Blog #7 (FINAL BLOG)

This article has a lot of them same messages that we have talked about all semester such as “Some people see language issues as right or wrong: That’s it. No flexibility.” Which is something that I strongly believe; this course had really made me think hard about how I wanted to go about teaching English and language. [Using a semi colon because my first sentence was not a sentence that contained a subject and a verb therefore it was a fragment and using a semicolon didn’t fully end the sentence] After everything I have learned this semester I have come to a conclusion and a mindset that I want to go about as a teacher someday.

I want to really try to open my students mind and their hearts and I think that students will try more with grammar when they’re writing about things that they are passionate about. I know that I clearly will have to talk about grammar and teach them the different ways to use punctuation and the different aspects of grammar, which is really a hard thing to do without lecturing—which is something I am not exactly a fan of—[using dashes instead of parenthesis also known as parenthetical dashes, which happen to be my favorite way of punctuation] but obviously students have to be aware of something in order to use it.

Other than that I plan on using project in order to bring out the students minds and get them involved; something that my class did in high school (advanced communication- senior year, which is what I want to teach) we read the book “Glass Castle” the teacher defined the word glass castle after we had read the book—glass castle meant a place where you feel the most safe and comfortable— we were given a colorful piece of paper and told to either draw or take a picture of our safe place and describe it. I still remember mine and this activity was 2 years ago, I took a polaroid of my bedroom an wrote something basic because I wasn’t exactly sure where was my safe place because I felt safe and comfortable everywhere. When it came to presenting our Glass Castles a lot of students didn’t have it as easy as me, some colored pictures of their small rooms and explained how they have to take care of all their siblings and parents all while working 2 jobs and there was a place to debrief and relax. I like the idea of this project because no matter what culture or background you have, you are equally as able to do the project. This project was clearly not to correct peoples writing, considering we only had to write a brief paragraph, but it was to help people of all cultures and backgrounds relate to the text that we were reading.

That same teacher, for our final project, was to make a video with no words that conveyed a clear message. I absolutely loved this idea –and after coming to college and learning how to teach different cultures—saw how open this was to everyone. We are all passionate about something; whether it was like me who made an emotional video on boy bands breaking up, or like another student who made an inspiring video of amputees going through physical therapy and being able to play sports. The videos ranged from funny, to heartbreaking, but what I really appreciated about the activity was that we were allowed to research what WE as students enjoyed individually. Student are so much more excited to learn when they are able to talk about things that apply to them, and that’s why in the classroom I plan on having free range on assignments an let students write about things that they actually want to write about, and with that, I think they will try new things grammatically.  

Blog #6

As a teacher you never know the backgrounds of the students walking into your classroom—rich, poor, religious, etc. Teaching these different backgrounds can become extremely difficult when it comes to making sure that every student is getting the education that they require. There are many factors that go along with this such as; the teaching of Standard English is today’s education system, the different subject that students are required to learn about, and the different levels that students may be at—learning wise—compared to other students; these are all factors that can make or break how much a student is able to learn in the classroom.

In an article “Teaching Standard English: Who’s Standard?” by Linda M. Christensen, Christensen uses a personal example of when a teacher pointed her out in the middle of class to say the word “lawyer”; She proceeded to say the word “attorney” because with her language that’s the word that they used. The teacher “Delaney” let the whole class burst into laughter, Delaney never corrected Christensen but used her as an example as to why you cannot use your own home language in the classroom. Although Mrs. Delaney thought this was a brilliant idea, this entire essay is to prove opposite. Teaching Standard English is a really good thing, the author (Christensen) also states later in the article that she too continues to teach Standard English, or else she would feel as though she was cheating her students. Standard English is something that is used for professional writing, such as this essay that I’m writing right now. In a way it is good to have one common language that everyone is taught, but why limit it to that? As teacher we want our students to enjoy writing, after all, for many it’s therapeutic. In order for a student to enjoy writing and to really feel comfortable they have to be able to use a language that they are most familiar with, therefore using slang or using words from their own language can really make students write from the heart.

