Taking Up the Challenges of Visual Literacy

A Lifetime of Literacy: From Birth to Age 25

I really enjoyed this assignment as it really got me to think about my experiences with literacy over the years and how they have influenced my life and the formation of goals that I am continuing to work toward. To be honest, I am not sure if I accomplished any of the goals for this assignment in regard to visual impact, coherence, salience, and organization. I put my visual essay together using my own photos, and not all of them are tied together in a visual way - I think it is the story behind them that ties them together. Also, I can't say that any one photo in and of itself would have a great impact on anyone who doesn't know me - but the photos work together, they tell the story of the role literacy has played throughout my lifetime. I do feel that these photos are important as a visual element in relation to the story behind them, and I have organized them chronologically (hence the title.) Oddly enough, while completing this assignment there wasn't a single moment when I thought "Ughhhh whyyyyyyy do I HAVE to do THIS?!?!?" It was an enjoyable task, and I think in creating it I began to think on a deeper level about the reasons behind why I chose the teaching profession. This only came about through completing this project, it wasn't my original end-goal. I would definitely use a similar project in my own classroom - but I would like to leave it as open-ended as we have for this course rather than put all of the restrictions on it as was done in the reading selection. 

I hope you enjoy viewing my visual essay as much I enjoyed creating it!

Here's to the last post! 

~ peace out ~

Media Education in the 21st Century

In reading the selections from Jenkin's article "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century," I began to think about how my own educational experiences, and I realized that much of what I actually remember exemplified some of the concepts related to teaching students the skills described and discussed in the article. For example, one of my best memories from high school is a group project that exemplifies the skill of appropriation. Two other students and I chose a song and created a music video to go along with it. I believe the song was "Living Dead Girl," by Rob Zombie. This was one of the few projects that I came to work on after class because I ENJOYED working on it. Another great memory I have (this time from college,) exemplifies the skill of performance. A history professor that I had while attending classes in London had us reenact the Battle of Trafalgar: One student played Admiral Lord Nelson, one played Napoleon, the rest of us played the ships. We first studied maps of the battle and watched a video of it, and then we went outside to Regents Park and acted out our own version. It was really helpful to see how Napoleon had his ships approach, and how Lord Nelson had his ships come in from different sides and basically annihilated the French. This was almost five years ago now... Look how much I can remember! 

After first relating the reading to my own experience (something I do quite frequently) I began to think about ways in which I could incorporate activities in my classroom to ensure that all of my students have "access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant, can articulate their understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and participants in online communities." 

I feel that one of the problems in today's classroom's is that students feel a growing disconnect between what they are learning in school, and what they want to learn, or should be learning, based on what they do outside of school. I think that focusing on the "new skills" described by Jenkins, is one way to bridge this gap. I am not advocating throwing out the current curriculum entirely, but I think it is really important for student education to progress at the same pace as society (and I'm not so sure that this is the case...). Remember when Powerpoint first came out? We've been doing Powerpoints now for years... Students know how to do Powerpoints, many of them have made these for webpages, facebook profiles, myspace, etc. etc. It is time for us to move on to bigger, more complicated types of media, to continue challenging our students and prepare them for future careers. I feel it would be a disservice to students if we teach them only the skills needed to succeed in the old world, and not the skills needed to succeed in the new. For example, I think multitasking is perhaps one of the most important skills needed by today's youth. They are inundated with information from various sources and forms of media, how can we ignore this and continue to uphold the novel as the greatest form of literature deserving of study? I also think it is imperative for students today to learn the skill of collective intelligence - this is how progress is made in today's world. The days of working alone to complete a task are over - todays students need to practice and learn the skill of working with others towards a common goal, to pool their knowledge, determine what is most relevant or applicable and move forward. 

To be honest, I don't feel that I am as prepared for this as I would like to be. The biggest question I have right now is HOW do I GET prepared??? I think I need to sign up for Beach's class this summer, that might be a first step. Also, I wonder, am I the only one feeling this way? This lack of preparedness? All this talk about being great teachers, and I really feel like we are missing out on something HUGE. 

My link for this week is a website that provides teaching resources, ideas, lesson plans, and tools for teachers grades K-12. You have to sign up for it, but I recommend this as there are many different ideas for teachers in terms of using role play in the classroom, and student projects that require appropriation and collective intelligence. 

Week 4: Grammar & Revision

 "What does a D+ mean?!?!"

What a great question. I imagine this student utterly frustrated and confused, staring at the grade emblazoned in scarlet ink upon their paper, labeling them once again as a "BAD STUDENT," and battling the associated shame much like Miss Prynn (without the adultery charge, the societal shunning and all of that...) 

