Reflecting on English Education

Although I was not particularly happy about waking up at 8 am to attend a school-related event on a Saturday, I am so glad that I had the opportunity to attend Longwood University’s Education 360 conference. I attended two sessions: Dr. Kristina Doubet’s “Motivating Every Student: The Power of Connection” and Dr. Sarah Tanner-Anderson’s “From Your Prospective Principal’s Perspective: How to Snag and Keep that J-O-B!”

This semester I am only taking education classes, which I expected to be exciting since I am very passionate about education, but it has actually been a very frustrating experience because I am just hearing a lot of repetition in most of my classes. Hearing Kristina Doubet speak reinvigorated my passion for learning about education because she mentioned so many ideas that I have not already heard. I firmly believe that forming strong relationships with students is one of the most important aspects of teaching, and this was the focal point of her speech. One of focal points of her speech was taking students’ interests into consideration. She presented a variety of ways to do this, but one that really stuck with me was using music to get to know students. There are a lot of connections between music and literature, and analyzing song lyrics really is not that different from analyzing poetry, so asking students to choose lyrics that represent them and then analyze why those lyrics represent them is fun way for students to tell me about themselves, while also integrating some course content that I could potentially use as a formative assessment. She also recommended that we use turn their responses into a class playlist, which would be an excellent way to keep students attentive as they listen for their favorite song to come on, and also to make our classroom a more comfortable and home-like environment. My favorite part of her presentation was her suggestion to include the question “How are you?” at the top of assignments in addition to asking students to write their name, date, and class period. This seemed like such a subtle thing at first, but the more I think about it, the more impactful it seems. Including such a simple question can show students that I actually value them as individuals, and not just as learners; it conveys the idea that not only do I care about the work they are about to put on that piece of paper, but that I also care about the person who is doing the work.

Dr. Tanner-Anderson’s presentation was phenomenal. I learned as much about how to be engaging from just watching her talk as I did from the content of her speech. I was lucky enough to be in Dr. Tanner-Anderson’s Content Area Literacy class during my sophomore year, so I was already aware of what a dynamic, exciting, and passionate individual she is, but I had no idea that she would exhibit the same, if not more, captivating enthusiasm at 10 am after waking up very early that she had in her late afternoon classes. One of the aspects of the delivery of her presentation that was most appealing was her ability to relate to her audience. Knowing that she was speaking to a group of Longwood students, she told us all about her time at Longwood before she even began to address snagging and keeping a job. This gave us a personal connection to her and, because I personally love Longwood excessively, engaged me in what she had to say from the beginning. She also mentioned that she always a very positive and happy person, which clearly shined through as she spoke and was very contagious. It made me realize how much of an impact my attitude can have on my students, and reinforced the importance of remaining positive and cheerful at all times so my students will be more inclined to do the same.

In terms of the actual content of her presentation, Dr. Tanner-Anderson was incredibly insightful. One comment she made that really resonated with me is that employers are assessing your behavior from the minute you step into the school. She mentioned that her secretaries will often send her an email prior to an interview or speak to her after interviews to give a brief reflection of how the candidate acted when they arrived and what they did as they waited for their interview. In general, I try to be respectful to everyone, and carry myself with professionalism whenever I am in a public place, but I had not thought about how conscientious  I need to be of my behavior at all times when I am going to an interview. A really helpful tip she gave for résumés is that we should include volunteer work and involvement in organizations even if we do not think it is super relevant to the job we are applying for because it could be. She cited an example of a time she needed to hire someone who could fulfill the role of being a teacher, as well as the sponsor of an environmental club, so she ended up hiring a qualified teacher who also had experience volunteering with recycling and held a leadership position in an organization in college because they had the skills necessary to lead an environmental club. I have held leadership positions in a few organizations on campus and I perform around 40  hours of community service each semester, but I do not usually include that on résumés because I do not feel like they apply directly to teaching; however, this gave me a fresh perspective and showed me that it is important to include a wide variety of activities (without being excessive) because I’ll never know how all of my seemingly random campus and community involvement could potentially help me to land a job.