Growing up everyone learns about the same thing—whether you went to school in New York, or Washington state. There is nothing wrong with this considering it is good to all be on the same level as we enter college, but are we really teaching subject that are equally as challenging for each student? Each culture has their own set of ideals and rules that many teachers don’t understand. We read books that have predominantly white characters and are expected to write essays on things that many students have 0 background knowledge on. Examples from “TeacherVision.com” that can be very resourceful for teachers; “Appreciate and accommodate the similarities and differences among the students' cultures, Build relationships with students, Focus on the ways students learn and observe students to identify their task orientations, and Teach students to match their behaviors to the setting.” All these strategies will really help when it comes to teaching a culturally diverse classroom because it really depends on the students you have. I really like the idea of using more broad subjects for writing, such as having students write about their traditions that them and their family or friends do. This often excites students, and can really bring out a lot of culture.

Students come into the classroom at every different learning level with all different kinds of knowledge, leading a class that is challenging every student the perfect amount when it comes to language can be very difficult because of this. Theres many different factors as to why a student isn’t learning at a sufficient rate and may not have very well language skills; the best way to go about this is not to mark the students paper wrong and move on, but helping the student understand his/her mistake. 10% of all children live in poverty (Woolfolk, 216.) which means that not all of your students are going home and focusing on working on their grammar and the way the spell, which means classroom time is critical for many students education. This applies to students who don’t speak English at home at all—maybe their parents are only able to speak Spanish so after being home all night and coming to class they are having to constantly switch languages, being patient with students ad helping correct errors rather than punishing them is how students are really able to learn.

You are going to get students of every race, gender, and religion in your classroom, the main focus is to get every student on track and excited to learn in your class. It’s not always going to be equally as easy for each student, but as teachers it is our jobs to help students individually learn to the best of their ability.

Blog #5

I noticed that a lot of these articles were about adapting to another language in America. That is something that this class, as well as a lot of my other classes have been talking about, which means I have really put a lot of thought into all this. I really was struggling with what to write for this blog because I haven’t had to deal with a lot of this. I referenced other people’s blog for this because I needed some inspiration because I had some writers block with this one. The article that stuck out to me the most is Language Diversity in Teacher Education and In the Classroom because this is something that was brought to my attention a huge amount this year as I enter my teaching classes. I never thought about having to teach other cultures/languages as I decided to be a teacher—I always just pictured classes like mine in high school, which was diverse but we didn’t have any students (that I knew of) that didn’t speak English. Although, as I think about it—I never had any opportunity to read other students papers so maybe in theirs writing a slang came out that I was never able to notice.

Anyway, I really am intrigued to learn more about teaching more culturally diverse. The main part of the slam article that stood out to me was “In today’s society, grammar is often considered an indication of one’s class and cultural background”. This really caught my eye because I never thought about someone’s class affecting their language. As I think more about it though I can completely see how people may not be as well at speaking and writing because maybe they weren’t always able to put their full efforts into school. This year has opened my eyes to so many things you have to think about as a teacher and it actually is really scary because when I chose to be a teacher I was wanting to come in and try to make English exciting for kids, and for them to be able to write with their full heart without being scared of judgement and it just makes it that much harder when you realize that some people might not be comfortable because of their culture or class. Another thing that is difficult is that I am planning on being a high school teacher, which for a lot of people is the end of their education journey so any habits that a student has acquired in their last 11 years of schooling will be extremely hard to correct in just one short year.

The authors writing style was Standard English but also had a personality to it which I enjoyed, as for grammar there were a few things that I enjoyed that the author did. Towards the beginning of the article the author uses parenthetical dashes and I literally love parenthetical dashes because they really bring your eyes to that sentence. This is the example “… it seems that—unless there is effective…these teachers’ attitudes—“zero tolerance” will be there order of the…”

I really don’t know what attracts me to using dashes so much, I think it may be the fact that I never really got too crazy with my grammar and the craziest thing I usually do with punctuation is over use commas; therefore I get excited when I use dashes because I feel fancy.

Blog #4

              These articles gave me a lot of mixed feelings. Along with the activity that we did in class on Monday; I usually have very unpopular opinions about a lot of things so I’m not trying to offend anyone with this blog.
I 100% believe that people should use their own slang in their writing and be able to speak with their friends and family in whatever language is most comfortable for them—but when it comes to academics I believe that we should all have one common language… English. I am completely for everyone expressing their culture, but I think that in order for everyone to be on the same page and be actively learning in America there has to be one common language. As for what Suresh Canagarajah is saying, I think some people around the world use different variations on English which is completely acceptable in the diverse world that we live in. When it comes to teaching I’ve never exactly thought of all the things that were brought to my attention this school year, such as having to accommodate for students that don’t exactly speak perfect English.
In my teaching if I can tell what a student is trying to say I will not mark them down points, but I do want to also teach them Standard English because it is something that I strongly believe that everyone should have knowledge on. More on the article by Suresh Canagarajah, the main points of his article are basically about the fact that there are so many different variations of English and that he grew up speaking Nigerian English and was always targeted when there is no wrong version of English.

