Learning Letter

1. Reflect on the work you’ve completed in the course (book talks, unit plans, etc.)

Overall, the most valuable aspect of this course for me was the breadth of material that we covered and the diversity of the work we did. Completing readings, book talks, the unit plan, and blog posts gave me an opportunity to engage the material from a variety of approaches. This was an important exercise as it relates to teaching, since as a teacher I will need to approach lessons from different angles to fit the needs of different students.

2. Reflect on the theories and concepts we explored in readings and discussions.

I think the most impactful and thought provoking reading that we discussed was Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This reading was impactful because it presents a paradigm shift in the approach to education. Rather than thinking of teachers as the holders of knowledge who are responsible for bestowing that knowledge on students, Pedagogy of the Oppressed presents teachers and students as co-discoverers of knowledge. This shift alters the role and responsibility of students in a way that empowers them and makes learning their responsibility.

3. Reflect on how you think your participation in this course has influenced your thinking about yourself as a teacher

I think this class taught me to be more student focused. As someone who is training to be a teacher, it’s easy to get caught up in discovering my own strengths, preferences, and approaches, but it’s important to remember that ultimately teaching is not about me. I need to know my students to a degree that allows me to teach the way that they need me to teach.

Edgar Allan Poe

For my Edgar Allan Poe selections, I read "The Pit and The  Pendulum" and "The Masque of the Red Death". I selected these stories because they are both commonly included in secondary education curriculum. I also selected these because they are some of my favorite Edgar Allan Poe stories to analyze. These texts are probably appropriate for Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers but "The Masque of the Red Death" might be best used in High School simply because the language is a little more complex.

Both of these texts are probably best for teaching close reading skills in the classroom. These aren't necessarily the first stories I would think to recommend to a student who's looking for an enjoyable Young Adult read, but they offer plenty of opportunity for analysis, character breakdowns, theme exploration, etc. These stories are best engaged in the context of discussion so that students can make meaning in a discursive context.

Some challenges with these stories are the generally tense and violent nature of them. Psychological torture is a persistent theme throughout "The Pit and the Pendulum" and both narratives deal heavily with the prevalence and inescapability of death. I doubt administrators would take issue with these texts, but parents and students alike could be disturbed by them; they are intentionally disturbing stories after all.

Book Talk: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Description of the Text

The year is 2044 and in general, Wade Watts’ life sucks. He’s poor, his parents both died a few years back, and he currently lives in “the stacks” with his aunt, who only keeps him around for the food vouchers she gets for being his caretaker. The stacks are a vertical trailer park/ghetto/slum outside of the city where people too poor to live in the city congregated after the economic crash and the energy crisis. Crime, poverty, and danger are prevalent features of life in the stacks. But Wade doesn’t spend most of his conscious time there anyways. He, along with the vast majority of people across the globe, spends most of his time jacked in to the OASIS, a virtual, massively multiplayer online reality. Unlike in the real world, in the OASIS the opportunities are endless, especially since the death of James Halliday. Halliday was the eccentric, 80s obsessed creator of the OASIS. Notoriously reclusive (and rich beyond imagination due to the success of the OASIS), Halliday had no relations on which to confer his nearly limitless fortune when he died. Instead, he devised a hunt. Initiated by a video that was released upon his death, Halliday explains that his fortune is up for grabs. He relates his first experience of finding an “easter egg” within a video game, a hidden item left by a game designer without the knowledge of the publisher to be discovered by gamers. He explains that he too has hidden an “easter egg” within the OASIS, and the first person to find it will be entitled to his entire estate. As the video ends, a score-board appears to track progress toward discovering the egg. Initial response to the video was madness. Following a handful of clues left by Halliday, the entire world joins the hunt. But weeks, then months, then years passed without any news of progress. The score-board remains unchanged. Eventually, many people lose interest in hunting for the egg, writing it off as an impossible and cruel final trick by the game designer. But Wade is not one of those people. The hunt for the egg consumes him, until one day, his name shows up on the score-board and the hunt is on.

