English 493 - Austin F

Despite the negative connotation swirling around the boogeyman of education, the standards, the begin of this article stated a good point that many parents, and even some teachers, fail to recognize. Teaching to standards actually helps students in a number of ways. Among them, seeing improvement inspire students’ confidence, and the standards give students something clear and concise to strive towards. Seeing improvement in their grades and scores show students that they are learning what they are supposed to be learning. This gives students a sense of accomplishment and pride, which in turn, inspires them to do even better in the future. One of the foreseeable issues with this notion is the effect of consistently poor grades on a students’ confidence and mental well-being. If getting good grades has a positive effect on students then surely getting bad grades has the opposite effect. While standards are useful, and I do not disagree with their use, it is important to remember that o...

Reading and writing are two of the fundamental aspects of studying English. In one way or another, they are connected to everything that we do as teachers and everything that our students do as, well, students. Beyond the scope of school, writing is a skill that will last them a lifetime, perhaps even longer depending on their will to use it. Now, it is quite unlikely that any of us will teach the next Shakespeare, but it is nevertheless important that our students understand how to read and write constructively. Luckily, California State University has some pointers to improve our teaching abilities. This CSU template discusses both reading and writing, how to both do and teach them more effectively, and discusses some ways of assessment. The template emphasizes an idea that it calls “reading rhetorically” which essentially means to the purpose of the text, the intentions of the author, and the effect of the audience. In order to achieve this, reading is broken into three parts: ...

Prior to returning to school to studying teaching, I had only heard about Common Core Standards second- and third-hand for, at times, some very unreliable sources. As far as many of these sources—most of whom had not, did not, and would not work in education—were concerned, Common Core was the scourge of the earth coming to poison our water supply, burn our crops, and deliver a plague our houses. Much like Bubble-buddy from Spongebob never actually did any of those things, neither has or will Common Core Standards. While Common Core certain has its flaws, it is important to remember that nothing is perfect, and this applies especially to mandated by the government. One of the actual limitations of Common Core Standards is the rigidity of some of the standards themselves. For instance, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.11-12.2.C states that: [Students must] [u]se varied transitions and sentence structures to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships ...

Despite the immense degree of my nerdiness and the fairly substantial comic book collection in my library—mostly old Spiderman and X-Men—my first interaction with a proper graphic novel was at the college education level. In my Intro to Fiction class (I think), we read The Dark Knight Returns as one of our assigned texts. Honestly, I have never been more excited to read an assigned book before in my life, and that includes reading parts of The Fellowship of the Ring my freshman year here at Eastern. I think graphic novel are important to include in English classes for a number of reasons. Graphic novels are more interesting to read than traditional novels, comics, in general, are a huge part of modern American Literature, and they will give the class an opportunity to discuss the effects that the medium has on the story itself. Graphic novels utilize images, traditional the medium of children’s books, to tell adult-themed stories. In the same way that a children’s book tells a sto...

Concerning “Discussions as a Way of Teaching” by Stephen Brookfield, I had not previously considered the necessity of establishing ground rules for a discussion. I had thought that the most effective way to have a discussion is to have a free-for-all, and just let students discuss to their heart's desire, but making sure that everyone has an opportunity to speaking is undoubtedly necessary to facilitating a decent conversation between students. Speaking of rules in classrooms, I think that it is important to include students in the process of making the rules. That way, they will be more likely to follow said rules. As such, the first time that there is a group discussion, I will need to consider this and prepare for the extended amount of time to make rules. I previously had not considered the sheer number of roles in a discussion, much less the necessity of the teacher to model them. In my experiences, the teacher or professor operates primarily as a Problem, Dilemma, or Th...