is something we can model for our students but is something that they must learn to do in their own way, independent of the teachers thought or opinion.

In our current climate we see students, especially high school students, be overwhelmed by a massive amount of information from popular culture platforms. The media can be a tool that teachers use to introduce critical thinking skills to their students if used properly. A teacher’s goal should be to get students to think independently and critically about the world around them and what better platform to use than one that students already interact with on a daily basis. In this way we can use the media to our advantage and teach our students a valuable life skill.

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The ideals that are held throughout the education system as a whole often limit the student’s and teacher’s individual thought and creativity. The widely accepted thought is that the teachers’ job is to fill the students with knowledge and the students’ job is to be filled with said knowledge. While this is not always the view of individual teachers it is often something that is pushed by the education system in general.

However, the education of students is not just a simple pouring out of knowledge by the teacher but rather a give and take. If a teacher is attempting to make the most out of their lesson, there will be back and forth between the teacher and students and it is very difficult to learn absolutely nothing from one’s students. It is not just the teacher teaching but rather everyone is contributing and learning from the conversation and the teacher takes on more of a facilitating role.

As teachers it is our responsibility to give students reason for learning material and practicality in what they are learning. Most teachers focus on preparing their students to perform at college level in any subject area that they teach. However, it is important to remember that there are a number of students that have no desire for a career that requires them to have that knowledge. Balancing the college preparedness in a subject with the practicality of the knowledge that is being presented is important to keep in mind when presenting students with information. As teachers, most of us have the desire that our students will become life long learners. In order to achieve this, we must ourselves be learners in our work, learning from our students and teaching them how to do the same. It is when this occurs that teaching becomes so much more than just the pouring out and filling of knowledge but rather a constant learning experience.

Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?

I think that a lot of English teachers, especially in secondary education, sick with their go to when it comes to assessment. Nine out of ten times this assessment is in the form of an essay. The assessment could be a traditional essay format or a quiz where students respond in one or multiple short essays. However, assessment for literature needs to be so much more than just learning how to write an essay. While it is important for students to learn how to compose a paper it is also just as important for them to be able to show their knowledge on something they have read in other forms as well.

Sometimes students are given multiple choice, fill in the blank, or other short test methods to test their knowledge on literature. Usually students don’t face this method until they are taking an important test such as the SAT and if teachers haven’t introduced this style of assessment for literature before hand the student can feel overwhelmed or confused. We as teachers need to be knowledgeable of as many forms of assessment as possible, ones that we are sure our students will face as well as some other less common forms. This will help ensure that they are as prepared for any method of assessment that is thrown their way in the future whether that is in another class in high school or in their college career.

Assessment for literature can come in many different forms and it is important that teachers use a variety of assessment methods to ensure that they are helping their students learn as much as possible. A variety of assessment methods can also be helpful when you have students with different learning styles, which is always, so you have a more accurate measure of what all your students have learned.

Book Talk: Sold by Patricia McCormick

1. Sold by Patricia McCormick is a story of a young girl named Lakshmi from Nepal who is sold into the Indian sex slave industry by her stepfather. The story follows her throughout a brief portion of her childhood before she is sold and throughout her youthful naiveite about the horrors of the world around her. The book is formatted as a sort of journal entry style rather than chapters. These entries range from experiences Lakshmi has had with her “customers” while working as a sex slave to encounters with other prostitutes and her boss. While the horrific events are not graphically described, the emotion in this book is so raw that hinting at what is occurring is enough to bring the reader to a sad realization of the events. This book allows readers to see inside Lakshmi’s mind as a young girl grown up too fast while dealing with the surreal evil that is the child sex slave industry. While this story is a fictional one in the details of the events it is all too much of a reality for so many young girls living in India and the surrounding areas. Sold offers brief glimpses of South East Asian culture as well as into the sex slave industry with enough personal detail to make it relevant and important to the reader on a personal level.

2. The reason that I chose this text was mainly because of the personal impact it had on me when I read it. I believe that when you are teaching, and you can make it your choice you should do so. In a profession that requires so much from a person it is imperative that you pick things that you connect with in order to help you connect with your students. I also think that it is important as teachers to introduce difficult texts to your students in a safe environment so that they will be more prepared when presented with similar instances in the “real world”. My student target with this text would probably be 8th or 9th grade. It is a fairly easy read in terms of language, but the topic is heavier than I think most middle schoolers, or their parents and administration, would be able to handle in a classroom. The story is about a girl who is 12-13 years old and I think, for it to make the most impact, having students who are close to that age would be beneficial. That being said, I think that with the depth and complexity of the issues discussed in this book the majority of students younger than 8th grade would probably not benefit from this text as much.

3. This book is a heavy subject and should not be handled lightly. One way this could be managed while minimizing a triggering situation that could come up in discussion would be first by having the students analyze and write about the text that way you as the teacher can see how the students have processed the text and where to go from there. When I read this text, we did a silent discussion where you write a question on a page and pass the page along. From here you have an opportunity to either respond to the question, respond to another student’s response, and/or ask another question. The questions and discussions could be about a specific passage of text or a question about the story as a whole. Another way to incorporate this text into classroom use is have the students engage in a small group discussion in which they get to chose what group they are in. This way the students are in a group that they feel relatively comfortable with but also get to vocalize their thoughts, feelings, and opinions about the subject while not having the pressure of talking to the whole class.

4. This text is a topic that will be very difficult to talk about and may trigger very intense reactions from some students. The very real issue of using this text is that it may remind a student of a very personal and traumatic event that occurred. I would not suggest simply throwing this book into the mix of assignments right off the bat but rather wait until you better get to know your students to see if this book is appropriate for that particular class. Administration can be very wary when it comes to incorporating difficult and potentially triggering subjects into the class room and the same is true for many parents. Hesitation and even outright opposition could be expected from both parties. I believe, however, that if you allow the parent to be involved or at least just very aware of the topics of discussion and the reasoning behind why you are teaching them it will be fairly easy to gain favor to teach such a difficult topic.

