Around, Here

The further I dug into the Christiansen chapter, the more excited I became about the prospect of teaching writing in the schools. When I look back on my writing experiences during my time in high-school, I remember nothing but writing research papers. I wrote research papers for my college biology class, I wrote research papers for my college history and government courses, and I wrote research papers for my English courses. As I jumped right into my college composition coursework in 11th grade, I remember the goal was for us to be "college ready," meaning that we were to be professionals in regards to academic tone and citation formatting, specifically MLA. I was able to write some fun papers in these courses (I remember that my senior paper was 15 whopping pages of "Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams" nonsense, which culminated in the line "God bless America"), though I was far from a creative writer. I did not start writing creatively until college -

Grammar is weird. Especially as a future English teacher. I've heard plenty of people advocate for ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CORRECT GRAMMAR ALL THE TIME. Those people are nerds. It's a fickle concept. Coming from someone who knows grammar & usage fairly well, I oftentimes intentionally misuse it. Not so much in things like, per-se, essays and other academic writings (like this post, perhaps), but I freely misuse and omit grammar in social media and text messages. I do this in an attempt to articulate different tonality and delivery in my messages, and I'm certainly not the only one that does this. A lack of total grammatical correctness, to me, articulates a certain warmth and familiarity in speech. It is comfortable, unregulated; I would even go so far as to say that it is free-flowing. People that are stuck in the rut of typing EVERY SINGLE THING WITH 100% CORRECT GRAMMAR come off as stuck up and standoffish (to me) (and others, I'm sure) (undoubtedly). I think

If I were an impartial spectator to the development of my opinions regarding teaching and I were asked what I thought my opinion would be regarding whether or not the Five Paragraph Essay, I would have laughed in my own face and walked out of the room, leaving myself alone behind. ...that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, contrary to what you may think that I think, I like the idea of the five paragraph essay. Here's why. While I do tend to lean towards going against the grain of traditional teaching measures, I think there are plenty of merits in teaching the traditional structure of the five paragraph essay. At its core, I think teaching this structure allows students the opportunity to construct their arguments in a concise manner that follows a logical progression, as opposed to letting students essentially vomit each and every thought that runs through their heads onto a page and call it writing. Writing is a bit more refined and eloquent than word vomit, and I do wish

I do not remember the last time I have read something as moving and as powerful as the introduction to Tom Rademacher's book. If you think I'm being dramatic, I'm not. Day after day we have slogged through countless theoretical readings from the aforementioned "white-haired dudes with PhDs" with seemingly no end in sight. These readings, while informative and certainly telling of a dedication to betterment of the educational environment, have oftentimes seemed disconnected from any practical application. I have written about this phenomenon before, specifically in my final for CI 5441 (which I incidentally did not do too well on) - I can have all the theory I want shoved down my gullet, but at the end of the day it is my lived experiences and my human to human interactions that are going to define me in the classroom. Tom is right here - students aren't gonna care if I'm super articulate and effective teaching them about the intricacies of Shakespearian

For my first entry here this semester I wanted to write a bit about the piece that stuck out the most to me, which was the Heffernan & Lewison piece regarding Culturally Relevant Writing. Over the course of our, well, courses last semester we talked extensively about Critical Literacy and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and for whatever reason it did not even cross my mind to think that these same concepts could be applied to teaching writing and composition. The examples shown in the article showed just how powerful this exercise could be, and how this practice goes hand in hand with critical literacy. It is asked in the beginning of the article: “Could critical literacy practices shake up the writer’s workshop?” The answer, as it seems that they have found out, is absolutely. These practices can serve as an extension of critical literacy exercises, or even as a precursor to critical literacy itself. As illustrated in the article, going through the necessary steps that the teach

[My original teaching/educational philosophy draft from EDHD 5300 can be found here .] Within the above document we can see the beginnings of my educational philosophy take place. This assignment largely had me extrapolate some aspects of my K-12 academic career for my own analysis with my current lens and perspective. As I move forward in my teacher prep program I have come to the understanding that my teaching philosophy absolutely has to be grounded in theory. Period. It is one thing for me to have these grandiose ideas of being a fun, engaging, and inclusive teacher, but if these ideas are not clearly grounded in theory then the points may as well be moot. It is the theory that is the foundation of our desires to be the optimal teacher(s). Keeping this in mind, I realize that my teaching philosophy must include this in order to articulate my opinions regarding classroom assessment, technology integration, lesson differentiation, and classroom ecology. Of course, with assessment