Pytash: Final Reflection

This was a very busy semester, but every single college student says this, so who is to believe? I can't' allow for myself to get caught up in frantic nature of the end of the semester, this cycle has occurs so many times, that I feel I have it down to science, it's like riding a bike, after doing it for so long it becomes like second nature. I am glad to say that this semester was not like going through the motions. I feel that I grew the most when working with my student at Firestone, hands down, that experience felt like I was getting a taste of the rest of my life, the reality of it scared me at first, but then I began to feel a pride that came along with being responsible for my student's growth, not just academically, but as a person. I knew that if I could feel proud of what I did with my students, then I could enjoy being in the classroom for years to come. I hope I don't sound picky in this post, I would take any teaching job just to feel the satisfaction I assume comes with being a real teacher with responsibilities. The Language as ..... theories allowed for me to fully understand the different schools of thought on what we ought to be doing as teachers. As I stated in class many times, I would behave as a teacher who employs the Language as a Social Construct theory, I want my teaching to help shape young people so they will be ready to deal with the issues and questions of our society. I didn't gain too much from the Yvonne Hutchison. She had a very willing class that wanted to engage in discussions based on critical thoughts, all she had to do was guide them and make sure they didn't get out of line, I didn't see her motivate any student that wasn't already engaged. The text book for this class was good, I feet I will use a good amount of this book when preparing for lessons. I like how Jago had high expectations, she really pushes for her students to reach their potential, but I think at times she would put too much of a work load on her students. I appreciated how the this class was aligned with Professor Foot's class, the only comment I have about both of these classes is the fact that we only meet 15 or less times a semester, I have always learned better in classes that meet more than once a week, at times it felt like a string of seminars. I know that Dr.Kist, Professor Foot , and yourself have a lot of experience and wisdom to offer in your classes, and just seeing you all so briefly over the semester was convenient for work and running, but I think I would have learned the material better had we met more frequently. I loved that we dealt with The Great Gatsby all semester, I feel ready to go out and teach it right now, I know that one day I will get to teach this book, and I am know armed with many different resources for teaching it. Overall, this was a great semester, I always looked forward to coming to your class, and always felt like I would be learning worth while material from someone who has experienced the job I want to hold. So have a good summer, and I will see you around White Hall.

Pytash: Chapter 7

I found this final chapter to have a very uplifting message, that as teachers we can mold these students into young people ready to deal with the issues and tasks of our society that require the spoken or written word. This chapter rekindled the emotions in me that brought about my desire to pursue a career in preparing young people for the world. The issue of standardizing graduation requirements across the nation has very valid points on both sides, I always tend to believe that states and communities should be allowed to govern themselves, but in this situation if there is no consistency across the board as to what a 'high school diploma' constitutes, then this leaves our society with a huge problem. I hear from older people that back in the day not everyone went to college, that a high school diploma could land a hard worker a decent living. This is not the case today. I really liked the way the diploma project described the language arts academic expectations for students to graduate. I liked how the chapter dealt with the question students might pose, "Why should I care about this book? It has nothing to do with my life", the author's answer is exactly what I would say, she just did it more elegantly. Teaching persuasion, rhetoric, the essential questions of being a human in the Western world, these are all actions that give me self-efficacy as someone who hopes to change students lives in the future. The election lesson idea was brilliant, when I get a class I will defiantly do this every election year, it is a such a perfect example of how literature and famous characters can effect the populous. Also, the five paragraph/essay prompts for the final test was a much better way for students to demonstrate and be assessed on their ability to produce critically thought out opinions on literature and rhetoric.

