Narrative Inquiry: Measuring Student Progress Through Narrative Teaching-Focused Observation Being at the helm of a college classroom, especially an English classroom, affords teachers the unique opportunity to interact with varied personal narratives. As academia, and the world at large, strives, in the words of Sharon McGee, “to put front and center […]
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Does oral narrative (storytelling and listening) in the classroom have psychosocial benefits for students?
Now that my first quarter teaching English 101 is over, and I have spent untold locate where my classroom seemed to get lost, disengaged, exceedingly quiet or when the room emitted at least a few reticent sparks— I believe I have come up with an idea of what was missing. Although the curriculum was […]
Lose the Lecture: Utilizing Active Learning Strategies to Disseminate Curriculum Requirements and Engage Students
Reevaluating the “Fair Classroom”
In the text “Becoming Visible,” the concept of “special treatment” and the idea of creating a “fair classroom” were both analyzed against the issues they cause when it comes to the cultivation of a respectful and accessible classroom. I think that the use of these terms or the implementation of actions in order to justify […]
Fostering and Stifling
Conflict is good. Conflict keeps us from the sheep and shepherd mentality in the classroom, but conflict is a difficult balancing act to pull off well. I encourage my students to ask questions, and to be active in their learning, but I struggle personally with walking the line between healthy conflict that fosters engaged multi-vocal […]
The Hateful Slate
I could roundup a whole cast of adversarial teachers from my formative years that, if you were presented with snapshots of their wrongdoings, would shock you. I had one teacher that would pass out a math test to everyone in the room except me because “I would just fail anyway”. I had another teacher (both […]
Student and Teacher as Adversaries
I believe that the curriculum and the execution of English 101 has limited a great number of “traditional” adversities that are present in standard courses at an institution like Western. Of course, there exists the usual difficulty between teacher and student when it comes to homework and authority-but because the curriculum is permitting students to […]
By what metric?
I haven’t encountered much that I would term toxic to my class ecosystem. Let alone truly toxic. Theoretically, I would say that any violence in the classroom is toxic, destructive, unacceptable. If we’re making hierarchies, I would begin with physical violence. Any instance of fighting, assault, abuse, would seem immediately poisonous to my ecosystem, not […]
Shut Up and Listen to Each Other
My students speak over each other quite a bit in class. They have this idea that the only voice in class they should listen to is mine. During my warm-up question/discussion section, they will listen quietly while I speak, but I continually have to remind students to be quiet, and listen to their fellow student […]
My New “Best Friend”
During the first week of class, I was immediately aware of some behavioral issues that honestly made me dread teaching every day. Students would talk over me, question my presence in the classroom, and roll their eyes when I assigned free-writes or homework. The initial behavioral problems got better after conferences, and I was able […]
Toxic Behavior in the Classroom
During the first week of classes, I immediately noticed two students who managed to throw slight hiccups into the otherwise successful beginning we had as an English 101 group. When I proposed free writes or any sort of in-class discussion, they would roll their eyes and turn to the student next to them to try […]
“Heterogeneously Linked, By Golly!”
To begin to address this important question regarding toxic student behavior, I had to generate a list then enumerate them from most to least damaging, holistically. Here is a glimpse of what is happening in my classroom that feels toxic, “enlarged for detail”— meaning there are really nice things that also happen, and my classroom […]
Did we read the same article?