Maybe not... It is difficult to put myself in the shoes of the D+ earning student, as I've never received this grade (although I very well should have many, many times, if we were graded on effort rather than product...). As future teachers of English, I wonder how many of us CAN put ourselves in the position of the "struggling" writer, and I wonder if the fact that most of us probably haven't shared this experience has any impact on the fact that English teachers continue to grade their students' writing in this fashion. I know we've all been taught to do away with the red pen, but lets be realistic, in a decade or so, green will be the new red. (You know what I'm referring to, cohort!) 

I really liked how Chapter 7: Assessing, Evaluating, Grading, and Responding to Student Writing demonstrated various techniques for helping students become better writers regardless of what pen color the teacher uses (although yes, I did notice they advocated the use of a pencil).  I've often thought about how I will overcome the common practice of handing out arbitrary grades while still having the time to, you know, do the "life" things that we human beings tend to enjoy. While some may disagree that it is a commonality for teachers to arbitrarily assign grades for student writing, many personal experiences have led me to believe this is the case. Consider the following:

Exhibit A) Being that my Dad is an English Teacher, (ohhh how embarrassing) I often spent time in the teacher's lounge after school, and being that I was considered a "good student," on more than one occasion I had teachers ask me to grade papers. Now, this would be okay (maybe) if they were worksheets with an accompanying answer sheet, but I actually graded pieces of student writing. Imagine, an 8th grader marking up the papers of 6th graders. I remember thinking that I didn't really know what I was doing, and that it wasn't at all fair, but at the time I was more concerned with the fact that this meant my own "A" grades weren't worth crap. 

Exhibit B) As a sophomore in college I took a European History Course wherein our entire grade was based on the averaged grades of two essay tests: a midterm and a final. I was pretty disappointed when we got our midterms back and I had received a B-. After handing back our little blue books, the professor said that if anyone had questions about their grade they could stop in her office after class. I was really surprised to find that only four of us did so (being that the class had about 150 students and, in looking around me, most people had gotten an even worse mark than I had) and was even MORE surprised when in fact, the professor did not feel like answering any questions about my grade but looked through what I had written while making little check marks and saying "Oh, I didn't notice that you had included this," and "Oh, you touched on this too." I walked out of her office with an A-. 

Exhibit C) In my recent student teaching experience (observation), my cooperating teacher graded student essays during first hour while the students meandered around the library. Many of the papers she didn't even look at, making comments such as "Ohh Diondre struggles a lot with writing," Graded: C, and "Jamie always does a good job," Graded: A. No joke.

How can we recover from 20+ years of brainwashing when it comes to grading student papers? I think the contents of this chapter are a good place to start. I really like the idea of having students complete a self-evaluation of their writing - this is always a difficult task, but if done correctly it can be effective. HOW can it be done correctly? I personally would like to have students do this after they finish writing something, and then have them go back and rework what they wrote to strengthen areas that they themselves found weaknesses in. 

Maybe I'm a bit behind the rest of you, but I also found it really helpful to be given a definitive list of Higher and Lower Order concerns when it comes to grading student papers. Too often teachers place the greater emphasis on punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc. etc. in grading simply because it is easier to do so, and not because it is most beneficial to the student as a practicing writer. 

The section of the text that discussed alternatives to grading every paper also really resonated with me. (This goes back to that whole "having a life" thing I mentioned earlier, and on a less selfish level, I think it would benefit students to NOT receive a grade on every single writing assignment...) I can see myself using the point system for a lot of student writing tasks, and I really like the idea of having students put together a writing portfolio throughout the semester. 

My link for this week is an article about a Sociology professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia who has designed computer software that grades student essays for his class tests. This concept is frightening to me as both a student, and a future teacher. 

My second, less *academic* link for this week is a fun little website called RateMyProfessors.Com. This is a spin-off of RateMyTeachers.com... Another horrifying aspect of teaching we will have to deal with in this great generation of internet savvy information-ager students. 

Week 3: On Voice, Wordchoice, and the Horrors of Grammar, Correctness and Style

The highlight of this weeks readings for me was the chapter on 'Voice' in 6+1 Traits of Writing. Culham writes, "Voice is the writer's music coming out through the words, the sense that a real person is speaking to you and cares about the message. It is the heart and soul of the writing, the magic, the wit, the feeling, the life and breath." While I completely agree with this, and I believe most lovers of the written word do, I'm unsure as to how many English teachers actually "encourage students to uncover what matters to them" and allow students to "discover what they think and feel," by expressing themselves through their own writing. I really enjoyed reading about this concept, and I've even thought to print off a couple of copies and send them to a few of the freedom stealing, voice thieving teachers that I have encountered over the years. 

