I really enjoyed reading these two chapters. There were many terms I recognized, and many teaching theories and concepts that I was not aware of. As for the structure of the text, I really find the author's personal experiences to be the most interesting parts that I read. I have already taken many eduction and English courses and have learned a lot of terminology and theory, but the personal experiences from the experienced educator was something that I don't get to read a lot of.
I agreed with the main concepts of each one of her experiences. I especially liked the stories of Nate and Dr. Comer in chapter 1. Nate seems like the type of student that thinks he has teaching all planned out perfectly, but the teacher provides nice insight into how this is only his first phase on planning. He didn't have a purpose for teaching what he had planned other than the fact that it fit the curriculum. While it is important to teach what is required, it is also important to understand who you are as a teacher and even more important to have reasons for what you teach. Otherwise, why are you even teaching it? If you can't event think of a good reason to teach the information, then why would you teach it in the first place? It is part of a teacher's job to create their identity and decide who they want to be as teachers, and this is what the author was trying to explain.
Dr. Comer's idea was also very informative. It made me think more about my major as a profession. Oftentimes teachers do ask students to just write the paper and turn it in to them the next day. We don't stop to think, "Hey, maybe these students don't necessarily know what I am expecting or have not been provided with skills to do so". If we as teachers do not notice and cater to these issues then what separates us from anybody else? Where do our expertise lie? Can't anyone who likes books just assign a student an essay and grade it? Thus, we need to not only have the expertise, but we need to teach it as a process, not a product.
I also really enjoyed the practice exercises where you had to grade and rank scenarios. Not only did it act as a nice breather from the theory parts of the chapter, but it also made me realize what being a teacher means. It's not just about inspiring, mastering, or knowing the steps, vocabulary, and terminology. It's all of those things combined and more. These were great scenarios to try out on my own. I liked even more the explanations that the book gave for each scenario because it helped me think through each one on a more complex level.
While I oftentimes find visual figures in texts annoying and redundant, I liked a particular figure that was presented. Figure 1.1 Learning Centered Teaching was the most simple and most helpful of all of the figures. It demonstrates how teaching and learning should work together in order to show and create progress. It makes sense that the teacher would first do the task while the students watch, then rely on the students to help me finish the task, then help the students to finish their task, and then to observe them finish the task on their own. This reminded me of my math courses a lot. We would always watch the teacher present the problem and the solution, then she would provide examples and have us tell her what to do next in each problem, then she would give us practice problems and walk around the room helping us, and then she would assign problems for homework to do individually where she would look at them and see if there was progress. If we had issues with the problem she would go over that problem and explain it and then repeat the process until we understood it. As a student I did not know that this was a strategy, but, as I am now an aspiring English teacher, I can recognize these strategies and internalize them for the future.
On top of this idea, I also really loved the use of examples and metaphors in these chapters. I had always known what scaffolding was because I had to memorize the terminology for CEP315, but I never knew why it was called scaffolding. The text explained this metaphor through images and it made much more sense to me. I also liked the metaphor of teaching as coaching. A coach doesn't just throw the ball to the players and tell them to do what they want to. The coach teaches them plays, possible outcomes and how to prepare for them, the rules, technique, etc. Only then does he let the students play the game--after they are given the ability to take control and responsibility of their actions. Then the outcome of the game determines what the coach does next. Both of these examples were great ways for me to comprehend what the chapters were getting at.
Another thing that stood out to me in these chapters was the poem that was written by Jack. It was, again, a good break from some of the more heavy material and helped make one of the biggest concepts of the chapter stand out: providing students with the means to do what you want them to. It was interesting because I think Jack is a lot like my younger brother. He has never liked reading and has always made fun of me for wanting to have my own library in my house one day. He always asks me "How can you read for three hours straight?" and "Why do you want to be an English teacher of all subjects? It's so boring!" I don't think he has read more than 2 books that have ever been assigned to him for school. When I think more about this situation in terms of what I read in the text, I remember that he had to stay back a year in kindergarten because his reading skills were below average. Today, if I ask him to read something to me, he can read it, but he reads very slowly and has a hard time pronouncing longer and more complicated words. He used to love reading the Diary of a Whimpy Kid series when he was younger because they were at his particular level of reading, but now he does not find any literature enjoyable, and I think this is because he finds higher levels of writing hard to comprehend and does not have the patience to read something foreign (like the Wilhelm's example of the students reading Shakespeare). I think the issue here is exactly what was indicated in the text: he was taught some reading skills in elementary school and then, when he went on to middle and high school, teachers expected him to already know how to read an advanced classic novel and how to write a 5-paragraph essay with proper documentation analyzing this novel. The truth is that my brother can barely fill a page every time he writes an essay. This is not to say at all that my brother is incapable of doing so or is "too stupid" to accomplish this task, rather that he has not been given the tools and the skills to do so by his teachers, and this deeply saddens me. Due to this issue, my brother is a junior in high school and will probably never know the joy of reading a book. I'm glad that this text book brought this pressing issue up, but this is a huge issue that needs to be approached not just in text books but also in real life.
Overall, I found these chapters to be very interesting and useful. I loved the mixture of experience, theory, poetry, examples, visual figures, and practice scenarios in the book. All were very helpful in given me information towards my future as a teacher. More importantly, I was able to connect my life to the text, and that was probably the most useful thing that I took from these chapters all together.
No comments:
Post a Comment