This is a bittersweet final post to write. At least a final post concerning my English 493 Class. I have spent this quarter immersed in theory and practice that I have not gotten in any other class before. I've gone from aspects that I am familiar with to ones that it took me a moment to wrap my brain around. Pedagogy of the Oppressed was a difficult text for me to understand, for example. And SIOP is something I've gotten in depth instruction on. All of it placed together had created a new section of my brain that didn't exist before.
I actually did mean to say a 'section' of my brain, because it isn't just ideas. It's more than just knowledge. The entire course was planned to scaffold us into the mock trial of the mini-lesson and the grueling task of the Unit Plan. It was a step-by-step process that I didn't fully understand until it was finished. My own first experience with scaffolding a student was a surprise to me too. It wasn't until later that I realized what I had done. This course was like that. The funny thing is that we were informed that it would be scaffolded at the beginning of the course. But it wasn't until the end, until now, that I realized the extent of it. I don't know whether or not the course would have worked if it had not been formatted in this way.
The course also helped me realize that I had begun to look at myself as part teacher and part student. I have been assessing my own professors for quite a few quarters now. And I have been compiling books and ideas for lessons on a small bookcase. I find myself smiling indulgently at people who mock my choice of career or call me crazy. This course helped me to see that this was just my way of accepting and stepping into my future role as an instructor. I am, of course, still a student. I have been drowning in finals and worried about grades and dragging my feet to campus in sweat pants. But the change has begun. My change has begun.
I saw this in the mini-lesson I taught. I was a nervous wreck before it began and at the start I stumbled and forgot the order of my lesson. Then, I'm not even sure why, I felt my shoulders relax and my smile was real and I was enjoying myself in front of the class. The change was stark to me in reflecting on it afterwards. There was no mention of it, so others may not have seen the change. But it was like a freight train to me. And I just thought ... "I can DO this!" And that is a wonderful thought to have.
I'm still a little unsure about the intensity that comes out of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I can pick out the theories it holds that make it such a well quoted text. I even agree with some of them. I am just not as well versed in the ravaged and oppressive world that this work was written in. It's hard to swallow the energy behind this text without having experienced the devastation first hand. I try to come as close as I can, but I don't know that I will ever get there.
I also believe that I will be struggling with the Common Core State Standards for a while to come. They are so specific and in some ways so vague that I struggle to find what they are actually asking sometimes. This statement might need a little more clarification. It's not the standards themselves that are vague, instead it is the connections that I will have to make to my lessons to cover them. If I'm not teaching a a novel, but poetry, how do I teach the way that the author creates tension and mystery? That is a very specific type of poem I would have to find, because it is difficult to parlay some poems into this aspect. I understand that not all standards must be covered at one time, but repetition is always a good idea. The standards are very specific to what it should cover in that grade level, but it is up to me in some respects to figure out how to apply it. That will be my struggle.
Teaching will always be a struggle in some respects. The field is always evolving. The students are never the same. The answers I receive could be shocking. Some students will struggle no matter how hard I try (but I will never stop trying). And some schools will be uncomfortable to work in. I know this. I understand this. I accept this. And I am looking forward to every moment of it!
Friday, March 20, 2015
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Mini Lesson on The Complete Persepolis
TPA Lesson Plan #____12___
1. Teacher Candidate
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Tara Halvorson
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Date Taught
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3/11/2015
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Cooperating Teacher
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John Smith
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School/District
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District 81
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2. Subject
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English
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Field Supervisor
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Katie Higgins
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3. Lesson Title/Focus
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Exploring the Impact of Color on The Complete Persepolis
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5. Length of Lesson
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20 minutes
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4. Grade Level
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11
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6. Academic & Content Standards (Common Core/National)
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Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).
Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
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7. Learning Objective(s)
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The students will be able to analyze the author’s choice to use only contrasting colors and how those choices affect the development of story elements, meaning and aesthetic impact of the text.
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8. Academic Language demands (vocabulary, function, syntax, discourse)
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Aesthetic - design choices which are meant to give pleasure through beauty
Graphic Weight - describes how some images draw the eye more than others, ex: the use of light or dark shades, dark-toned images, or high-contrast images
Space - refers to the area between, around, above, below, and within objects
Negative Space - spaces surrounding shapes or forms
Positive Space - shapes or forms
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9. Assessment
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10. Lesson Connections
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Schwarz, G. E. (2002). “Graphic Novels for Multiple Literacies”. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 46. 262-265.
