Reflection

Blog Entry #5:  A vision of your ELA classroom, and how you and your students will experience Oral and Written Language.  How has this changed since your first blog entry?

When I started this course I was concerned that my inventive spelling and questionable grammar techniques were going to be a detriment to my teaching.  I believed a teacher needed to have all the answers and that her students success would depend on the teacher’s passion for the subject.  With all that we have done in our English and Language Arts class I have learned that passion is a key component of what makes for a great teacher, but that passion does not come from the teacher alone.  My best resources as a teacher will be the people, media, and literature around me. 

 A month ago I was groaning and moaning about the Education department because we have so much group work to do.  Group work can be a huge pain in the ass; a group rarely manages to meet before sending several facebook messages, emails, voice mails, and text messages to one another arranging times and places.   After deciding when to meet the group changes locations three times before the meeting ever takes place.  When we arrive we wander the halls aimlessly hunting for a new place to meet because the library, café, and computer labs are all packed full of students who are meeting for the same purpose.

However…  once we have sent 3 group emails, 15 text messages and the inevitable latecomer has arrived at the fourth chosen location, ideas begin to flow.  We come up with warm-ups activities, incentive activities, focus activities, culminating activities, warm-down activities, closing activities, review activities, assessment activities, and finally we are out of time but the ideas keep coming.  We come up with modification that could include the most ‘gifted’ and ‘challenged' of students.  And finally we start on extensions: sometimes our extensions could fill weeks of class time.  If we were allowed go on I suspect we would go on and on, until students have explored English, Science, Math, Social Studies, Music, Drama, Physical Education, and so much more.  Before we are done with our ideas children will have mastered critical thinking, logic, and philosophy and should be well on their way to solving the worlds’ greatest problems.

Yet the ideas that come out of our group brainstorming sessions are nothing compared to the ideas that we come up with as a class.  One group barely finishes a presentation before the rest of the class is trying to share all the ideas that came to them while their classmates were presenting.  Soon Ideas have become fuel for more ideas and we are in the middle of a gigantic idea bonfire; the entire class is crackling hot.

Our teacher has provided us with lectures, readings and a textbook but no amount of theory seems to inspire us more than her endless wealth of ideas and experience.  When she presents an idea she never presents just one, she give several examples and variations until we can’t help but build on them ourselves.  Our ideas begin to flow in a way they just couldn’t have on their own, and eventually we are on fire too.

This is the essence of education.  If there is anything I have learned this semester it is that ideas are best shared so that they can grow and even become the seeds of new ideas.  In my English and Language arts classroom I will utilize the power of the idea.  Oracy and literature will serve as a means for sharing and inspiring so that students can play with idea fires too.  As a teacher I will present books, podcasts, films, newspapers, letters, community projects, theatrical productions, and guest speakers.  All of these resources will bring more and more ideas into our classroom so that my students can swim in a pool of ideas; taking in the ideas they love, discarding the ones they don’t, and exploding with their own ideas!  Once my students begin to explode with ideas; they too will share their ideas with their classmates, families, communities, and teachers.  Their ideas will catch like wild-fire sparking idea fires everywhere they go.  I will help students to express their ideas and teach them to use the ideas of others in their expression and communication.  Writing, representing, and oracy shouldn’t be about spelling tests, grammar lessons, and memorization; writing, representing, and oracy should be a means of exploration and expression in and out of the classroom.  Grammar and spelling will bloom within this atmosphere.  We will have personalized spelling tests and technical writing workshops to help students improve on what they already know.  Students will learn to enjoy reading, writing, and representing because they will be working with topics and ideas that inspire them to think and create in and out of the classroom.