Questions for an English Supervisor:

• What do you do to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners?
• How do you assess students? Do you vary the types of assessments you use
• What do you find to be the most effective classroom management strategies?
• What measures do you take to ensure that your classroom is welcoming and safe environment for all of your students?
• Is your teaching style teacher-centered or student-centered? What do you think are the benefits and drawbacks of your style?
• What is the most rewarding part of your job?
• What has been the most challenging part of your job? What do you do to handle it?
• Are there any specific situations that you wish you had handled differently throughout your career or anything that you wish you had known sooner?

Interview Questions:

• Why do you want to teach? Why do you want to teach English in particular?
• How do you plan to handle behavior and classroom management?
• How will you differentiate instruction to reach all of your students?
• How will you assess your students and track their growth?
• What do you anticipate will be the most difficult part about teaching? How will you address that?
• What unique personal skills can you bring to the classroom?

I commented on Brittany and Danielle’s blogs.

Seeing the American Shakespeare Center’s performance of Romeo and Juliet helped me to view the play in a completely different way. Although I have read Romeo and Juliet, I had never actually seen Romeo and Juliet performed before. Throughout high school, my teachers either randomly assigned parts for us to read out loud in class, or had us read plays for homework and then discuss them in class. I did not realize how much I was missing out on until I started to see performances of plays that I had read. It is incredibly difficult to visualize the characters and their actions to move beyond thinking about the plot in this type of environment, which makes me grateful to have discovered the vast amount of resources and lessons in existence already to avoid this type of boring, one-dimensional exposure to Shakespeare because his plays are really very multifaceted.

The American Shakespeare Center’s performance really brought the characters to life for me. It was a lot easier to keep up with who was a Montague and who was a Capulet because they wore different colors to help differentiate which family they belong to. The actors also really made the character’s personalities shine through. This was true for Mercutio in particular. When I read the play in class, I do not remember him being such a funny character, and frankly, I did remember anything about him other than Tybalt killing him; however, the man who played him stole the show. The actor clearly seemed invested in his role and comfortable with putting himself out there to elicit laughs from the audience so that Mercutio was brought to the forefront as one of the most memorable and likeable characters. This particular performance also gave a sense of what it would have been like to see the play performed in Shakespeare’s time. The props and scenery was pretty minimalistic for a performance of this caliber and the background stayed the same throughout the entirety of the play. Additionally, the lights stayed on for the entire play, and there were no special effects done through lighting. These factors helped me to visualize how plays were performed in Shakespeare’s day more than I would have gotten from just hearing what it was like.

One of my favorite ideas from The American Shakespeare Center Study Guide for Romeo and Juliet is called Choice, which is an assignment where the teacher “asks students and performers to consider the different choices they might make, given the clues within the text” (American Shakespeare Center p. 26). I envision this activity coming to life in a classroom by having students work in groups to determine how a scene should be acted out. One of the great things about Shakespearean plays is that they encompass so many different concepts from action to romance, so students will likely be able to choose a scene that is appealing to their own interests. Students can each pick a character to bring to life from that scene and think about things such as the vocal inflections in what they are saying, the emotions they are conveying, and the physical movements that go along with the words. It is so easy to get lost in the basic plot of a Shakespearean play just reading it straight through, but activities like this require students to think deeper about the nuances of each character and what the words on the page really mean. Many students dread Shakespeare, but perhaps being able to invest their time into a scene and character they find interesting will alleviate some of the stigma attached to Shakespeare because it allows students to focus on the parts of the plays they do enjoy.

Another activity that American Shakespeare Center suggests is called Iambic Bodies, which involves “Ask[ing] volunteers to line up in front of the classroom, with a chair behind each one. You may wish to couple up your iambs by placing their chairs close together, then a space, then the next two chairs” (American Shakespeare Center p. 31). The idea behind this is that the students who are standing read the stressed syllables and the students who are sitting read the unstressed syllables to get a better sense of iambic pentameter. Personally, I did not actually understand what iambic pentameter was until doing activities like this one in college. I could easily rattle off the definition that I had memorized, but I had no clue what it actually meant conceptually. Demonstrations like this are incredibly important because Shakespearean language is tough this opens up the opportunity to not only discuss iambic pentameter, but also other unique qualities that appear in Shakespearean language. High school students generally are not familiar with words like “o’er” or that Shakespeare uses them to conform to iambic pentameter, and this is the perfect opportunity to explain that. Another technique that could be incorporated into an activity like this is having students read the lines in high pitched or low pitched voices. It’s hard to get used to Shakespearean language, and this technique makes everyone sound silly, so readers who struggle with the new language or reading in general have time to adjust to the new way of talking without feeling embarrassed because their struggling is obvious.

