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.