Student A, You have written an interesting engagement with some of Mike Rose’s ideas here. You have a certain flair hiding out in your writing that I really enjoyed too. In particular, in the first paragraph, you write, “from an early age, putting a pencil to a paper seemed like to be the most impossible […]
House Plants
Not surprisingly, my young students don’t believe they’re writers at all. I imagine they look at the classroom (and wordpress) as a kind of echo-chamber; assuming their voice will bounce off the walls and return to them— that there is no receiver. This tenuous call-and-response attitude they have when they’re asked to write is typical, […]
Sometimes the title comes last
This feels somewhat similar to my last post where I peered into my students’ heads and watched their inner critics berate them into paralysis. From talking to them, I imagined them facing these harsh judges, speaking in the voice of English teachers past, who tell them their work isn’t good enough, saying things like “provide […]
The Harshest Critic
As I mentioned in my last post, I believe that many of my students observe the practice of writing and actually write from a very self-critical space. When they first entered my classroom and we began a discourse to determine what makes someone a writer, and what makes their writing good, my students shared opinions […]
The Importance of Being Earnest
I apologize for my title. It seems like a huge obstacle to student writing is that they are thoroughly conditioned to be performative and to respond to cues- the compulsion is to mimic each other, satisfy the teacher or get the correct answer. Their writing, at this adolescent stage, is reflective of the way they’ve […]
The Lonely Road of Struggle
I think of two types of struggle when considering the student experience in my class. One type of struggle I would consider unproductive and constraining, while the other I would say is an almost necessary condition for any deep, lasting learning. Shaughnessy’s line about “written anguish” as an alternative “English” felt like an apt characterization […]
The Genre of The Teacher
“ I hated in high school when I would get my writing back from my teacher, and they would edit it and make me take stuff out, and at the end it didn’t even sound like me. The thing I turned in wasn’t my writing”. That is a quote from one of my student’s letters […]
Aint No Dead Poets Society
I am a very romantic person. I got totally swept away by Dead Poets Society as a kid because it wasn’t about “school” it seemed to be about freedom. Looking back, I’m sure it was so appealing to me because it was the antithesis of my experience in English class. I have wanted to be […]
Realistic Expectations
Instead of focusing on the idealistic facets of this class, I think it might be more sensible for me to root the goals and the mile-markers of this class firmly within the realistic. This class and its curriculum were not created, from how I interpret everything, with idealistic successes in mind, but instead determined how […]
More Thoughts on Teaching Thinking
This post has a strong connection to my previous post. Durring my most ideological meditations about the impacts this class could have on one of my students, my thoughts turn more often towards thinking rather than writing. I want my students to leave my classroom with strong skills for critical thinking. As I said in […]
My Disjointed View (So Far)
As I don’t get to see the outcomes or the written work of students, this is a little bit of a difficult question to engage with. On the other hand, I have seen many students across several classes throughout my subbing experience so far, and it has been interesting to see what they all seem […]
Political Literacy in English 101
To my surprise, the students in my classroom seem to be extremely active within local politics, advocacy, and have chosen subjects for their research projects that examine controversies that our society is struggling to make sense of. I was very surprised by my students’ initiatives to be aware of their political surroundings, perhaps it is […]
when what matters in the world matters to the person
I can’t speak for all of my students, but many of my students are aware of the world around them. Sometimes, they’ll mention local, national, or global news sometimes in the context of class and sometimes when they’re getting off track in group work. There are, however, a handful of students who are very aware […]
intersections of our lives, my shifting identity, and what I decide to share
In Krista Ratcliffe’s Rhetorical Listening Theory: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, she discusses something called a “dysfunctional silence” which centers around the idea that a silence (of voices in different contexts) is no longer “merely the absence of speaking voice(s); it is also the absence of hearing ears” (85). “Silence” or the absence of voices is something […]
Prioritizing Community and Discourse within the Classroom
Within my classroom, I place value upon passion. Sometimes, it is difficult for students to find excitement in the curriculum or subject matter, and I believe it is the responsibility of the instructor to find the ways in which they can bring forth students’ excitement and passions in relation to the classroom. This is sometimes […]
Storytelling and Academic Discourse: Including More Voices in the Conversation
Citation: Mlynarczyk, Rebecca. “Storytelling and Academic Discourse: Including More Voices in the Conversation.” The Journal of Basic Writing 33:1 (2014): 4-22. Web. Summary: Since the start of her academic career, Rebecca Mlynarczyk has struggled with the relationship, or supposed lack-there-of that exists between what the academic world defines as “narrative” or “personal” writing and “academic writing,” […]
We are a community of writers
I spent some reflective time thinking about what I wanted my classroom to “look like” when I was drafting my syllabus. A starting off point would be my “Class Climate” section of my ENG101 syllabus: “First and foremost we are a community of writers. Writing is a personal exercise by nature. In order for all […]
Participatory Hospitality and Brave/Safe Spaces in my thoughts about the classroom
What I hold at the core of my beliefs about my classroom and try to bring into my classroom is that it is a place that we create together—I’m kind of pulling from the ideas of a community of practice that I was so entrenched in at my old WC. Writing center scholar, Michele Eodice, […]