LitEVO's Blog
Research and response to trends in teaching language and literature.Archive for November, 2009
Reflection
Whoa, I just looked back through all my blogs so far and am pleased. I’ve never had such a good collection of my thoughts all in one place and didn’t realize how much I had written in the past few months. Thank you to Melissa for the blog idea. I hope to keep it going after this class.
Our course has been such a positive part of my semester, the focal point in fact. It makes me want to be a full-time student. I view my teaching and my school more critically and want to know the whys (the policy, policy-writer’s background and motivation, and the trickling down to my teaching process) behind each decision that is handed down to me. I also want to know why the decision is handed to me instead of me being part of that decision in the first place. I want to find ways for critical literacy to be a part of my classroom and school as well as multiliteracies and multimodalities. I’m also pleased knowing how to find published research (thanks to the sweet UT library) to look at how some of the practices that I use with my students hold up in research studies and if I’m really teaching certain concepts in the best way. Looking forward to our Dog and Duck class as well as future semesters within the program:)
Coming back from the dead every day
“Coming back from the dead every day” was Ms. Grant’s quote from the Duncan-Andrade article, “Toward Teacher Development for the Urban in Urban Teaching.” I believe she was referring to life as a teacher in a non-critical, stale environment. This was a tiny portion of Grant’s comments, but it resonated with me because I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience lately as my students write “This I Believe” statements for their website projects. I guess it’s more of me trying to believe in resilience and being resilient because I feel much as though I leave every day feeling disheartened and drained, and yet I try to bounce back to work the next day with renewed spirit. The readings this week, “Making the Road by Walking and Talking,” the Duncan-Andrade article, and even the annotated bib. on teacher inquiry groups got me thinking about how far my school is from these practices, and it feels deadening (my school environment, not the knowledge of critical inquiry within teaching). I live in contrast to a setting where “teachers [are] treated as partners, not subjects.” One good thing though is that there are studies, D-A’s in particular, that show what is best for teacher retention, satisfaction, and success: hope for schools and teachers to be better in the future.
