The Round House

This book was very addicting to read. Books and movies like this have always captured my attention. My family calls them "who done it" movies and that always made me laugh. Although I did like this book, I don't know if I would ever incorporate it into a high school classroom because of all of the issues it deals with, especially rape. I myself don't even like hearing or talking about rape because it makes me very uncomfortable. I know people say that it is important to be uncomfortable because that is when you learn more; when you are put outside of your comfort zone and learn to handle that. And because I know I have a problem with it, I know parents would not approve of this book. Topics of rape, murder and many things done underage, I honestly don't know how a book like that would be allowed in a classroom less than college level. And what if there are kids who have actually been through situations involving rape? God forbid that would ever happen but I know it does. And I wouldn't want to make someone read about it because, odds are, they would relive their own experience and I don't want that to happen. I feel like this book is very controversial, but sometimes these topics do need to be talked about. While some would hate to relive their experience, others could possibly find it comforting to know that it happens a lot, as repulsive as it is. Having something to relate to is very helpful at times.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

I actually read this book in Dr. Beth's class The Composition Process last winter. From what I can remember, the book is about how students are reading things without actually understanding what they are reading. I remember going through the motions and not understanding what I was reading because in elementary school, we were always being timed to see how fast we could read a paragraph but we never had to summarize what we read. They just wanted to see how fast we could read. Because of that, I always wanted to read as fast as I could and I never got good at retaining what I was reading unless it was something I was interested in. Even when I got older and had to write papers, most of the time I would start reading what was assigned, but then would just look up the text on Sparknotes and was able to write the paper from that. Sometimes it was even worse and I was able to take bits and pieces of what I was supposed to read and somehow come up with enough BS to write a paper and somehow got a good grade on it.

Hopefully this has changed. I don't know very much about what they are doing in elementary schools nowadays when it comes to reading and comprehension, but hopefully they are actually focusing more on the "comprehension" part so that by the time kids get to high school or even college, they can actually understand what they are reading and they don't just look up summaries or just skim what is assigned so that they are able to full contribute to whatever assignment that it is attached. For this book itself, there are some awesome tools in the back of it, so I'm planning on keeping this book for my own personal use in my classroom someday as something to refer back to.

Book Talk #2

The Summer I Turned Pretty

Summary: This book is actually three books in one. The stories are about a girl named Isabel (Belly), her older brother Steven and her mother who spend every summer with their mother's best friend, Susannah and her two sons, Jeremiah and Conrad at a beach house. For as long as she can remember, Belly has been in love with Conrad, the older of the two and Jeremiah has always been her best friend. Conrad is the bad boy. He's tall, has dark hair, and this summer he is constantly in his room when he isn't busy smoking or getting drunk. Another difference this summer is Jeremiah is acting awkward around Belly and she, stupidly, can't figure out why. Nothing really happens until Belly gets a boyfriend named Cam and tension builds in her relationships with both Conrad and Jeremiah. Secrets start to reveal themselves from all of the characters including Conrad and Jeremiah's mom, Susannah. Jeremiah and Belly eventually end up dating and have some highs and lows like any relationship does. But is Jeremiah who Belly ends up with at the end of the trilogy?

Rationale: I chose this book because it is a coming of age novel and I think it is a great book for teen girls to relate to. Belly is a girl who is dealing with secrets, a love triangle, and just figuring out her feelings in general. I think girls who are between, maybe 12-18 would relate best to this book. Belly herself is 16 in the first book. 12-18 is a general age for girls to start dating, figuring out what they aren't looking for in relationships, figuring out who they are as individuals. And even though figuring out these types of things go beyond the age of 18, I feel like the range of 12-18 is where that process starts. I feel like this book could be important for teen girls because of how relatable it is with what Belly goes through as a teen girl herself. Boys could read this book too, heck, even my 12-year-old brother wants to read it, but I think girls would better relate to it because it follows the story of a teenage girl and her summers that are filled with romance, heartbreak, confusion and everything that seems to come with being a girl. 

Teaching Ideas: I personally would not teach this in a classroom just because it seems more like a book someone would read for pleasure and not for a class. However, if I were to teach it, I would maybe do a lesson on themes and see what kinds of themes my students could see throughout the book. Themes like friendship, love and moving on are themes that could be talked about in this book. Or, perhaps a lesson on conflicts. Internal and external conflicts are both very apparent in this story and students could find specific quotes and explain how it is either internal or external. 