In my classroom, I want students to view Shakespeare as an author who is accessible and fun to read, rather than tedious and unpleasant. It’s important to remember that these texts were meant to be performed and students are not going to get the full experience of reading Shakespeare without either seeing a performance or doing performance-based activities to bring the characters to life. As exemplified by the image above, the plot of Romeo and Juliet is actually quite simple. There is so much more to be gained from Shakespeare that extends beyond focusing on just the plot, I plan to use class time going further in depth into characterizations, themes, and performance qualities of the text, rather than reading the entire play just to be able to produce a basic summary of the plot.

Over the last week, I have been overwhelmed with an influx of information about the diverse learners that I am going to encounter throughout my teaching career. Growing up in a small town with many likeminded individuals, the students that I encountered throughout my own educational experience were a fairly homogenous group, so my teachers did not focus as much as they should have on incorporating a diverse curriculum. As I reflect on my own educational experiences and how I should create a welcoming environment for diverse learners, I feel that I first need to spend some time learning about other cultures myself.  It’s not that I am unaccepting or discriminatory of diverse individuals, but I am ignorant about many other cultures that I have not been exposed to. Creating a warm and welcoming classroom for diverse learners begins with me doing research about the different cultures that will be represented in my classroom so that I am able to accommodate and teach my students to accept the differences their diverse peers have in their mannerisms, cultural beliefs, and linguistic qualities.

In his book The English Teacher’s Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession, Jim Burke (2008) writes that teachers should “Learn what [they] can about their [students] culture. Have them write you a letter (in lieu of some other assignment) in which they tell you where they are from and what their lives are like here so far” (383). This should not replace doing my own independent research about my students’ cultures, but I think that this is a great way to supplement my learning about their culture. No matter how much research I do on my own, I am not going to be able to pinpoint exactly what my students’ cultures are like because everyone’s culture can be slightly different. Each student is unique because they all come from different backgrounds, even within the same country. One student might come from a wealthy family that values education, while another may live in poverty and value family time and practice a different religion. These students would have clear differences in their cultural practices. Rather than just asking students who are culturally different from the majority culture in my classroom to do this assignment, I would ask all of my students to do the assignment because even within American culture there are many subgroups such as religion and socioeconomic statuses that contribute to cultural differences. Taking this a step further, I would love to use this as an opportunity to have students share their cultures with each other by having them do an informal presentation about what they wrote in their letters.  This would show that I value hearing about their cultures and create the expectation that I want my students to share and embrace their own cultural differences, as well as their classmates’ cultural differences.

It is also important to me to represent a variety of cultures in my classroom both visually and in the learning content. Literature is not unique to white males, yet the majority of posters that I can remember seeing in English classrooms and reading about have been white males. I want all of my students to strive for success in reading and writing, so it is vital to expose them to images of writers who have succeeded from a variety of races and cultures. I never want my students to feel like because they have never seen someone from their own background being a proficient writer that they cannot be, so I intend to post images of authors and books that derive from a variety of cultures around my classroom. Not only is important to make the classroom visually welcoming to diverse cultures, but I also want to incorporate literature that is representative of diverse cultures. It is difficult enough for students to assimilate into a new culture, but when this new culture just ignores their primary culture, it must be incredibly frustrating. Incorporating a multitude of poems, short stories, and excerpts from novels written by individuals from a variety of races, countries, and socioeconomic statuses will make it so that my students are all being expose to something that is familiar to their own personal culture, in addition to learning about life from the perspective of someone who is different from them. This will hopefully help my students to assimilate more smoothly because they can talk about their own culture in addition to the new culture they are trying to figure out, as well as help my American students empathize with what it must be like for my culturally different students to read and learn about a new culture that they know nothing about.

Burke (2008) also presents the idea that it is important to “Allow them to write first drafts in the primary language as a means of getting their ideas together” (383). I love this idea and plan to use it in my classroom because the writing process is difficult enough to grasp for students who speak English, so I cannot imagine what it is like trying to learn the writing process while trying to learn English and translate ideas from one language to English. I know that when I write in foreign language classes I often substitute strong ideas for weaker ones just because I do not know how to say the more complex idea. I don’t want my students to struggle to present their best work because of a language barrier. The most important part of writing is just getting your ideas out on paper, and if a student can’t do that because they do not understand the language well enough, it is going to be very difficult for them to succeed. Writing in their primary language first will enable them to present their best ideas, which is what I want to grade them on. Forcing them to translate their ideas into English initially will inadvertently result in me grading their ability to speak English, rather than their ability to convey their ideas in a paper, because then they can only write what they know how to say in English.

