Memory/list poem

A typical college town house. Really. We always walk in and joke “it smells like a frat”,
but it really, disgustingly does. On weekend nights it is turned into crowded screaming loud square footage, blaring music, with beer pong tables, and beer bongs. Weekend days it is turned into a couch potato paradise, with sunshine shining, trying to come in the window that we have closed so not to blind us. Besides the repulsive sight of used cups, beer cans and blood everywhere from the typical fight club scene, that makes it look like a murderer once lived here, it is a hermits paradise. Monday comes, during the week, it is a gathering room, a room of peace from the outside world, where all the roommates have a chance to sit down after a long day of stressful classes, drama with the significant other, and just talk and relax with each other, planning our next big event for the weekend. The room is filled with people coming and going, laughter from events that happened over the weekend, and sometimes tension, people yelling. The big never-used fireplace, expensive picture frames and big screen tv, makes the somewhat spacious room look somewhat liveable and homey, but the coaches that thousands of friends have slept on, probably caked with puke or god-knows-what ruins the room. If video taped throughout a typical day, it would look like a bees nest, everyone coming and going, maybe stopping to talk, or yell up the stairs, and then settling down together at night.

Writing for Communities Discussion.

Linda was NOTHING like I pictured her... she seemed sooooo preachy to me. I really expected her to be this liberal, loud, fun women. I thought what she had to say was amazing and great, but while she was talking, I was trying to picture her actually doing all these things she was saying, or even the things she described in her book, and I just couldn't see it... I'm going to blame it on the fact that she was in New York right before us and we were probably totally boring compared to that group.

It was so interesting though to be almost MADE to discuss things though... in a lecture!! I've never had that happen and I think it almost worked to some point, and made us talk to people that we didn't know... creating a community within a LECTURE, which I have almost never have, besides once with Dr. Al, who is way smarter than I think I could ever be. Some of the questions really stumped me though, and it seemed like that kind of seating really didn't encourage us to talk to more than just the people next to us, and some people who sat on the end, like me, could only talk to mainly one person! I never really thought that sitting in circled tables (in groups) was a great idea, but you really can't have any discussion when you are in lecture rows like most classes have.

It was also nice to hear Dr. Webb speak of her and how much he respects her. I think one of our "own" speaking of her in such high regards really does something to a lecture hall, especially before she has even spoken.

Our group... COMMUNITY!!

I thought it was incredibly interesting the things that people had to say about their lives growing up. It was definitely a subject that almost everyone in the class had something to say about, especially about Western. In our plans, we never even thought to bring up Western, but wanted to more focus on Kalamazoo as a community (bringing up the different Harding’s, like Todd suggested, and the different side of the train tracks ideas). But really, Western was a great way to start a conversation about university towns, and better, our university compared to others. It brought up great questions about our community such as: why doesn’t Western try to involve students more in Kalamazoo life?? Students’ love staying in the summer just because of the great activities that Kalamazoo offers during the summers. I thought it was a great discussion that made us all think out loud about our own university and how it is and isn’t a community. Maybe to make our lesson go along with what we ended up discussing, we could have used pictures from Western comparing to Kalamazoo, again maybe focusing on the different side of the train tracks idea, almost like Western as the higher class compared to the city that it originated in... ironic.

I thought our game went sooo well. I felt like everyone had fun and really realized the pros and cons of the game, and how they could change it for almost any idea that they want to portray in their classrooms. While I understand that people were concerned about the stereotypes, I also thought the pro's weighed out the cons with dealing with the stereotypes... people realized why certain communities do end up the way they are, and even some of my group members were like "ohhhhhhh" in realization of each group. While we knew what it was like on paper, we didn't imagine, besides Brett who had already experienced in, that students would really identify with their character and really get into it.

Multi-genre group

I thought it was a great idea to get into GROUPS to do these multi-genre pieces, not only did we come up with an amazingly interesting topic (MTV REALWORLD!!) but it was a great way to make sure that everyone could contribute in a way that they maybe exceeded the most (drawings, poems, stories, etc) or even trying something different, but everyone had to research in some way. This could've been a downfall, since researching seperatly on a group project can become tricky especially since everyone uses the internet now.

Something I didn't expect to like: handouts. Sadly to say, I don't read a lot of handouts, especially if they are all in a big book like the group did. But everything they gave out really helped me understand when and how to use a multi-genre project, what the pro's and cons are, and what almost a dictionary definition of what it is and can be used in it. I think I would really use these, and am planning on keeping them, hopefully until I teach.

