Readings for Sept. 17

First and foremost, I really liked the article by Short, Kauffman, and Kahn because I feel like they made some excellent points and I hope to integrate some of what they talked about into my classroom.  I think it is important for future teachers to realize that students come to us already having previous experience in using multiple sign systems, but to often in schools we take this freedom of expression and learning away from them by telling them what to do.  How is that fair?  I believe that my students will learn best in an environment that is tailored to their needs, whatever their needs may be.  Hopefully, I will never be a teacher that stifles their creativity and inhibits their learning.

That being said, I also loved that they touched upon the idea that there is no "wrong" answer in many literature discussions.   This brought back a powerful memory for me as I witnessed a teacher employ this way of thinking to great success.  In eleventh grade, we read "The Awakening" (by Kate Chopin), and in the end it is strongly implied that the main character commits suicide by swimming into the ocean and letting the waves carry her away.  However, in a literature discussion one student disagreed, arguing that it never explicitly said she never came back and he thought that she would regret leaving her young kids and swim back.  My teacher struggled with this idea as that obviously was not what she thought the ending was, but she never told him he was wrong and respected his ideas, even letting him complete an assignment as if she weren't dead.  This has stayed with me all these years, because yes, I am going to disagree with students, but I never want to tell my students they are wrong, especially if they can back it up with logical reasoning.  It is all about respect in the classroom.

But, back to the main point of the article, I love the idea of art in the classroom because I think that many times kids work better with less restrictions.  They aren't afraid to mess up if they know I am not going to grade it and I love risk taking in english class.  I have always been someone who needs to doodle or draw pictures to get my point across and I will encourage this in my students.  They are more than welcome to write/draw/paint/record whatever they want in their classroom journals and I will be happy to look at all of it because my main goal will be to get them engaged in learning.  As was mentioned in the article, the most engaging presentations involve multiple medias and sign systems, and this goes both ways.  I plan on not only encouraging these behaviors in my students, but I want to employ them in my lesson plans as well.  Hence, this article wasn't just helpful in gaining strategies, but also in critiquing my own teaching style to become more well rounded.

Finally, the most powerful moments for me in learning are when I can relate something I am learning now to previous knowledge that I already have.  This intertextuality, as it was referred to in the article as, is super important because knowledge is a journey, not simply a destination, and that is super important!