Challenges: A challenge that could arise with using this book is parents feeling like underage drinking and smoking are being promoted. There will be challenges with at least one parent I'm sure, but it is not that the book is promoting it. In fact, if they would actually read the book, it shows how much of a negative affect drinking and smoking have on the character that does it. If anything, this book should show the students the dangers of drinking and smoking and the affect it could have on your emotions. However, I would definitely try my best to have a meeting and talk with the parent(s) before they wanted to take it straight the administrators. I would like to have a chance to explain my perspective, listen in person to what the parent has to say and see if we could come up with some kind of compromise for their child. I really enjoyed this book, and I think most teen girls would, too. It really is a PG written story and it was very fun to read. It's always nice to be taken into someone else's world to escape your own. Even better if you can relate to something a character is going through. 

edTPA Guidelines and Good Choices

Not gonna lie. This was A LOT of information to take in and this is probably going to be a shorter post because of that. I don't really know what to say besides that I'm glad that this is one of our reading assignments because I had no idea what the edTPA entailed. I even said it wrong in class one day because I said the edTPA instead of saying the TPA lesson plans for the unit plan we are working on. I had no idea that the edTPA was an actual assessment, I always thought the TPA lesson plans and edTPA were the same thing. But, the TPA is just the formatting we are learning because it's the format used on the assessment we will take to show that we can create a formal lesson plan. All of the information from the "Making Good Choices" one was awesome because it tells you the good choices to make during the assessment. It also says there's a handbook we will be given? Didn't know the handbook was even a thing, but I'm eager to start reading it so I can be fully prepared to take the edTPA assessment! How and/or when do we even get the handbook for that? I read there's more than one and you need it for your content area, so do we get them in a future class? Is it something we can buy ourselves? Is it given to us only when we have paid to take the edTPA? So. Many. Questions...

Social Justice

https://blog.ed.gov/2011/08/education-is-social-justice/

I didn't really know where to start with looking for social justice and why it's important in the classroom. I came across this blog and the title is "Education is Social Justice." The title caught my attention right away because I was only thinking of finding things that talk about what social justice is and why it's important in our classrooms; however, this blog states that education is social justice in itself and I thought it was very intriguing. It starts off with a quote from 2009 by Secretary Arne Duncan, "I believe that education is the civil rights issue of our generation. And if you care about promoting opportunity and reducing inequality, the classroom is the place to start. Great teaching is about so much more than education; it is a daily fight for social justice."

The blog explains that social justice is a collective goal to protect the dignity of human beings while maintaining core pillars of equality and solidarity. I agree that if we want to protect equality and solidarity, it starts in the classroom. Us, as teachers, need to implement equality in our classrooms to make sure our kids feel safe in the environment that we are creating. School is the place where kids go to get away from their home lives because many of their home lives aren't good. Hopefully I can create a safe space in my future classroom where everyone can feel equal and free to speak as they wish or come to me with whatever is acting as a weight on their shoulders.

Pop Culture

I don't remember much about pop culture or being taught it when I was in high school. All I can really remember is one day during my 11th grade English class, my teacher had us read lyrics from songs that were popular at the time. She had us try to analyze what we read like analyzing a poem. Then, she had us analyze it again while we listened to the song because when people are singing the lyrics, you can feel what they are feeling by the way they sing. You can tell whether they feel angry, sad, happy or excited. It was one of my favorite days that year because it was fun. I think pop culture is important to bring into the classroom because it's another way to make learning fun for students.

I like the way this article used a couple different projects to explain why pop culture is important for students in secondary education. The article gives a quote directly from the student report from the hip-hop project. The students who conducted the project said that it is important to understand the world you live in, your ideology changed. When your ideology changes, your actions will change and then it is possible to change the world you live in. I personally think it's a stretch to say that you'll change the world you live in by changing your ideology, but I don't think it's impossible. I just think that someone has to be motivated to try to make changes in their world. Just because someone's eyes are opened and their views change, doesn't mean that they will do anything about it around them. It's one thing to be sympathetic, but another to be active.

I want to use pop culture in my classroom, but I want to use it to make learning more fun for my kids. I don't want them thinking because they learn something new, that they are obligated to do something about the way that they feel. If so, that's great, but my main objective is to make sure my students are learning and having fun while doing so.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

I had a hard time with "banking education" because the article made it sound like students are just objects that we give information to. The article made students lifeless and I honestly felt very uncomfortable reading it because I strongly disagree with the "attitudes and practices" of oppressive society. Part of the article, which I placed below, is everything that shouldn't be part of how teaching and learning between teacher and student should be:

• the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
• the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
• the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
• the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly;
• the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
• the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
• the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
• the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
• the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
• the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.

I never want my students to feel like I am all knowledgeable because I do not know everything. I want them to understand that I am just as much of a human as they are. I'm going to make mistakes that they will hopefully correct me on. I will learn from my students just as they will learn from me. It's not just me feeding them information for them to write down, memorize and repeat. I'm not trying to create robots, I want to help my kiddos grow into adults, and have actual conversations with me about what we are talking about in class. There will be days when I have to talk at them when learning a concept, but I want them to feel free to ask questions, speak up when they don't understand because that's what learning is. I believe learning should be a conversation or discussion about things that are being taught because not everyone will understand the teacher right away. 

I don't want to "oppress" my students. I want them to be involved with their learning because it's THEIR learning experience. I want them to question me if they feel like something I said wasn't right, I want them to be part of the decisions I make when it's appropriate and I want them to have fun in my classroom.