My Read-Aloud
I chose to do Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” for my read-aloud.
Who I am and How I Teach
Hi! My name is Sam Hite. I am 21 years old, I was born and raised in Clarksville, Virginia, and I’m here to teach your English class! I’m 6’4″, I weigh 290 pounds, and I enjoy playing video games, writing stories, cooking, and thinking up fun assignments for you all to do. I’m very excited to be teaching you all this semester. I truly believe that everyone has their own skill sets and things they enjoy. As such, I believe that everyone learns differently and deserves to be taught differently. I will be doing my best to nurture each of your individual talents and career paths, while also teaching you to write academically, professionally, and (hopefully) recreationally.
Below, I have included links to one of my favorite assignments that I particularly enjoy giving at the beginning of each semester. In it, I have each student in the class draw pieces of paper from two hats. In one hat, the gray slips of paper, on which are written a topic that they are to write about. In the other, the yellow slips, on which are written an audience that the students are to write to. For example, one combination could be that the student has to write a letter to their boss about pandas. It can be a very interesting, intuitive assignment that can lead to a lot of fun and goofy combinations. Students are encouraged to be creative and let the assignment be as imaginative as it entails. It’s meant to be an entertaining, interactive exercise to allow students to express themselves while learning about the variations in writing between different audiences.
I’m looking forward to seeing you all in August so we can start our semester off right!
Welcome to Meme-ories of Research!
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Research papers as a final project are not only entirely non-interactive for the students, but for the teachers as well. Students get little to no benefit from writing papers and many of them, myself included, rarely remember anything from the papers themselves. If students are assigned to make truly creative, alternative projects, then not only will they learn more than they would from a paper, they will enjoy the project more and will put more work into it. Making memes is a fun and interactive way for students to not only apply the knowledge gained in creating digital art but also to connect the themes of the class to popular mediums of the time.