My brother recently wrote a blog entry about his attempts to override the traditional education system that advocates the churning out of dull, academic essays by inserting his own thoughts and opinions about a text in parentheses. Apparently, this strategy was unsuccessful.

 

<< for a while in college... in my papers, I would insert random commentary on things in the novel that struck me as either funny or ridiculous.. It didn't go over very well. *looks down>>

<< ACTUALLY, I don't think I was using the Parenthesis technique for this particular response (which I thought was absolutely hilarious btw. I can't wait to preface something with "To be rude,") but it's comments like these that INSPIRED my writing in parenthesis. I thought maybe if I put my jokes or BS in parenthesis, acknowledging that they didn't belong in the essay, perhaps I could get away with having a little fun while writing the most mundane shit on the entire planet. BUT, turns out I was wrong. The few times I tried it, I got like a red line through the stuff in parenthesis, with a short, but capitalized "No" next to the line. Tragedy. One more voice being crushed under the cute bulge of fat America. :) >>

I include this in my post because I think it speaks to what many students have encountered when faced with writing their own versions of "the most mundane shit on the entire planet." 

One activity I would like to take from this chapter into my own classroom was the Greeting Card Activity where students work in groups to identify the "voice" of the author for each card. I think students would find this an interesting task, and depending on the cards I brought in, it could actually be FUN. 

Demonstration of the proper use of the "Parenthesis Technique" : 

(I laughed out loud when I came across the section entitled "Responses to Give to Students" on page 123. A table of cookie cutter responses for a teacher to let a student writer know that they are using voice well in a chapter about 'Voice.' How ironic.) 

Chapter 5: Word Choice, was a less enjoyable read for me. Culham writes "As students learn the lingo, steer them away from exceptional, impressive vocabulary, and toward the skill to use every day words well." I disagree with this in so many ways, but I read on found that Culham contradicts her own assertion in writing "Only through trial and error will students find the middle ground between word choice that is wildy out of control and word choice that is trite, mundane, and inaccurate." I would advocate that students should experiment with word choice, and rather than steer them away from thesauruses and guides on alternative phrasing, we should teach them how to use these tools correctly. It is pretty basic, students simply need to be taught that you can't just plug in any word from a thesaurus and it will work, but that the same word can have multiple meanings and therefore multiple alternatives that mean different things. I don't see a problem with a student getting "Word Drunk," isn't this the kind of passionate response to learning that we hope to evoke from our students? (Invoke/evoke/draw out from... I just used my dictionary widget on that one... Am I correct???) :) 

I really liked the four categories of word choice discussed in this chapter, I can see myself putting this up on the wall in my classroom: Striking Language, Exact Language, Natural Language, Beautiful Language; and having students write words and putting them in these categories. It could be a reference point for them. I also liked the "Bad Writing Contest" idea. I don't think students are often asked to find a piece of bad writing, nor are they asked to determine what makes it "bad." I think this could be a really enlightening activity, and again, it could be FUN. 

Speaking of learning being FUN, when I flipped open my copy of Dornan's "Within and Beyond the Writing Process," and realized I had to read a chapter entitled "Grammer, Correctness and Style," my reaction (which can be collaborated by my sister who was sitting next to me reading the Superficial online) was "Oh my GOD... Grammar, Correctness and Style???? I'm about to shoot myself in the &$*#!@ head." I found it amusing of course when the first few paragraphs of the chapter addressed the human propensity for horrific distaste when it comes to these subjects of the English language. The most important ideas I took from this reading include the notion that "one of the best ways for students to learn the conventions of Edited American English is through reading," and that teachers should provide classroom time for all stages of the writing process. I particularly liked the ideas of teaching mini-lessons and holding student-teacher conferences on editing and proof reading. I was reminded of a mini-lesson Mr. L (from Crosswinds) held in his classroom about the proper use of quotes in a story. I think these are effective methods of teaching grammar, correctness and style that I can employ in my classroom - steering clear of the worksheets and the vocab lists that are at their very core, "busy work." I was surprised to learn that "a century of research has failed to show any positive correlation between teaching formal grammar of any kind and writing improvement," particularly because so many teachers that I have substitute taught for still employ these methods. You'd think after 100+ years of these methods not working, teachers would be innovative enough to come up with alternative ways of teaching these things. Enter: Teaching sentence combining, composing and manipulation. I'm not very convinced by the fact that research merely "suggests" these activities lead to "more mature writing at the sentence level," and I found the activities to be reminiscent of the grammar worksheets the chapter dismisses as "mundane," but I suppose I will have to see how these activities work for my own students before making any final judgments. 

My link for this week is a page that provides activities for teaching grammar. I believe it was created by an ESL teacher, but I found some of the activities to be applicable to the English classroom as well. 

Week 2: Organization, The Essay, Etc.

