Poetry

This event was very interesting for me.  I have never been to poetry event....ever.  The entertainer was just that very entertaining.  On the other side, the poems read were very serious and very touching.   The works were written about identity, trying to figure out WHO YOU ARE.  The piece presented by the TESOL minor student gave me goose bumps.  She had a lot to say about growing up Asian and some of the racist events she has had to go through.  When she talked about being stuck on an elevator with 10 white male students and they called her asian and a chink, I could feel the hair raising on the back of my neck.  I just couldn't believe it.  I think her whole writing connects with bell hooks nicely.  She explains how racism still exists, how she can't get away from it.  She talks about how it is cruel but it is what rules.  bell hooks   talks about how people think racism doesn't exist anymore, well here is a perfect example that it still does.  bell hooks chapters were a call to action and I feel this poetry reading about identity is a call to action as well.   Everyone struggles with identity, it is up to us to look beyond the stereotypes of identity and find out really WHO these people are.  It is not are place to decided that by the color of their skin, by their cultural heritage.  It is our place to dig deeper,to discover the WHO, not the label attached, and to celebrate  differences.

Authentic Materials Module 8

This module jumped out to me.  Since I have been at ISU and in C&I courses all I have heard is authentic material, authentic material, authentic material!  When I was tutoring for C&I 209 my teacher constantly discussed authentic material and I planned many of my lessons using pictures, web pages, and books (not the textbook).  I wanted to explore authentic materials for English Language Learners to see if the objective for ELLs was any different than non-native speakers.  From this video I can conclude it is not.  Authentic material is important for all students, everyone needs to build their language. The video showed several ways to use different types of authentic materials in the classroom.  The only thing to remember for ELLs is to pick materials that are at their level or a little higher, but not too hard.  Authentic material provides the learner with real language and language that is used in the target culture.  It is interesting and also can provide a lot of information.

As a future elementary teacher it is important for me to remember authentic materials, especially for my ELLs.  If I want my ELLs to speak the target language the best way for me to help them is by providing books that use the language they hear and are surrounded by.  It is also important for me to remember authentic materials are not just different kinds of printed books but magazines, newspapers, and even the internet.  Some of my students may not have access to the internet or even know what it is, it would be a great tool to enhance their knowledge of technology but also teach them different types of language and avenues for them to find information.  The internet is also a good tool for addressing different modalities in my classroom and the different levels of ELLs.  There is so much out there at the click of a mouse!

Week 10 Readings

I really liked this weeks readings, I think all the articles are relevant to our future teaching careers and it is an issue we need to say on top of.  Chapter two in Teaching to Transgress had some really interesting view points.  What really got me though was the quote on page 32, "Some folks think that everyone who supports cultural diversity wants to replace one dictatorship of knowing with another, changing one set way of thinking for another. This is perhaps the gravest misperception of cultural diversity."  I think this quote speaks for a lot of people.  The way I see it is people who fear cultural diversity have problems with the unknown.  They are familiar with "american  culture" and therefore can accept it but when you throw in a culture that is 100 percent new, their first response is fear.  

From my perspective cultural diversity is not replacing the "american culture" but enhancing it.  Who says that just because there are other ways of thinking that we automatically are saying this new way is better or this new way is far superior to what was here first.  It all goes back to fear of the unknown.  As future teachers we have to address the unknown in the classroom to hopefully change this misconception.  Thinking about my job as elementary teacher, I feel it is important to explain what exactly cultural diversity is and have an open and safe class room to address the misconceptions.  We have a hard road ahead of us.

Week 9 Readings

Chapter 6 was really interesting to me.  I thought learner autonomy more or less, was how a person learners, what their learning preference is, and which strategies they like to use the best.  This chapter shows there is more to that.  There is learning to learn and learning to liberate and if learners and teachers take great care a learner can achieve both.  It’s interesting to see the differences of the narrow view and the broad view.  The narrow view focuses on how you can learn and the broad view focuses on how you can take learning to a further level.  I think it is important for future teachers to be aware of both the narrow view and broad view and be conscious of what teachers can do to promote learning autonomy to create learners who learn and learners who strive for more.

Week 8 Reading

This article was interesting and I liked how curriculum and syllabus was clearly defined.  However, there is something in this article that is bothering me.  Maybe I didn't really understand what they were trying to say or I understand perfectly but it still doesn't make sense.  In the beginning of the article the author discusses who the consumer, customer, and stakeholders are of curriculum design.  The main consumers are the learners and secondly the teachers, the customers are materials and test developers and program evaluators. Who are these developers and evaluators?  People who have a background in education say through classes but not experience or are they experienced teaching professionals?  If the main purpose of the curriculum is to provide these people with clear guidelines for developing materials, courses, and assessment instruments then shouldn't they be the people who understand the classroom and the art of teaching?  I guess I really just want to know who these people are that are in control of the curriculum who is making the decisions of what the students have to know and what I have to teach.

Week 7 Readings

"A method of teaching allowing the students to learn by discovering things by themselves and learning from their own experiences rather than by telling them things." (176)  This quote, I feel, explains how to activate intuitive heuristics.  Basically it is better to learn by your doing than by the doing of the teacher.  My fiance is a big computer nerd and when I need help with my computer, he won't help me.  He tells me I have to figure it out, he will sit with me and give me ideas on how to solve my problem but he never does it for me.  I think this has made my understanding of my computer much greater than if he were to come in and fix it and leave.  What would happen if the problem occurred again and he wasn't there?  I would be out of luck, that's for sure.  Kumaravaduvelu does a good job explaining how to activate intuitive heuristics.  He explains in the inductive approach to grammar, the teaching lies in helping the learner discover what the grammatical rules are.  In deductive teaching there is hardly any interaction between learners which Kuma states is necessary to create an environment promoting self discovery.  Like we have mentioned in class before communication between everyone involved in the learning process is essential to learning and better yet essential to learner discovery.  As a future teacher it is important for me to step back and reflect on my teaching to see if I am creating opportunities for my students to learn for themselves or if I am not creating opportunities but instead telling information.

Final Project Progress

I have been in an ESl classroom with K-5 students on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  I have been observing the interactions between the teacher and student/s, students and students, and students and content.  I hope to be discussing a lesson with my CT that I will teach to a group of 4 first grade boys on the topic of transportation.