Christensen ch 8

I never experienced tracking in my high school and so this chapter was pretty interesting to me. If I wanted to take an AP course, that was my choice. We didn't need to take another class or get a certain score or get a recomendation from another teacher to get into any class at all. I never thought I was that great in English until I decided to take an AP english class. I really don't know why I ever thought I could take the class, because in a way, only certain students took AP classes and I was one of those students that wasnt exactly the greatest in the school. I did notice, just as Christensen said, that the students who have not succeeded were the most creative.

It was interesting that she talks about teaching to untracked students and the activites that she has done with them. The ones that that had no real self confidence in the subject, or were the "bad readers". Motivating these students to WANT to read will probably be the hardest thing, but making reading come to life, such as using the tea party, could help. I think the hardest thing for me will be answering "WHY!? why do I have to read? I hate it.." its hard to share motivation with other students that just have been beaten down with "you're just not good at reading and writing."

ch 5-7 Gilmore

Again, another checklist that Gilmore gives us that we can actually use in our classes. I loved "the ten or twenty or thirty" minute revision checklist. It gave all the things that you should be doing in revision, but in a way (from 1-whatever) to do step by step, and in a logical way. Obviously proofreading would be first, with strengthening your thesis statement almost right after it. These are definetly the first things you look to do when you are revising. I guess never thought to make it so simple for students as to give them a checklist to revise. If I am remembering correctly, only one teacher, a professor here actually, has ever given me a revising checklist of some sort. All the others just give us requirements for the paper and say "go to town."

I thought it was also great how he didn't just give us the checklist but explained each number/part to the readers, explaining why itwas important, what to say to your students, and in terms of his example at the begining of the chapter, AP classes.

I thought it was also interesting the "what DOESN'T count" sort of checklist after he explains all this. That poor handwriting, poor spelling, scribbles, and organization issues shouldn't count against the student. Pretty ironic to me since that is all I feel my mentor teacher is trying to teach his middle school students right now, and yea I do disagree with the poor handwriting. I got marked down for having handwriting like an 8 year old boy all my life because of the fact that nobody could read it. well I could read it, but that is the same reason why when I am grading papers for these middle school students, I don't know if they actually answered the question or not because of the fact I can't read their handwriting. I guess the difference in this is that these are middle school students and i'm assuming Gilmore is speaking of just high schoolers.

Are most of these books for high schoolers? I wish we had some books talking about middle schoolers... since I am sadly stuck in a 6th grade classroom and seem to have not many ideas for students that can't make a complete sentence.

On to more gilmore though, I also liked how he gave yet ANOTHER checklist for revising students timed essays. You would have never thought that it would be different grading students timed esays, but it seemingly is and he points this out. I liked how he wants the students to go back over their own riding though, rather than you just grading it giving it back to them and them crying about their horrible grade. Why not make this a learning experience and do read arounds (which he calls a pass-around activitiy) which is almost the same as the read around. More checklists from poetry to creative writing come up and I loved all of them. I would really come back to this if I was running out of ideas for revision. He does come up with some really cool thigns for revision!

Gilmore 4

The three categories of activity I really found helpful in the begining, starting off the chapter with how he picks and chooses techniques and where they fall. I found this chapter extremely helpful because of the LIST of revision strategies that he uses, the descriptions, what they do, why they work and such. I really liked a lot of the strategies and could definetly see myself looking back to this chapter to imitate a strategy in one of my own classes.

While Christensen and the others we have read have had really good ideas of what to do in classes, and I would use a lot of their ideas in my classes also, they don't do it in this format. A name of a chapter of what its on, and then a LIST, each activity in bold, of how do, for example revise. Instead of having to make all these pages up with post its and other such things (highlighters and pens are hard to come back to and find exactly obviously), you can just go back to the chapter and quickly find what you are looking for, and use it in class intead of reading all night the chapter you remember the activity was in, and then not having any time at all for other things.

Ch 3 Gilmore

Its pretty funny that I already do abreviations when I revise others writing or even proofread my own stuff. I don't use that many but the one I do use, that could even not be considered an abbreviation is a ? I write it everywhere... I'll write it when I don't have any clue what your talking about, when theres no transition, or when I will write a alternative sentence or word into the space I marked or crossed off. I had to explain to my last victim, who wasn't an english major, what the questions marks meant. I realized I wasn't specfici just as Gilmore claims in the first couple paragraphs of chapter three.
I also liked that he says you really do need an explain of what "good work" looks like. Not something professional, but maybe, just like he did, an example of a former students work that is "accessible, familiar and it works" as he says. Marking what works and discussing why it works will give students examples of what they can do and can't, especially on a college essay.
I loved instead of having just a couple students answer, either sharing in pairs or every student reading a passage outloud and instead of someone else raising their hand like gilmore suggests, that same person could add something FIRST, so that everyone has a chance to consider this example of writing.

