bootism-shoe-religion

I think this is a hard questions for me to truly answer well. Since I'm not really going to be a literature/writing teacher specifically. Since I will probably be teaching many subject in my teaching career. I am going into special education. I think that I will be using literature in many ways. I think literature is a powerful teaching tool. Since I enjoy reading I will encourage my students to read as well. I will accomplish this by using literature in my teaching and have opportunities to read on their own. Since reading and writing are difficult for some students, i will take the stance of how powerful reading and writing are in our daily lives. The population that I plan on working closely with need a practical reason for learning things. I would build my lessons around the practical aspect of reading and writing.
I want my students to want to learn. I hope that I can be engaging and fun. I like to see students think on their own. To make new discoveries. (Side information to understand: I have been in College of Ed. Done my TA and one Student teaching) For example: in a 6th grade language arts class that was made up of 10 students with learning disabilities. I used literature in a way that made them discover something about themselves. I used two picture books Don't Laugh at Me, and I'm Gonna Like Me. Our discussion about these two books was awesome. They knew what it was like to be laughed. They did a project on who they are. What is special about them. That it is ok to be different. It does not make them a bad person. They were free to explore who they are in the this classroom without censure. For example one male student expressed himself through the color pink. Don't often find a boy liking pink but I encouraged him to write only in pink.
I want my classroom to be a place where students feel comfortable enough to express themselves in many different ways. I remember some of my own literature classes they were intimidating. I never expressed my view very often, because I did not feel that the class was "safe" to express what I got out of the reading. I probably use journals a lot more at first then move to class discussion.

I think that biggest part of my job will be motivating my students to want to read and write. There are some basic principles of motivation.

Basic principles of motivation exist that are applicable to learning in any situation.

The environment can be used to focus the student's attention on what needs to be learned.

Incentives motivate learning.

Internal motivation is longer lasting and more self-directive than is external motivation, which must be repeatedly reinforced by praise or concrete rewards.

Learning is most effective when an individual is ready to learn, that is, when one wants to know something.

Motivation is enhanced by the way in which the instructional material is organized.


The basic learning principle involved is that success is more predictably motivating than is failure. THis is something to think about when teaching. Are we more motivated when we know we can succeed? Or are we motivated by the challenge. I think that it is different for people. I think that for students with disabilities they are more motivated by sucess because they have probably been told a few times that they are dumb, stupid, you could never do this. Well, once you hear it a few times you start to believe these things. So if they have the belief that they can't do it, then why try?

Click here for more information on Motivating students

What is literary reading? When I think of reading in general it is reading anything. For example reading a sign, a cereal box, magazine, or book. But when someone refers to literary reading I think of reading literature. More specifically reading a novel. Like Charles Dickens, or Mark Twain. This question can be answered many different ways. I think that any reading should be considered literary reading. I think that if english majors/english teachers were asked this question they would answer something like reading a piece of literature. Who decides what is worthy literature anyway? I think all things that are published should be considered literature.
This question was asked of me. I think anything that is read for information or enjoyment is literary reading. I read many books but some people don't read books unless they have to. And then there are those that should read but do not. In the case of my future teaching position I think that anything that I can get my students to read is a huge accomplishment. Since the students i will be working with will dislike reading. They probably would rather have a tooth pulled then read a book or anything for that matter.
According to the NEA literary reading is on the decline. They are saying this decline has become a national crisis. This report has stated that it has declined 10 percent which is about 20 million potential readers. That's a lot of readers. If you would like to read more on this report on the decline in literary reading click here.What is this saying about our schools? Why is there a decline? I thought there would be an increase because of the emphasis now on reading and writing. I guess I was wrong.
The question now on most people's minds are how do we fix this problem of people not reading? I think the problem might be that people don't see the benefit in reading. They don't analyze why we read. People don't realize how much of a disadvantage it would be to not be able to read. The is might be a societal issue. We live in a capitalist nation. Where we have upper, middle and lower class. Someone has to be at the bottom. Then also the flip side could be that we need to analyze who participated in this survey by the NEA. Was is a sample of equal parts upper, middle and lower? Were there both men and women in this sample? How big of a sample did they use? Could this survey be skewed based on the sample? Surveys tend to be biased. You can make a survey turn out the way you want it to. To make a point in your favor.

I was very excited when one of the assignments for this class was a unit. I don’t really have much practice in unit planning. The experience I do have is only in planning on lesson not thinking of a two week period. I think this is due to being in special education. The College of Education in the special education program does not require you to do a unit for the special education placements. They only require a unit for the general education placement which is in elementary. Although it would be more work for me I think that they should require us the complete a unit in the special education program, because it would prepare us for the general education placement. The reason I am enjoying putting this pedagogy project together is because I feel I need as much practice as possible on lesson planning. Also if I do it now then I may not have to do as much when I’m a teacher since I will have some lessons prepared already.
Lesson planning is different for a class of students in general education versus a class of students with special needs. I mean in a general education class you put it at the present grade level there really isn’t any tailoring to the lesson. In a special education class there is much tailoring, because if you don’t then your students are not benefiting from the lesson. I think the hardest part of the project was not tailoring it to a special education class. I have to get out of special education mode. It is hard to get out of special education mode when that is what I’m so use to. I have to say the mantra of “this is not special ed”. The other thing that I am finding hard is to choose the right books. I have to ask myself is this book appropriate for students, is the school going to have issue with the book I choose. In reality the school district usually picks the titles that teachers are to teach. Many times teachers don’t have a choice. The books I chose for my book journals are Stargirl, Perks of being a Wallflower, Speak. I think that these are great books. I just don’t think they would be on top of the list of books taught in a literature class. I think they should be. I’m at the stage where I don’t really know if I’ll use one or all of these books for my unit. I think that it would be a rich and rewarding unit for students. I think these titles would be options to read for independent reading versus taught. I think this is another difference between special education and general education is that there is a lot more freedom in choice. This is from my personal experience. One school that I was in I asked if we had Standards to cover. The teacher I worked with said no we get throught what we can get through. I didn't have to worry much about Standards or benchmarks. I think this could be can of worms in a way. THere could be a debate over should students with disabilities be held to standards and benchmarks. I'm really on the fence about this. Because most of the time students with disabilites are grades behind, which means they are not usually learning what their peers are learning.