In reading the chapter on Organization in 6+1 Traits of Writing, the following questions/thoughts came to mind: 

How has my own writing been affected (both positively and negatively) by learned organization techniques, and why? 

What/whose ideal for "good writing" is being met by teaching/learning these organization techniques? Are we choosing one ideal over another equally valid ideal?

How can I teach these methods for organization without sacrificing the "fun," and the personal creativity that goes hand in hand with writing an interesting, effective piece? 

In thinking about these things, I feel that I have, at best, come to somewhat shaky conclusions of my own personal beliefs regarding the teaching, or "enforcement" of organizational techniques for "good writing." I say shaky conclusions, because I question them myself for their validity. For example, I'm well aware that it is an ecological fallacy to base conclusions on personal experience, and yet this is how most of us come to conclusions, no? So, in MY personal experience, I feel my development as a writer was stunted by having one technique for organization of writing rammed down my throat for 13+ years of my education. I think Culham addresses this in the section entitled "Rigid Organization is Often Overvalued." I would like to steer clear of this entirely, but, as Culham mentions, this is difficult in an age of standardized testing. In my head I see this big machine called 'Education' popping out seventeen year olds that all look, talk, act, and think alike, and to me, this scene is akin to something in one of those doomsday science fiction novels.

I like that Culham discusses teaching organizational options, and I think this would be ideal, but, I'm afraid that for most teachers it is easier to adhere to a "one size fits all" technique for organizing a story, or a paper, and all too often this stifles the creativity of the writer and makes writing more of a chore than an enjoyable experience for students. The basic notion of a well organized piece of writing makes perfect sense, but I think things start getting complicated when it comes to what constitutes "organized." Whose ideal of "good writing" is being met by the organizational techniques described in this book and touted in the wider education community? I've read that in African American writing/story telling that author/story teller often begins the story with the punch-line, skips to the body of the story, tells the beginning and then gets back to the end. Clearly this is a form of organization, but I don't see it discussed here in this chapter, and I am unsure as to whether or not a story written in this fashion would earn a passing score on one of our standardized writing tests. I am curious as to whether this same idea holds true for other cultural organizational techniques, and I wonder how this has affected the scores of minority students on standardized tests (if at all, like I said, "shaky conclusions...").

In reading the chapter on the essay and other write-to-learn assignments in Within and Beyond the Writing Process, my thoughts were more about how I will go about teaching this essential skill (I say essential because it is, in an educational sense) without giving students the impression that the five paragraph essay is the highest form of composition for writing assignments. Unfortunately, I feel this was the impression I was given throughout my own education and I hope to not perpetuate this in my own teaching. Even now I struggle to write without plugging everything into the five paragraph essay formula. Ugh. (I don't think Ugh. would be allowed in a five paragraph essay, do you?) 

My link for this week provides some ideas for teaching organizational techniques in writing. 

On another note, please check out this link if you too are interested in hearing a minority perspective regarding the film Freedom Writers. (Yes, I am aware that this is only one perspective and cannot speak for ALL minorities.) I can't get past the ridiculousness of 25 middle to upper class white people discussing racial issues in the classroom with zero minority perspective on the subject. 

Week One: The Writing Process

I apologize for the presumed *great disappointment* of anyone who thought to click on my blog to see what I wrote about this week's readings... :) I ordered my books online a week and a half ago and have yet to receive them, and I have not yet completed the readings. I suppose the intelligent and responsible thing to do would have been to ask someone to borrow their books, but for whatever reason I didn't feel comfortable doing so. I planned on simply reading the posts of my peers and winging it, but, I feel like I would be cheating myself if I were to do this as I really enjoyed reading the wide variety of perspectives in the posts of my peers, and I've decided that I would actually like to give my own true opinion of the text rather than formulate it based on that of others. Soo... here's to holding yourself to higher standards based on the work of your peers... (Something I can't really remember doing at any point in my education before I entered this program.) 

I would like to provide you with a link, so as not to leave you in utter despair over the absence of my highly regarded opinion on the text. Web English Teacher provides a list of writing sites and ideas for classroom writing assignments. This is one resource I can see myself using in my own future classroom. I feel that lack of student motivation is perhaps the greatest obstacle for any teacher in getting their students to apply themselves to a writing assignment, and one of the best ways to overcome this is to allow them to write about something that interests AND challenges them. In my experience as a substitute teacher for the MSP school district, I have often enforced writing assignments that I myself find boring and pointless and I can't imagine perpetuating this within in my own classroom. I was really moved by the story Tracy Pyscher shared with us in class yesterday about the book of short stories her students created about their lives in Somalia vs. their lives here in America. I only hope that I will have both the opportunity and the ability to do something similar with my future students.