Ch 6 in Christensen

I thought the idea of a research paper on immigrants sounds like it could be a great to use in the classroom. But one thing, it didn't sound like she really pushed them to do something on their own culture. i think this would make the students more interested in the subject, that they could talk to their grandparents, great aunts, their parents, or even share personal accounts of visiting their homeland or even immigrating themselves.
I liked how that she split up her time very well for research, not only to research in the library but to PLAN what you were going to do in the library. It was all planned very well, that she was doing an example of what they should be doing half the period than giving them time to plan things the other half or research themselves. I also thought it was great that they had to teach the class and write a lesson (which I feel like most students would just do a powerpoint to make it easier).
I liked how she did a whole section on portfolios. For higher level students that are close to reaching college and their college essays, i thought it was gerat that a huge point of hers to make these writing portfolios was for the disadvantage kids who were not so good at testing well, but could show their intelligence in their portfolio.

Gilmore Ch 1 and 2

The first chapter just blew me away. I think it was mostly because he didn't write like Christensen and Jago at all, in a professional tone. While Gilmore definelty writes like he knows a lot about teaching, its not in the same way as Christensen and Jago. I tend to skip over a lot of adjetives and other kinda useless words to me that don't exactly point out the... well point. It seems that in Christensen and Jago, I was doing just that: skipping over a lot of stuff, not meaning to of course, but it wa sbecause it was how it was written. Gilmore does have useless words also, but he writes very similar to me. An english teacher here once said that I write "chatty", and I think thats exactly what I do. I write like I talk. While I have gotten a lot better about doing this, I still try to write as I talk, maybe using the words thesauris a lot more though.

I really liked how many of his sentences were in bold. Most of them were really great quotes about revising and teaching, and very to the point such as "The writing teacher's job, ultimatetly, is not to revise for students but to teach students how to revise for themselves." Plain and simple. I also liked his goals for students, they were simple, yet very important in all writing.

In chapter 2 I really loves his upside down triangle, or as he calls it a ice cream cone or an alien head/ the revision cone. I feel like I could actualy use this in my apporach to teaching and if I did show this to my students, I think that they would understand more what to focus on when revising.

Remember Me

Remember Me

Stubborn Aunt Nini,
Not your real name of course,
It’s more like an cicilian slur,
Than a little old women,
Baking Christmas cookies all day
Just to send them in literal trunk loads
To the whole family,
Around the country.
Squeezing cheeks,
And smells of tomato and storage,
Hiding under your overgrown trees,
Or sledding down your driveway.
I’ll always have memories
Of Aunt Nini.

Italian Household. I am from poem.

I am from:

I am from a big drowsy Catholic church,
Haggard, old-as-time Wednesday night CCD scolding,
And squeezing cheeks godmothers.

I am from “elbows off the table”
A little too hard arm squeezes,
Deep voices of warning,
Winks of encouragement from across the soccer field.

I am from a yelling and screaming,
Typical American household, hiding upstairs,
Between “I’m staying at dads”,
Or “that is what mom said.”

I am from all day boiling
too-spicy-for-my-liking tomato sauce,
Aunt Joanies Italian wedding soup and oil and vinegar salads,
Comfort foods of spaghetti and meatballs.

I am from boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations,
Up and down the basement stairs,
Looking like santa threw up everywhere months before he even comes,
Saying “If you don’t believe, you wont receive.”

You can see it in my eyes,
The fear of my genes,
Alzheimers and heart disease.
The racism that brought my grandparents here to America
To give their own parents the finger and get married.

Christensen 5

I really did hate opening the book and finding out that this whole chapter had to be about poetry. I guess I knew it was coming... Christensen used poetry examples and activities throughout our whole book and we've been doing them in class, I just was hoping and wishing that there wouldnt be a whole entire chapter on them. A non-excited YAY. I guess its good to read and enjoy poetry, and write it of course, becuase like we've discussed, I dont want to teach my kids to hate poetry just because I dont enjoy writing it. I think the activities given have been great and that I would actually use them in my classes.
Beyond this, I loved the teaching of Martin Espada... that poetry can be about injustices and other htings than just nice and happy, or about yourself.
I really love the "remember me poems though", I think thats great to actually write about someone in the class. You obviously have to have a "community" estabilished already, but it defiently makes the student special, and makes everyone apretiate everyone. Nobody would feel left out, everyones included. I think it could make a class really feel connected and I think its a great idea.