Above all, I want all of my students to realize that they can be successful in school regardless of what background they come from. All students deserve to have an equal chance of success and to have a safe and welcoming learning environment. My hope is that all of my students come into my classroom feeling comfortable and confident in their ability to achieve academic success.

When I first read Maya Wilson’s article “Why I Won’t Be Using Rubrics to Respond to Students’ Writing,” I wholeheartedly agreed with her because I have always found rubrics to be incredibly frustrating because I’ve always felt that they are creatively restrictive and are used as a substitute for meaningful feedback. Throughout high school, I found myself conforming my writing style to meet whatever I interpreted the rubric to mean. I chose the word interpreted deliberately because I often found myself struggling to figure out what the rubric that was supposed to guide my writing even meant because they were often loaded down with complicated academic language that was far beyond my knowledge of writing at the time. The more that I think about rubrics, I really like the concept on paper, but it seems like my original opinion of them, as well as Wilson’s perspective in her article, stems more from poor implementation of rubrics, rather than rubrics being innately useless in classrooms.

One of the concepts that frustrates Wilson the most is that rubrics do not allow much room for specific feedback. She writes “While numbers work pretty well for communicating certain kinds of precise information, we have kept words around for their evocative, emotive, associative power” (Wilson 63). Frankly, I do not understand why Wilson portrays rubrics and specific constructive feedback as mutually exclusive ways of responding to students’ work. In isolation, rubrics do limit specific constructive feedback, but what is stopping teachers from using a rubric as a guide for grading, in addition to providing students with specific written feedback? Sure, it is more time consuming to evaluate a piece in multiple ways, but if it benefits students, then it is worth the extra effort. Effective rubrics show students why they received the grade they did in a way that is much more difficult to do in written feedback. Because rubrics are broken down into point values with a specific description attached to each numerical value, it is easy to see what each numerical value entails and how to improve that specific category or to see why a student did well in a specific category. Specific feedback does not breakdown grades into categories in the same way that rubrics do, but it does allow teacher to branch out more and talk writing in a much more holistic way without just focusing on the categories in the rubric. It broadens the horizons for what teachers can talk about in writing, as well as providing students with a much more human and personalized response to their work. Together, these two tools seem to be an effective way to encompass everything that a well-rounded response to student writing entails.

I value making writing assignments be open-ended enough for students to have choice and to be able express their ideas in their own personally creative ways, but at the same time, I think there has to be some guidance incorporated into the assignment. There are a variety of ways for students to write and express ideas that are perfectly acceptable, but there are specific skills and methods of writing that I am responsible for teaching students, so it is necessary that I assess students in these categories to make sure that they are learning what they should learn in their grade level. I think that rubrics can be an effective way to let students know what they are being evaluated on in their writing without necessarily inhibiting their ability to write in their own unique way. For example, my professor is using a rubric to assess this blog entry that is very open ended, but still details exactly what I need to do to get my desired grade. The categories on this particular rubric are Overall Purpose and Focus, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Quality of Entries. These categories are specific enough for me to know what I need to do to be successful, but still broad enough for me to be able to incorporate my own writing style into this post. I could have exhibited those four criteria in a variety of ways, such as a narrative, a research article, a poem, or a plethora of other genres. Effective rubrics serve as a guiding force to show students what they are expected to do, but do not mandate the process they must take to reach that point.

In my future classroom, I intend to use both rubrics and specific feedback. Students deserve to know the qualities I expect them to exhibit in their writing before they begin writing. For this reason, I think it is essential to give students the rubric prior to their writing, so that it is not just a tool for evaluating work, but also for explaining the assignment. The rubrics I plan to use will incorporate language that is appropriate for my students’ knowledge-level and cognitive development and clearly outline what they will be assessed on. In addition, I will incorporate my own personal specific written feedback that discusses the characteristics of their individual writing because they also deserve to know that I value their writing and am invested in their learning.

Welcome to Longwood Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!