5. Sold is a text that portrays an under-discussed issue that we have in both our national and global society. I think it is important to remind students that, while this text might be portraying the sex slave industry in one particular culture does not mean that it is the only culture that faces this issue. Presenting this fact, not in a way that scares them but rather informs them about the world around them, can be extremely beneficial for their future.

California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

Whenever a student is approaching new material or a new type of material there should always be building blocks in which the student can use their current knowledge to reach the next step. One thing that is difficult for many students to achieve is successfully reading and writing through connecting the two elements together. Students writing about literature or informational texts is a different process than a student tackling a creative writing project which means they need to be taught to approach it in a different way.

Before a student can even read a text, informational or literary, they need to make sure they can understand the concepts in the text. Reading something once is also important when there is language that a student does not fully understand. Whenever a student approaches new vocabulary they should familiarize themselves with said vocabulary and then reread the portion of text it was included in to give them contextual understanding before moving on. The students’ goal should not be to read the text for the sake of reading, when connecting it to writing analysis, but rather they should read the text in order to better understand the topics that are being presented to them.

The most important element when it comes to connecting writing to text is making sure there is evidence to support whatever claim your essay will be making. In order for a student to successfully make an argument for or against something in a text there must be textual evidence backing up your statement. Digging through the text and making those connections between the work and your own work is imperative for a strong essay. This is where the reading to understand comes in great importance.

The connection between reading and writing seems like an obvious one to some people. However, there is a process in which a writer must go through to make this connection successful. This process takes instruction and much practice for a student to be successful but once the building blocks have been put into place the rest will follow easily.

Common Core State Standards

Common Core is one area of the education field that I do not have enough information on to make an informed opinion about. However, I do know that there are many myths about what Common Core is and how it operates within a school, district, and state. There are also factors, when it comes to meeting said standards, that are not controlled by Common Core.

Common Core State Standards are a set of standards that, contrary to some opinions, gives teachers a set of standards but does not tell them what or how to achieve that goal. The hope for these standards is to help create a commonality between state education goals which in turn would make it easier for students and teachers who move from state to state. Common Core is not the nationalization of education as a requirement but rather a type of incentive program in which the federal government offers money and other benefits to the states who adopt these standards.

Common Core, when implemented correctly, helps students coming from different states or counties to pick up relatively close to where they last left off in their educational path. The downfall to Common Core comes when teachers are unsuccessful in helping their students meet and surpass the standard that was set before them. Common Core gives flexibility to the teacher in terms of what they teach or how they do so. This is a relatively good thing in most cases but there is always going to be a teacher that does not have the knowledge or skill to meet the standards. Unfortunately, in these cases it is the student’s education that suffers greatest as a consequence of underprepared teachers. There are always improvements to be made in the education system and Common Core is no exception to this fact regardless of anyone’s opinion on how it is currently operating in the school system.

Graphic novels in the classroom

Graphic novels were not something I was introduced to, and actually read, until last Spring in one of my English classes. As a lover of classic literature, I wasn’t sure how comics fit into a serious English scholars’ library. However, it was no surprise when my prospective of graphic novels changed as so many opinions do throughout one’s college years.

The first graphic novel that was introduced into my arsenal of books was the autobiography Persepolis. In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi writes about her childhood in Iran and the effects the Islamic revolution played in her life. This book not only helped me learn more about the Islamic revolution but also opened my mind when it came to integrating graphic novels into ones library and into the classroom.

Graphic novels can be used for a wide variety of reasons, all of which I believe are beneficial to secondary students. Students with learning disabilities or those who speak English as a second language might have an easier time reading if they have pictures to associate with the text or could help them understand the scenario better. Also, students who have no trouble reading but just have a distaste for reading in general, especially when it comes to classic literature, graphic novels could help introduce the text in a way that interests them more. Students who enjoy reading and have no problems diving into the world of classic literature can also appreciate graphic novels that are adaptations of classic literature or even just their own creation as a new type of reading.

All in all, I believe that graphic novels are beneficial to a wide variety of students and should be more frequently included in secondary classrooms. Graphic novels help level the playing field for students with all ability levels and introduce a new and exciting way of reading literature.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

Using discussion as a way of teaching can be an invaluable method because it allows students to contribute their unique thoughts and ideas about a subject. The goal of any good teacher should be to encourage growth and a desire for lifelong learning within their students and by using active class discussion as a way to teach students to learn from their peers and develop independent thinking strategies.

There are many reasons why discussion fails teachers as a method of successfully helping their students learn more. Luckily, the factors that cause discussion failure are fairly simple to resolve. The most important aspects of discussion as a teaching method are that the teacher sets an example for what the conversation should look like, the students come prepared for said discussion, and there are very clear ground rules set so that the discussion remains productive rather than argumentative.

Having clear expectations about learning targets is another important aspect when using discussion as a way to teach. If clear expectations are not set, at least in the teachers record, then the discussion has no end goal and there is no direction in which the teacher can clearly steer the conversation. As a teacher, having a clear expectation and reason for what you want to accomplish and why will help you be able to articulate those learning targets to your students in a way that they will understand.

Discussion as a teaching strategy is only as effective as the teacher makes it. Making sure the students are prepared, helping guide the discussion after you have set clear targets and expectations, and setting ground rules are all very important aspects in making sure your discussion is as productive as possible. Having student input offers a wide range of thoughts and opinions on a subject that just the teacher might not be able to provide which is what makes this an invaluable teaching strategy.