Lesson occurs during the reading of the text. Lessons on the realities of the war in Iran in the 1980’s and war in general have been discussed. The author’s background and the fact this is a biography has been covered.
Students have been taught that the first thing they do in class in to copy the Learning Objective down in their notebooks.
Students have class experience in calling out their answers and being courteous and polite and taking turns speaking.
Students have shown in previous assessments that they are not taking the art into account in how the story is told. This lesson will help them to analyze the novel not just for the words, but also for the impact that the art itself has on the story.
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11. Instructional Strategies/Learning Tasks to Support Learning
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Learning Tasks and Strategies
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Teacher’s Role
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Students’ Role
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Student Voice
At the beginning of class, a student will read aloud the learning objective and the class will try to explain what it means. At the end of the class, the teacher will again show the learning objective and ask the class if they have question about it or if they feel they have accomplished the objective.
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12. Differentiated Instruction
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Listening, speaking, writing, and reading will all be used. This will help auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners gather their information. The comic assignment will also help kinesthetic learners and introverts and ELLs prove that they understand the information. The use of partners will also help introverted and ELL students to feel more comfortable asking questions and creating understanding, as well as the teacher circulating will allow students to ask questions they may have and did not want to ask in front of the class. The vocabulary will also be printed and available to those students who read and write too slowly to copy in the time allotted.
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13. Resources and Materials
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14. Management and Safety Issues
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Class discussions can become hectic if students do not respectfully take turns speaking. This class will already have experience with this technique. If they do not courteously take turns speaking, the teacher will resort to calling names and having students raise their hands.
Students may lose focus as they choose partners and become off task. Teacher will give a warning that they only have thrity seconds to find their partner and have a seat. Should the students not listen, the teacher will clap her hands in a rhythmic manner and the students will releat the clap. This will happen again and again until everyone’s attention is on the teacher. Then she will remind the students to immediately find their partners and take a seat. The clapping will be an experience that the students are already familiar with.
Sharing supplies can be a problem with some students. If a problem should arise, teacher will calmly approach the group and try to calmly mediate the problem. If the problem continues, the two students will be asked to step outside of the classroom and the teacher will join them to mediate the problem in a quieter and more private setting.
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15. Parent & Community Connections
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The stories that are created are of the student’s choosing. The teacher will encourage the students to share their wonderful work with their parents.
Page 140, which is being discussed in class, concerns the imagined loss of the author’s family. This will be included in the discussion of why the contrasting colors were chosen.
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Wednesday, March 4, 2015
The Handmaid's Tale
The
Handmaid’s Tale
Written by: Margaret Atwood
Summary:
The Handmaid's Tale is set in the
near future in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic military dictatorship
formed within the borders of what was formerly the United States of America.
Beginning
with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that
kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the
"Sons of Jacob" launches a revolution and suspends the United States
Constitution under the pretext of restoring order. They are quickly able to
take away all of women's rights, largely attributed to financial records being
stored electronically and labelled by gender. The new regime moves quickly to
consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized,
hierarchical, compulsorily Christian regime of Old Testament-inspired social
and religious ultra-conservatism among its newly created social classes. In
this society, almost all women are forbidden to read.
The
story is presented from the point of view of a woman called Offred (literally
Of-Fred). The character is one of a class of women kept as concubines
("handmaids") for reproductive purposes by the ruling class in an era
of declining births due to sterility from pollution and sexually transmitted
diseases. The book is told in the first person by Offred, who describes her
life during her third assignment as a handmaid, in this case to Fred (referred
to as "The Commander"). Interspersed in flashbacks are portions of
her life from before and during the beginning of the revolution, when she finds
she has lost all autonomy to her husband, through her failed attempt to escape
with her husband and daughter to Canada, to her indoctrination into life as a
handmaid. Offred describes the structure of Gilead's society, including the
several different classes of women and their circumscribed lives in the new
theocracy.
The
Commander is a high-ranking official in Gilead. Although he is only supposed to
have sex with Offred during "the Ceremony", a ritual at which his
wife is present, he begins an illegal and ambiguous relationship with her. He
reveals to her hidden or contraband aspects of the new society, such as fashion
magazines and cosmetics. He takes her to a secret brothel run by the
government, and he furtively meets with her in his study, where he allows her to
read, an activity otherwise proscribed for women. The Commander's wife, Serena
Joy, also has secret interactions with Offred, arranging for her secretly to
have sex with Nick, Serena's driver, in an effort to get Offred pregnant. In
exchange for Offred's cooperation, Serena Joy gives her news of her daughter,
whom Offred has not seen since she and her family were captured trying to
escape Gilead.