CH 5 and 6 of Jago

It was quite nerve-racking reading what Jago had to say about students writing. It was hard to think that Jago could be and almost most definetly is right about teaching some students how to write well might not work at all for another group of students. Am I really going to need to think of a new way each year/semester how to teach this type of group how to write well? Blah. The beliefs she wrote down to "keep her focused" was pretty... well focused on good writing. I liked how at least, if anything else fails, and you start to get overwhelmed with having to find another way of teaching writing, that you can at least fall back to these 4 standards.
I also loved the idea of the 5-day plan. I liked a lot the letter to the parents/whomever at home, to get involved with a childs writing. I know that my parents never helped me with my writing, even though my mom went to college to be a teacher. I also liked the explanation behind the peer "response", not peer revision. I liked the sheet she gave the students, not focusing on the grammar as much as the content, did the main point get across the paper?
Ironically, in chapter 6 jago talks about how you cant give all the revising to the kids though/ you can just put them into groups and assume that they are going to teach themselves. i thought it was good to point out this extreme, because while studying to be a teacher we read/ discuss a lot of things, such as this idea of students learning from each other, but that we also have to remember that we must teach them also. I liked how she ends with writing about she still does write in red ink, and critique... I knew i was still going to do that. suck it up kids! she writes exaclty what i thought, that we're not saying ur (the student) is a bad person, just that your writing needs work... maybe i need to be more sensitive.

ch 4 of christensen

That first section of the chapter... I didn't get where she was going the WHOLE section. I mean, was she trying to say that it was wrong to tell children that they spoke incorrectly, or was she trying to say that they needed to know Standard English because of the "more powerful". I guess in the end she ends up saying both... which she points out really doesnt make sense. You have to teach your kids that what they are saying is wrong, that someone (pretty much richer people) have the power and that to get there you have to speak a certain way, even though they dont know who wrote these so called rules, and why they have to followed, just that they have to be. She ends the section on such a great note though... doesnt make sense, saying that her students wont feel like what her teacher made her feel like, but thoughout the section she tells how they are going to feel like how they grew up speaking was wrong, and that they have to change.
One of my teachers did something similar to the "tea party" christensen explains. I like both versions. My teacher, instead of a final exam told us that we could be one character we found most interesting in all the books that we read the entire semester, then sat down at tables and talked to each other, in character (and dressed as the character too) and have to have a conversation. She would tell us to switch tables a couple times during the hour. If we proved that we really knew the character well, then we would get an A. I thought it was really interesting because some people did end up choosing the same character to be, but they acted differently because the took the character as being different. The tea party i feel is someone similar, a really fun way to see if the students got what they were reading and connected with the characters.

Jago Ch 3 and 4

Ironically, ch 3 was what my education class and I talked about last week, taking up almost the entire class period. The subject of, how do you get a student to be comfortable writing and speaking freely in your class if you might have to report one of htem at some point because of the laws teachers are binded to, of suicide and such in the schools. There really was no good answer we found, just taht we warned the students at the begining of the year that we might have to report them if there was any suspiscion, most likely we'd talk to htem first. But I think this chapter brings out a good point, htat just because some kids write about "bad" subjects such as suicide doesn't exactly mean they are thinking about it, and if htey are, it might help them through it because writing down your thoughts always seems to organize them and you can look at them from another perspective. I loved the girls narrative story though... i think it can hit home with most students and she wrote it well. Not only that, but there seemed to be a surprise ending. I like all his excersizes in this chapter too... the smell, the different characters. I think its a really good start to opening students minds up to writing in a narrative, totally different then your own.
ch 4 was interesting too. I liked seeing the exact criteria of a 4-1 scale of what a paper should include. While it is all up to the teacher, example, that a teacher in the ch gave a student a 3, just below being pushed into an AP course, because the teacher didnt think the student was ready.

Christensen ch 2

So i read this chapter for our praise poem but never blogged on it. Ya know, its sad. I grew up LOVING disney movies and cartoons, man, definetly the greatest... mostly I just loved the catchy songs. I still love musicals just for that.. well not just, but dfeinetly a plus. It was sad coming to college and taking many Womens Studies courses (another how many credits that would not go towards my major or minor... therefore the 5 years in college)showing the sexism andd racism in the cartoons. I dont exactly that it teaches them "how to act, live and dream" but i do think we all could say we want a "fairy tale" ending and would say that was Cinderella or some other of that sort. I liked that this was not only about cartoons, but about critiquing the media... showing that what is in tv or the movies arent always right.
Praise poems... I cant even imagine how hard that would have been in high school. I remember an english teaching in high school asking to write down things we liked about ourselves... and I'm pretty sure I only wrote down one thing, and that was that I was good at sports. Now thats pretty sad. Its not that I had extremely low self-esteem I just never looked at myself or my life and thought "now what is good about myself." Like it says, we really never were taught to do that, its "bragging."