Pytash: Chapter 6

I look forward to teaching clasical literature more than I look forward to teaching writing or poetry or grammar, so I was very intruiged t osee what our author had to say on the matter. At firt I though tto my self "what am I going to learn from Japanesse teachers, they dont have to deal with the poverty that American teachers do, Japanesse students coem from families where socail success is valuedabove all esle, the student doesnt want ot dishonor this or her family by failing at school, so the Japanesse teachers are dealing with a completely differnet school system and studnet than American teachers are dealing with. But I found that I liked some of things they are doing, they are beign much more productive and getting results or inforamation from all of their teachers. By allowing teahcers to view their job as research more than teaching, then the teacher feels like they are valued by the school system, teachers learn from each other and together when they plan and critique their lessons together. However, I don't like that Japan has a national curriculum, It is as if they are having all of their teahers experiment with different lessons in hope that theywill hit the jackpot and then have every teracher in Japan terah that golden lesson that every Japanesse student will respond to. I totally agree with how a teaher should handel the outset of teaching The Odessey , The teaher needs to spend time explainging what an epic is and provide modern dayexamples of epics, the teacher must stimulate the students' minds to think about mental constructs theyhav about storys that have influnced them in the past. I would mention superheros whem describign the epicand Odsesius. I would want to read the whole story, not the abridged one that they usually use in high school, the complete verison is only longer because it has more episodes, but it is just as easy to comprehend as the abridged. If I am going to teach someone the greatest epic of all time, then we're goign to do it as the stroy has been handed down to us in its entirity. I would assign the reading as I saw fit, I woudl stop at sreasonable stopping points, I think it woud be worth mentionign how the epic works in an episodic fashion, it is a long story comprised of smaller tales. We would do the common activity of chartting the gods, that would be a day right there. I would print out maps of Mediteranian to show the students the actual loactions mentioned in the story. I would have daily rading quizes over the readings, and I really liekd the authors idea for a test and having the studnets preapre the review for the test for their classmates, I would definlty do this in class and will use this in my student teaching. The students will be broken into groups and each group will be responsible for teahcing the class a short review session on their assigned chapters, afeter each groop goes the whoel slcass should be preapred for the entire test,and each student has taught, the reciproacl process empowers the students and teaches them about academic responsibitlites. I am glad that the author used The Odyssey to demonstrate lesson plans for classics, there were a lot of good ideas in here, but I am sure that createing a lesson planis not this simple it will require experince and trial and error experiments if I will create effective lessons plans that I will carry out.

Pytash: Chapter 4

This chapter was alright, I didn't like how the author spent the first page talking about how the average language arts teacher is doing things the wrong way, and that she is perfect ,and expects nothing but the best from her students, aparently she has never had an off day or ever setteled, she's never been complacent or satisfied, she siply strives to be the best. However, I don't see any new ideas in this chapter about how to teach the elements of literature to students. The list of most commonly used literary elements was what I would have expected. I like that the author used The Call Of the Wild to show the differences between first and thrid person points of view, I was taught the differnce using Jack London, and I hope to one day teach the difference using Jack London. I agree with the authors thinking regarding the notion that students rember what they think about- the teaher demands harder thinking about complicated texts- therefore studetns will rember these complicated stories that they were assigned because they invested their thinking into the text. I, like the author, want a student of mine to remeber the classics rather than meaningless assignments that don't challenge the students. I wonder what percent of language arts teachers teach literary elements by giving a defintion matching quiz with words and their definitons, that is how I leanerd the literary elements and I know them all very well, but it seems so dated and against what I have been learning in my education classes. However, I belive students today will be a bit more motivated to learn some of these literary deivces, like figurative language, 99% of the hip hop/rap that they play on the tv and radio today is figurative language, Lil Wayne is strickly metphors in most of his songs (not that I would ever listen to him).

Pytash: Chapter 2

I really enjoyed this chapter; all of the information in chapoter 2 I will use when I get my chance in the classroom. During my time at Firestone last semseter and tutoring this semseter I saw how vocabulary acquisition was so crucial for students to be able to read, comprehend and express themselves. I always took vocabulary acquistion for granted, my dad stressed my learning new words all the time, he would come home and throw out these new words and expect me to know them. Today I love to learn new words and use them as soon as I get a chance to, I have noticed that in comedys they now use outdated vocaulary that most peopel don't know to get laughs. I believe that people who value learning are inately intruiged to learn new words in their lanugage. So when I teach I am going to need to motivate my students to see the benifits of having large vocabulary, this will enable them to intruiged by new words, because the students belive they will benifit at some level for learning these new words. The work done by Stahl and Shiel done in 1992 points out what I believe are the keys for an individual to be able to acquire new vocabulary when one incounter a word they have never seen before. They found that vocabulary instruction must be productive for the learner by stressing the following: teaching prefixies, suffixes, and roots; teachign students to derive meaning from the context; and teaching words as part of semanitc groupings. I'm not claiming to be as bright as Stahl and Shiel, but before I ever read this I was teching my student to decipher new word by noticing prefixes, suffixes and roots, and telling him to derive meaning of the new word by understandign the context it is being used in. I told my student to do this becasue this is how I have always figured out what new worsd mean, I feel fro mmy own experiences that this is the best wayto learn vocabulary, but this doesn't cover all words some words have roots that an average person wold not have a clue aout, so students do at one point need to be introduced to these words strait up and told what they mean. I was really proud of myself for beign able to comprehend that passage from "The Fall of the House of Usher", but I know that there are a lot of students out there that would not know where to start with this passage. I was insipred by the author's idea that this passage was all about setting the mood for the restof the story, so the students ought to investigate what words are meant to set the mood, adn then investigate those words. When the author posed the question"what vocabulary words should we teach?", I was a bit confused becuse I thought that teachers were probably assigned vocabulary lists from the department head or the state. I would probably teach vocabulary words that we will run into throguhout the semester in literature, but not only in my class, I would talk to other teahers of studnets in my classand see what advanced vocabulary they have been using and try to work it into my class to show the students that learning new words will positivly impact them in life. Lastly, I will probably keep this book becuase of the great ideas it has in it, one in particular is the vocabulary activity the author uses with Julius Caesar . Going in-depth into four new voaculary words that describe human characteristics, have the students apply these desciptive words to people they know(not other stuents unless positive), then write about how they display one of these new words, then have a scale for ecah of the new words and have the student place themselves on each scale. This activity will creat understanding of new words,and has students apply these new words to their lives.