After
Offred's initial meeting with Nick, they begin to rendezvous more frequently.
Offred discovers she enjoys sex with Nick, despite her indoctrination and her
memories of her husband. She shares potentially dangerous information about her
past with him. Through another handmaid, Ofglen, Offred learns of the Mayday
resistance, an underground network working to overthrow Gilead. Shortly after
Ofglen's disappearance (later discovered to be a suicide), the Commander's wife
finds evidence of the relationship between Offred and the Commander. Offred
contemplates suicide. As the novel concludes, she is being taken away by men
from the secret police, the Eyes of God, known informally as "the
Eyes", under orders from Nick. Before she is put in the large black van,
Nick tells her that the men are part of the Mayday resistance and that Offred
must trust him. Offred does not know if Nick is a member of the Mayday
resistance or a government agent posing as one, and she does not know if going
with the men will result in her escape or her capture. She enters the van with
her future uncertain.
The
novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue that explains that the events of
the novel occurred shortly after the beginning of what is called "the
Gilead Period". The epilogue is a "transcription of a Symposium on
Gileadean Studies written sometime in the distant future (2195)." According
to the symposium's "keynote speaker" Professor Pieixoto, he and
colleague Professor Knotly Wade discovered Offred's story recorded onto
cassette tapes. They transcribed the tapes, calling them collectively "the
handmaid's tale". Through the tone and actions of the professionals in
this final section of the book, the world of academia is highlighted and
critiqued.[5] The epilogue implies that, following the collapse of the
theocratic Republic of Gilead, a more equal society re-emerged with a restoration
of full rights of women and freedom of religion.
Why choose this text:
When I was in my junior year of high
school the time of year came when the class needed to choose a book from the
approved list. I was unsure what to
choose and asked my teacher for advice.
She smiled at me and told me she knew the exact book that I should
read. The next day she brought me this
book from her own library. It changed my
view on women’s rights in a way nothing had before. To this day I still hold onto this book in my
mind with the hope that one day I will be able to recommend it to one of my
students.
I
was a proficient reader and I would not recommend the use of this book with
struggling readers. I would also suggest
that the students who study this sort of material are of a higher grade level
or are in AP classes. The discussions
that must arise from a book which tackles the subjects of religion and
oppression may not be suitable for a younger audience. Whatever class uses this text should be
prepared to tackle this subject area and the classroom culture should feel safe
for the students.
How to use this text:
The
topics of this text include religious and gender oppression and the environment.
·
Current
events in multiple corners of the world are encompassed in these factors
currently. This book could easily be
tied to the study of the current war in the Middle East.
·
Gender
oppression can also be tied easily with the history of the United States. Discussions of women attaining the right to
vote would tie in well with this story.
·
The
use of handmaids in the text came to be because of pollution and sexually
transmitted diseases. This could be tied
to current world events as well. The
AIDS epidemic in Africa, global warming, the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan,
or the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are all changing and affecting our
world and can be discussed.
Obstacles:
This
is a controversial text. Its topics are
hotly debated in current events. The
oppression of women and their fight for some sort of agency is a difficult
subject when taken into context with the struggles in the Middle East. There is always the chance that your class
could include students from a culture where women are a separate class from
men. This could make those students and
their families uncomfortable. The
administration shouldn’t find fault in the discussion of women’s rights or the
right to vote for women wouldn’t be taught in school. There could be a far greater amount of
backlash from the dark portrayal of religious extremists. Even though it is clear that the dictatorship
IS the work of extremists and not the average Christian, Christianity is the
politically prominent religion in America.
Certain schools will not allow the teaching of a book which smears the
Christian religion and certain parents will not allow it either. This is something that will need to be
discussed with the administration and a decision made on whether or not to send
a note home to the parents.
An Extra Note:
The
idea of a subjugated dystopian society is nothing new. 1984 has been taught and debated since it was
created. The difference in this work is
that the subject is wrapped in religion and focused on the plight of
women. It is up to you as instructors if
those are topics you wish to attack. They
are hotly debated.
It
should also be noted that the basis of the Gilead society is wrapped up in the
Old Testament. The use of handmaids as
concubines has a biblical origin. Jacob
took his two wives handmaidens as concubines when his wives were unable to have
children. Abraham also took his wife’s
handmaid. It was believed that since the
handmaids belonged to the wives that they were a suitable substitute; the baby
would still come from the wife, instead it would be born of her property rather
than her body.
If you decide to speak on these subjects, this
is a well written and engaging book to use.
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