Future Teacher of America

I thought that Webquest was very helpful for us as future teachers. I didnt know that such websites existed. I found this activity to be fun and engaging. I liked the various things that we could explore and it gave us a great opportunity to learn new things. These resources will definetly be in my arsenal when I start teaching.

Four Freedoms week was a very interesting week. I think I was introduced to a side of myself that I had never known before. I actually began to care about things that are going on in society rather than just in my own personal life. Dr. Bruce Jacobs was a very inspiring speaker I think he opened everyone’s eyes to the insanity that is occuring in everyday life. I think that any racial issue can be solved through education. Dr. Jacobs stated that a woman from Perinton and a man from the West side of Rochester have two completly different views of each other. With education each person can see what is on the opposite side of the fence rather than continuing to misunderstand and have hatred for one another. Diversity can also be influenced by education the more you know a person the more you can put yourself in their shoes to fully understand what they are going through.

I think it is important to be prepared for any presentation that you may have to do. Going along with Frankenstein I think the Dr. knew what she was doing but didnt access the timeframe or the audience in which she was speaking to. I thought she could have spent a lot more time on the three individual cases instead of going so much into the history of monstrosities. I thought the first picture she showed us was very engaging. I know that everyone around me was trying to self-diagnose what the problems were and were picking what they thought was the coolest one. If she would have spent more time introducing those figures rather than just pointing at them and explaining briefly. It was hard to pay attention to some points of the lecture because it was hard to follow, I didn’t even understand what the 2nd individual case was because it went right over my head. I liked the presentation overall I just think she could have done a few things differently.

I enjoyed the presentation on Frankenstein yesterday. I was surprised to find out that a lot of the monstrosities were all a misconception especially the one about the women giving birth to rabbits, and rabbit parts. I cant believe that people would spend money to see people with deformities and get a kick out of it. I would treat these people with respect and try to put myself in their shoes to truely see how they would feel if people couldnt look at them or walk down the street in terror. It is important that these people get treated like people so they dont have to be “Frankenstein” and be lonely and secluded for the rest of their lives

I would like to comment on the self assessment assignment that we had to do. I thought it was very informal for each of us as a teacher. I think it gave us a chance to look internally and ask ourselves question’s that we would not normally ask ourselves. I thought it was a great learning opportunity for myself to really get on paper what I was thinking about my career choice and where I am headed. I will definetly do exercises like this in the future because I got a chance to learn a lot about myself.

After going through the Poverty tour I couldn’t believe that a family of 4 was only making 19,000 a year. I watched the breakdown of all of the money and what it goes to and I realized how lucky I am to be living where I’m living and have what I have. I can’t even imagine the struggle that those families go through and what they have to sacrifice day in and day out. I’t made me appreciate that I am recieving a good education and that I can better myself so I dont end up in that situation. As future teachers especially if you are going to teach in high poverty level classrooms you have to be prepared for a world in which you have never recognized. Many people think that children in poverty are dumb and they are going to end up in the same situation that they are in. As mentioned in the reading it is the job of the educator to reach out to every student no matter what situation they are in. You can take a student from poverty and a student from a wealthy family and sit them down and teach them the same thing and if you are an efficient teacher you can get both of the students to understand the information

In the podcast that we recently listened to one of the major arguments that I payed close attention to was the NCLB or the No Child Left Behind act. Kozol mentioned that there was “terror” in schools because of the harsh conditions under the NCLB. Kozol insists that teachers are just teaching for the test and the students are in terror because it is a do all end all kind of exam. The problem that exists with this kind of teaching is that the students dont gain any of the necessary knowledge that they would recieve under conditions that werent so fearful. Terror clouds the students minds and even the Teacher’s because the students do nothing but learn for the test and the Teacher just focuses on teaching for the test. The NCLB doesnt help students that are from lower SES situations because they are compared to students who may go to a better school or have had access to many years of schooling when minorities or students with lower SES situations may have only been exposed to a few years of education and are far behind their grade level. I hope that the NCLB has some kind of revisions to it because I dont see anything good comming from it at all.

Today I would like to comment on chapter four of the Daniels and Zemelman book regarding Hard vs Easy reading. I believe that reading should be challenging because it forces you to engage the reading so that you have no choice but to understand it. However I think that some reading challenges students to much to the point where they dont want to engage it or just set it aside and not read it at all. I think this is where the different stratagies such as: Jigsawing, and Guide-O-Rama come into play. With Jigsawing it allows students to engage with one another and it divides up the work so they dont feel like they are doing everything. Jigsawing creates a good class discussion and allows the students to learn everything through their fellow classmates. If this model doesnt work for you it is then easy to point them in the right direction using the Guide-O-Rama model. When I was in High School I felt that my teachers didnt explain what we had to do to often. A lot of times certain students in the class would rely on each other for help with assignment because they were unsure of what to do or lacked the proper guidance. With the Guide-O-Rama model teachers can point their students in the right direction and give them hints of what to look for in the reading.

I would like to comment on the article that we had to read for today. I took note of the method of Mental Modeling. I think that it is important for teachers to help students read regardless of what subject is taught. Even if I am teaching a Social Studies class I think it is important to incorporate all of the subjects into my teaching. I would love to sit down with my students and help them attack certain texts. I think it is important to use the mental modeling process to help students analyze texts in the way that you and I would. I like the example used in this article about how a coach can not simply just go out and tell a student to hit a home run. The coach shows the player or student where to stand and how to hold a bat. I think as teachers we can be the coach of the classroom and guide students at reading and help them further their comprehensive abilities.

Reading, within this theory, is not linear but cyclical. Visual, perceptual, syntactic, and semantic cycles are constantly in play, each dependent on and enabling the others. This reflection is on the Victoria Purcells article dealing with Comprehension is Primary. I think we as students and teachers take it for granted how we can read so well. I dont think we look as deep into reading and what components make it what it is today. I believe that Comprehension is the most important aspect of reading. According to Goodman’s theory reading is a transaction between the reader and the text. In order for anything to make sense the reader must fully understand what he or she is reading. As students read the same piece it may be the same piece but each student will have a different understanding of the information and different views on what they have read. I guess I never really looked at that side of reading before and it has helped me realize that I may not have been comprehending the information to my full extent.