Christensen ch 3

Ive noticed that I write my blog continuously throughout reading the chapter, while others write after reading the entire thing. I write what i feel about a certain part while others write about what they thought about the entire chapter as a whole.. maybe next time I will try this.
Anyways, I loved the paper on test taking. Test taking was never that big of a deal in my school... i mean yes, we all wanted good scores on the ACT, MEAP and SAT but none of us ever really got a low score. We all got MEAP scholarships and pretty average or better scores on the ACT and SAT. It sounds liek in this class that they hardly knew anything on the tests, and i never knew that what i would face at a school. I knew some schools would study for the MEAP, which was a joke test in my schools... but I guess I never realized I could be actually teaching at one of these schools that have to study for these tests.
Another reason to love the read around though. It made kids realize they werent the only one that felt "studid" after taking a test. I loved that she paired this activity with the book about Brigham, that testing started off as pretty much weeding out the non-whites or "elite/upper-class" or, the more your parents make, the better grade you'll get on the SAT... which i guess makes sense why my high school had not had any problems.
I think the forgiveness poem is SUCH a great idea, especially for kids in high school. My friends and I all pretty much hated our parents in high school... I think it would be a good way to "realize their loyalty" as Linda says, that even though your fighting with them every day, that they are human. Its one of hte ultimate things I learned in high school, and begining of college.
Again, she uses coloring to point out things in a writing. I also like how she made the students color their own writing and compare it to the example essay they first colored in, it shows them implicitly what they have to work on and what an essay "should" look like, or how they could go about writing an essay. I also liked her starting intros with questions or even conversation... It definetly gives a start to at least SOMETHING.
I also loved later how she took the students on field trips to colleges, and brought in former students showing that it could be done, and that fellow students at the same high school, or in the same position as themselves could do it. Its like pushing them towards college without lecturing them about it. And "accidently" writing a college essay... totally brilliant.

Jago's Chapter 2

I really loved how she used her own essay that she wrote in class. Not only did they use things such as crayons, which most high schoolers havent used since the 2nd grade, but she also made a couple good points to them: that essays can be something your actually interested about, and that sometimes you dont realize your thesis till the end, exploring the idea, which is exactly what she did. off topic, i liked her essay about dressing profesional. I never realized, but i agree. the teachers that did not seem put together (clothing wise) I hardly wanted to give respect to at all.
I thought using the newspaper as a resource was a great idea also as to pick out a topic that interests them/ have "intrinsic value", which is so important for a paper, without being too overwhelmed with just "picking a topic". Using the editorials as an exampl i thought was really interesting also, definetly urging students to read the newspaper more and what they can get out of tools they already have.
The prompts from the NAEP were very intersting and are definetly things i would use to encourage enjoyment of writing.

Jago's Chapter 1

Crazy enough, I have this problem sometimes also: sitting down to write a paper and just being so overwhelmed with it all, that I just can't start with just one topic, moreover, the introduction... i hate introductions ah. I thought Jago had a lot of good points though, that sometimes prompts are a little bit confusing for students. Making it one sentence, like she suggests makes so much more sense and must be way easier when writing a paper for students. Making a long prompt into a short one was definetly harder than I thought though, using her prompt 3 that she gave us to think about how to shorten and such... its difficult trying to get a whole paragraph of questions into one.
I really liked how she made it easier for a class to write an essay by having them freewrite in class and discuss in groups. Discussing in small groups would most definetly help each person develop a thesis or one idea to build on for their paper.

first chapter of christensen

It sounds horrible, but throughout the reading I kept thinking of all those cliche "inspirational movies" about the white teacher in an all black classroom that raised them up or helped them in some way or another, usually by teaching english. They all say "based on a true story" but I guess i didnt realize that i could definetly be teaching a class like that: surrounded by violence and hatred. I guess thats where the big importance of community comes in, which was repeated throughout the chapter. It was interesting reading that without a class feeling like a community, it pretty much didnt work.... which makes sense especially in a english class where students need to feel like they can talk about their feelings on the issue we're discussing.
I found more interesting that you could bring this community around with a common topic of violence... why would you want to do that. Such a negative subject... very sad for many people. I guess you have to start on negative topics rather than positive, kind of interesting that negative emotions can be brought out more than positive emotions.