English 493 - Austin F

Like many of the stories that we have discussed in this class, “The Round House” is a coming of age novel for Joe, a thirteen-year-old, Chippewa boy. His mother, Geraldine, is tortured and raped at the beginning of the novel. Throughout the novel, Joe faces tribulation after tribulation, most of which stem from the event at beginning of the novel. First his mother is raped, then he gets caught spying on Father Travis, his father, Bazil, has a heart attack at the grocery store, Linden, his mother’s rapist, is acquitted of the crime, Joe tries to kill him, fails, and then Joe’s friend Cappy has to help him, then on their way to Montana, they get in a car crash, and Cappy dies while Zack and Angus, Joe’s other two friends, are injured. As a coming of age novel, “The Round House” features moments that make it more of an adult novel. It has moments that I would not necessarily feel comfortable having my students read the novel aloud, I would not object if they wanted to read it for a p...

“I Read It But I Don’t Get It” by Cris Tovani covered the topic of “fake reading” in the first chapter. The chapter in question explains what “fake reading” is and how students accomplish it. “Fake reading” is the act of pretending to read an entire book. Tovani explains that this could be done by “attending classes, reading first and last chapters, skimming the Cliffs Notes, and making Bs or better on essays and exams.” The chapter certainly hit close to home for me, I have been fake reading for about 15 years at this point and still do occasionally. Fake reading is a hard habit to break, especially when it works for the most part, and I understand why Tovani worked so hard against it. It was also a demonstration in one of the struggles of teaching that no one really talks about. Teaching students who dislike reading is hard enough, but teaching students who dislike reading and know how to almost convincingly pretend as though they read what they were supposed to read. I connected to...

To no surprise, Eastern’s edTPA Candidate Support Resource aptly names “Making Good Choices,” is brimming with useful information and helpful tips. For instance, I did not know that I would need the students’, or students’ parents’ depending on how old the students are, and the other adults' consent before filming for my edTPA. However, in retrospect, it makes perfectly good sense. “Making Good Choices” covers the three major parts of the edTPA with enough detail and useful information to make a candidate feel like they can pretend they are ready for their edTPA. The first part of the edTPA revolves around planning a lesson and was certainly the most helpful for me. Planning is not a strength of mine, but the more times I read through the Candidate Support Resource, the more ready I felt. It may all be a façade, surely, but hopefully, I will be able to plan well enough by the time my real edTPA begins. Only time will tell. The second part of the edTPA focuses on instruction, ...

Christina Torres wrote the article “Why Teaching About Social Justice Matters,” in which she discusses why social justice is an important topic to talk about in the classroom. She pointed out that when asked to write about stereotypes, 40% of her students wrote about racial stereotypes and 20% wrote about gender stereotypes that they faced. Without fully understanding the social justice buzzwords, her students wrote their essays about micro-aggressions that they faced and the negative and/or damaging expectations that were thrust upon them. The topics and ideas that the subject of social justice invokes are the struggles and tribulations that our students face every day. These are the ideas that our students are passionate about, that they wrote about on Twitter and Tumblr, that they make memes about on Reddit and Instagram. Someone once said that: “Movies are made by the rich, for the poor; opera is made by the rich, for the rich; theatre is made by the poor, for the rich; but memes,...

Ender’s Game and the Turmoil of Youth and War “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.” --Andrew “Ender” Wiggin Description Ender’s Game is a story by Orson Scott Card about Andrew “Ender” Wiggin who attends Battle School with the rest of Earth’s brightest children, where he is taught to fight the “buggers” and how to lead an army. The Battle School is designed to test the children’s ability to lead in order to defend Earth if the buggers attack again. Slowly but surely, Ender proves himself a competent leader, despite the obstacles stacked against him. He eventually gets control of his own army, Dragon Army, made up of other recruits. He leads Dragon on to become the top army at the Battle School. Soon after, he is taken to Eros to Command School, w...

The banking concept of teaching equates education to a gift that bestowed by the teacher, knower of everything, onto the students, knowers of nothing. Students then become a thing to which knowledge is thrust upon, which is almost true albeit in a twisted sort of way. The banking approach to teaching serves to dehumanize students, to treat them more as a commodity than as actual people. Students learn and teachers teach, nothing more. But when phrased like that, anyone can look at it and realize that that is not entirely accurate. Students can and should do some much more than just learn, and teachers can and should do so much more than just teach. If “students learn, and teachers teach” is the standard to which we are held then we are severely, catastrophically, underestimating ourselves as teachers and our students. The banking system also oppresses our students, it forces them into a little box that most of them will not fit into. It dehumanizes, as mentioned, but it also has the c...