Why I chose this text

I honestly chose this text primarily because I like it and I think it’s a text that a variety of students would enjoy as well. It would be a great book for students who aren’t that into reading but who do enjoy video games and/or (80s) pop culture. While the text is simple and fun, it also does pose some bigger questions related to modern man’s dependence on technology. The story and characters are fun and engaging, the difficulty is minimal, and for these reasons the text is very approachable. This text could be appropriate for middle or high school students but would probably be more relatable to those of a high school age simply because most of the characters are closer to that age group.  

Teaching Ideas

This book would probably be best for a lit circle or as a recommendation to specific students who are looking for a fun book to read. It could however also be used within a curriculum. The book highlights both the benefits and drawbacks of video games/technology and creates an opportunity for students to engage with the argument. Students could write an argumentative analysis of where they believe the text lands in this dichotomy and use evidence from the text to back their position (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.1). The character of Wade Watts also undergoes quite a bit of development over the course of the text, which is a great opportunity for students to do an analysis of how his character develops over the course of the text (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3).

Challenges and Responses of Students, Administrators, and Parents

Ready Player One is a text with pretty minimal challenges. The text might be less meaningful to someone who has never played video games before, but the story is still quite interesting even without the video game lore and references. There’s the occasional curse word here and there, some slight but inexplicit drug references, and a couple of sexual innuendos relatively common to YA fiction. I don’t imagine that students or administrators would have much of a problem with the text, and it would probably be rare for parents to take issue with it either. I could only really see a parent taking issue with the text if they have a problem with the idea of video games in general, but again, this is going to be very much the exception to the rule.

Extra Thoughts…

This is a book that I plan to keep on the shelf of my classroom especially for those students who don’t really like reading but do enjoy video games. Sometimes it’s a major win to simply find a piece of literature that a kid will actually read, and Ready Player One might be an exceptionally readable text for those students. There is a movie (it’s okay). This text might also be an interesting link to opening up the possibility of reading video game stories as narratives.

Into the Wild

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer was an inspiring and harrowing read.

I think this text would be appropriate for a high school or a middle school audience. The text is not a particularly difficult read and while it does handle subjects like death, sexuality, homelessness and vagrancy, nothing in the book seems to be outside of a middle schooler’s ability to handle with support.

I could see this book being used in a book talk/lit circle, but I also see why it has earned a spot as a common part of curriculum. The way that this text interacts with American literature and American ideology is a great way to highlight themes that emerge across American literature. The frequent references to transcendental writers such as Thoreau and Hawthorne and the impact that literature itself had on the life of Chris McCandless are an excellent way to have students make connections to classic literature.

Challenges with Into the Wild are mostly ideological. I don’t think students or administrators would have issues with the text, but I could see parents being upset that the text romanticizes vagrancy. Ideologically, this could be one of the most dangerous texts we’ve dealt with thus far, simply because it offers a tantalizing perspective of a relatively dangerous and socially unacceptable lifestyle. Of everyone involved, parents might be the most opposed to the use of this text.

Personally, I really enjoyed the story of this book. The way it challenges the boundaries of social convention is refreshing and exciting. I also appreciated the impact of literature on the life of Chris McCandless throughout the story. I can definitely see myself sharing this book with my students in the future.

The Round House

The Round House by Louise Erdrich was an excellent read, though not without its challenges.

I think this text would be appropriate for a high school audience. The depth to which issues of rape, sexuality, violence, and emotional trauma are addressed in the book might make it too difficult to teach to a middle school audience. Aside from these issues, the difficulty of the text is mostly found in its informal style and shouldn’t be too difficult for high schoolers to approach. As this is a coming of age story, its themes should be accessible to a high school audience.

I could see this text being used both within a lit circle/book talk setting as well as being explicitly taught in the classroom. The Round House offers ample opportunity for analysis of linguistic choice and its impact on tone (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4). Students could analyze the impact that casual language, simple sentences and short paragraphs have on the tone during specific occurrences in the story. The narrative also interacts with time in a way that warrants analysis (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5). Students could analyze the impact that the retroactive retelling of the story has on the narrative or analyze the interjection of “Linda’s Story” as another narrator takes over the narrative.