Foot:Pleasure Reading

This spring break me and five of my friends went down to Eden, North Carolina and went on a 4 day/ 3 night canoeing/camping trip. We covered 60 miles altogether over the 4 days, it was an amazing experience, I've done this twice before on the Green River in Kentucky and the Shoal Run in Tennessee, I love going into the wilderness for a couple days, it makes you really appreciate how good we have it nowadays. Whenever I go on one of thee trips I always bring some litterateur to read, always short stories. This year I brought "The Best American Short Stories of 2008", and the store I read as I floated down the river and lay in my canoe was "The Year of Silence", by Kevin Brockmeier. It was about how busy the city was and how everyone was in a hurry, and then one day every one fell silent for a moment, and the people of the city realized they loved the peace and serenity, then these bouts of silence kept coming over the city, and the people would rejoice whenever they occurred. Eventually, the people tried to artificially create these bouts of silence by planning them, but they never work, someone is always making noise. The story was an interesting narrative about how we all seek rest, and I really appreciated this story after being in the woods for 4 days, getting a a bed with cushions and pillows was seriously one of the best feelings ever, we always go and stuff our faces at Cracker Barrel when we get out of the woods too, the food you eat once you get back into civilization after camping is always amazing.

Foot: Cleveland International Film Festival Film Review

On Monday night I went to see "Whirligig", it was directed by Chaz Thorne, and stars Gregory Smith (Small Solders, Everwood) as the main character. Overall, I was satisfied with this movie, I probably won't remember it in a year, but for Monday night it sufficiently satisfied my mind. The personal issues in the movie were interesting, the most prominent issue was the main character, Nicholas, being 25 years old and going nowhere in life, he has failed at everything he has attempted in life, and returns to his parents home to try to find himself. Most college age people can relate to this because of the stress that comes with going into the job market. The story is actually supposed to be a representation of the director's own fall to rock bottom and rise up. It also deals with the issue of adultery, as Nicholas beings to have an affair with the wife of the only neighbors within miles. The technique was unique, it followed the same structure as most independent films do. the music was all instrumental using the same instruments, I can't recall what instruments were used, but all the scores were united. The acting was pretty good. I didn't realize till after the movie that there were only 6 actors in the entire movie. Gregory Smith was convincing as a 'loser', the neighbor that Gregory smith was cuckolding was my favorite character, he was a self-obsessed actor who had retired to the nearly remote shores of Nova Scotia. The plot was as follows: Nicholas is a 25 year old male who returns to his parents house on the shore of Nova Scotia, Nicholas is considered a failure, he has failed at his two former jobs, his parents don't want him in the house, so they allow him to stay with them for one month. Nicholas meets this family's only neighbors when he crashes into their mail box while learning to drive. The two families becomes friends, Nicholas begins having an affair with neighbor's wife. The two families remain friends with the underlying tension created by the affair. Nicholas befriends the neighbor's child, and they have adventures with archery and growing cannabis sativa (the 10 year old kids is the one growing it and experiments the finished product on Nicholas, it's hilarious and done quite classy). However, the 10 year old discovers that Nicholas has been having an affair with his mother, and then Nicholas gets a call from an old girlfriend he had at his last job, he moves away back to his old job to try and raise a child, the end. It was all good until the end, I thought it was the writer taking the easy way out. The themes that I picked up were the idea that one can always start over, one must forget the past and move forward, friends are temporary but family is forever. The genre was definitely independent film, it was a life struggles movie trying to be a comedy. The film represented families that are successful but have offspring that rent successful, so the family has to take care of the offspring. Both rich and poor were represented, however the film only dealt with 6 characters who were the only residents within miles of the shore, so only the 6 characters were representing. I did not see any ideology in the film, as it was a story of the director's own experience with hitting rock bottom. There was no trailer for this movie, but here is the website that has a lot of info on the movie Here is a trailer for the only othe movie that Chaz Thorne has made, it has a lot of the same actors from "Whirligig"