Blog #3

I really did like where Crovitz was coming from when they said that errors these days are looked at as sloppy mistakes when really they are signs of improvement. Something that I really took to heart during this school year is when Beth said that a student could write a grammatically perfect sentence that has no real substance. I feel like students these days are taught to “write between the lines” and are focused so much on making sure that a paper is grammatically perfect that they don’t actually put their heart into what they’re writing about. In another sense, I do believe that grammatical errors should be addressed and instead of just docking points and moving on I believe teachers should try to help adjust the mistakes.

 As for the DOL’s—I really like the idea. I know that growing up I always enjoyed them (in my school they were call “entry tasks”). It’s something that gets the students attention right away, although as an aspiring high school teacher I think that DOL’s work best for younger kids to help get them to focus on English right away when they get into the classroom.

As for high schoolers I think that the entry tasks would have to be more than just fixing an error in a sentence. I really like the idea of creating more interesting sentences out of boring sentences because it will get students brains working, and for high schoolers they can add their own twists to it which will make it a lot more fun for them. My group is going to be using the lesson that I stated above to teach the class and I am hoping that this lesson will spark into their brains while writing (because I know I think of old lessons while I write) and they will be able to add some more pizzazz to their writing.

Well I’m not to 500 words yet so I am going to jump subjects a little here; in the text it was brought up errors like people using words such as porpoise, taken for granite, walla, instead of the words purpose, taken for granted, voila [lists used without the word “and”]. This really stood out to me 1) because it reminded me of a meme I saw on twitter of a girl spelling “all of garden” instead of olive garden, and 2) because after reading that article I noticed that teachers (and clearly the whole world because of the meme) take those sort of mistakes as a joke when really that is just someone going out of their comfort zone to try new things and experiment with new words that they’re clearly not familiar with. One last thing that I noticed about this text was the authors use of brackets, here are some examples of how the author used brackets: “a teacher who would work with [basic writers] might well begin by trying…” and “a readiness to look at [errors] in a way that does not…” It confuses me why the author put the brackets because the sentence would make complete sense if the brackets weren’t there so that really confused me.

Anyway, thank you for reading.

Brandie Roueche

Blog #2

Coming into this class I figured I would be learning the basics of how to use grammar—what I didn’t realize was that there is no “correct” way to write [dash to indicate the quick change in tone]. When it comes to teaching grammar, it’s a whole new process that I had no idea about; you have to keep culture in mind. This concept is not something I had thought of when I thought of becoming an English teacher. In the article by Christianson when he spoke about students making no mistakes because they were holding back in their writing it really spoke to me. In my writing I tend to stick to Standard English just because that is what we are taught is correct. As I think about it though, as the reader, many people enjoy reading books that have a certain voice and tone that writer has created for the story, rather than a text book that is written in Standard English. It is so important to add a voice to your writing, or else everyone all sounds the same. As the article by Christianson and “Grammar Alive!” both covered, it is still important to teach Standard English because in our society they are going to need it. It is basically “adding another language variety to the students' linguistic toolbox” and as Christianson put it, “it’s the language power of this country”. The context behind Christianson’s quote is that her student Fred was struggling with writing; while she helped him find his voice in his writing, she also felt it would be cheating him if she didn’t teach him Standard English as well [run on sentence broken up by a semicolon].

          Something that I really took from Christianson’s article was the lesson where she had all of his students talk to each other about hardships that they each faced. To me, this is very important in writing because without that openness you can’t write from the heart, which is what someday I hope own student will feel comfortable doing. I also think that it will create the class to feel much closer to each other which is also so important in writing because when you’re just learning to write, being comfortable with your audience is a huge key to success.

          Overall, our reading scared me in a way… [ellipsis used for dramtic effect]  As a teacher you aren’t just given a curriculum and told to teach it—it’s so much more than that. America is a “melting pot” and every single person in the world has their own language and their own voice that is still considered English, so as a teacher you are required to learn to teach everyone for their own voice. As a teacher I never want anyone to feel as though they have to change their culture or their background because it causes them to make grammatical errors in Standard English. As a teacher I want to embrace all the different cultures and my main focus to be that my students are writing from the heart about things they’re passionate about without having to hold back.

Brandie Roueche