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.