This book comes with some difficulties that are obvious and some that aren’t quite as obvious. Content-wise, teachers who want to teach this novel will need to be careful with the issues of rape, violence, trauma, racism, and sexuality that occur within. Some students may struggle with these topics, some parents may push back, and administrators who haven’t heard of the novel will likely need an explanation before it is incorporated.  Structurally, the challenge of this novel is mostly found in its casual style (which is ironic for a novel that handles such serious issues). The novel doesn’t make use of quotation marks which can make fluency a little challenging at times (also a stylistic choice which warrants analysis). The first person narration also leaves parts of the story feeling ambiguous (another stylistic choice which warrants analysis). None of these challenges are crippling however, and most of them are actually further reasons why this novel would be great for teaching in the classroom. Nonetheless these challenges do need to be addressed and handled carefully by any teacher who wants to teach this text.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It by Cris Tovani

My first reaction as I was reading Cris Tovani’s I Read It, But I Don’t Get It was to feel incredibly privileged. My experiences related to reading and comprehension were quite different from the ones described in the book. I grew up with parents who read to me, read with me, and encouraged me to be reading on my own frequently. My mom is also a primary school reading interventionist so her specialty is literally helping young kids develop the skills related to decoding, fluency, and comprehension. As a result, it has been a rare experience for me to encounter literature that I felt like I couldn’t make meaning from. It’s not that there weren’t times when I struggled to understand a text or to make meaning, but from a young age I was given the skills to be able to overcome my confusion with a text, and for that I’m incredibly grateful.

As I was reading and looking through some of the appendix materials, I recalled times in my schooling experience when my teachers used approaches similar to the worksheet found on page 129 (related to identifying places in a text where a reader is stuck). I’m sure these assignments were incredibly helpful for some students, but I honestly remember struggling with these assignments a lot, simply because I struggled to identify places where I had been stuck in a reading. Looking back, I’m sure there were places in the readings where I had to reread something to make sure I understood it, or where making a connection to my personal experience helped me to understand a confusing part, or where by continuing to read past a difficult section I was able to figure out what was going on. But to me this didn’t feel like getting stuck, it just felt like reading (a point that Tovani makes), and so with worksheets like the one that focuses on sticking points, I found myself making stuff up just to get it done.

The second reaction I had to the reading was to realize what an incredible resource this book could be to me, especially since it offers perspectives and experiences that aren’t primarily similar to my own. As a teacher, I recognize that an area of difficulty for me could be helping students who “read it but don’t get it”, simply because that is not an experience that is super common to me. It was helpful that the text broke down the process of constructing meaning from reading because it helped me to examine the process that I go through without thinking about it.

Overall, I’m excited to use this book as a resource in my classroom.

EWU's TPA guidelines and edTPA Making Good Choices

I was working on a draft of the ‘edTPA Lesson Plan’ portion of my final unit plan project today and found myself becoming increasingly frustrated. I was taking a stab at each of the sections but kept feeling like I didn’t know exactly what belonged in each box. After lamenting my difficulty finding any succinct guide in a quick online search, I decided to take a break from the lesson plan for the time being and work on my blog post assignment for tomorrow, and boy am I glad I did!

The readings for this blog post were pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Up until now, I haven’t received any direct instruction on the edTPA format, and I found that while comprehensive, on its own the lesson plan format isn’t necessarily intuitive. I know what “Lesson Connections” means, but it’s difficult to remember everything that that one section can contain when the only prompt is “Lesson Connections”. 

The “EWU edTPA Lesson Plan Guidelines” article was particularly helpful in that it succinctly and clearly laid out each section of the edTPA Lesson Plan document and asked questions to direct how one might fill out each. Reading it was kind of like taking a quick look at each section under a microscope: the details really started to become more visible. When I take another crack at my edTPA Lesson Plan draft I plan to make direct use of this article.

The “edTPA Making Good Choices” article was also helpful but in a different way. It was not as succinct or easily applicable as EWU’s Guidelines but it did give a better glimpse at the big picture of the edTPA. It also gave some better descriptions of the more nuanced parts of the edTPA, like the descriptions of how and what kinds of research to include in the “How specific do my references to research and theory have to be?” section. This article might be more difficult to apply directly to the lesson that I am planning right now, but it will be a great reference to turn to when I feel like the EWU Guidelines aren’t quite enough.