Subbing in Monroe County Schools

I subbed today at Templeton Elementary in a sixth grade classroom. I jotted down notes about what I saw during the class. I came in after lunch and recess, and so the first thing that was being dealt with was the “incident” at recess. One of the troublemakers of the class was explaining to another teacher about a black kid with whom he got into a fight. He said the boy was a “gangsta getting up in my face.” I was a little disturbed by having to somewhat deal with a fight only two minutes into class, even though I didn’t directly deal with the problem. I realized quickly that it was a low-achieving class, and the student teacher in charge affirmed this. It was really pretty diverse; there was an African-American kid, an Asian kid, and two Latino kids, and they all seemed well liked by their classmates. The class in general seemed very accepting and comfortable with one another. The class was also primarily male (maybe three girls?), and it was a very loud and raucous class.

I wanted to comment actually less on racial issues but on tracking. The student teacher explained to me how NCLB was affecting her classroom. She said that they primarily taught English and Math, and there was a big emphasis on testing. There was very little focus on science and social studies, and she said that she hadn’t taught really any science in a few weeks. I just can’t believe that. If America is so concerned with pushing our students to be real competitors, it has to be about more than taking the math and English tests. These kids aren’t learning anything that will help them in the global world, and they are falling behind in those subjects. I just can’t believe that our grand solution to bad schools is to focus the content so much on testing within Math and English. It’s ridiculous. And the strategies to teach were really aimed at low-achieving students and didn’t help the students stretch themselves at all. The student teacher read to them while they drew or slept, and the rest of class time was spent playing an anagram game. So all these kids learn about is English and Math, and all they do is draw, sleep, do skits, and play games. Where is the real learning? When do these kids actually get to be creative? It’s just stupid.

Communication Tools

Communication can be defined as an exchange between two or more people. There are multiple forms of communication tools: one to one (phone, IM, email, text), one to many (blog, email), and many to many (wiki). There are two forms of interaction: synchronous (immediate feedback like texting or talking on the phone, chat room) and asynchronous (email, blog, bulletin). A good example of a communication tool is yakpack; teachers can use this asynchronous tool to communicate information to students such as notes, review information, or important updates. A similar tool is vocaroo.

Poe

Fall of the House of Usher:

• Gothic and horror themes, suspense, dejection, melancholy
• Psychological illnesses
• Madness: Usher has schizophrenia or split personality
• Frontier gothic: confusion in the night, constricted society, huge mansion
• Symbol of crumbling mansion, which seems to have its own sentience (eye-like windows, perceive things)
• Beautiful young woman dies
• Plenty of symbolism in mansion, status of minds, etc. Also foreshadowing through pink color of Madeline's cheeks

Berenice:

• Evident psychological illnesses, hallucinations
• Blurred barriers
• We doubt the reliability of the narrator
• Liminal space once again of love and death
• The beautiful woman dies a violent, horrible death, just like "Usher." Is this to create a more heart-wrenching ending or is a comment on the beautiful and prized things in life?

Tell-Tale Heart:

• Use of sounds to build suspense: from silent and still to shrieks, screams, and groans; beating heart and ringing; only he hears the heart beating
• Obsession with the eye similar to the obsession of the narrator in "Berenice" to teeth
• Affliction of the nerves
• Relation of insanity and morality
• Very intense and long descriptions of paranoia, fear, guilt, horror, and more; Poe's gift is his description of emotion and setting
• Undermining of rationalism in American Gothic: perversity of the self, whether it is acknowledged or not
• Punishment within religion and American Gothic; punishment isn't always justified, although this narrator attempts to; grotesque punishment
• Major theme within American gothic is the murderer's fixation: very concerned with the here and now as opposed to higher reason
• Because the narrator's motive can't be ascribed to logic or reason, it blatantly defies the themes of reason and rationalism in this era
• Ambiguity is another characteristic of American Gothic literature: what happens to our narrator? How do the police react to his outburst?
• Comedic irony: insistence on rationality and attention to detail
• Evil eye: also references to this in Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu faiths as cause for unexplained illnesses or misfortunes; to counteract such misfortune, extraction and distraction serve to dissolve the evil

Poems: Browning, Rossetti, and Dickinson

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets

• Juxtaposition of love and pain
• Receive love based on self-worth
• Romantic love, outward expression, love can be clumsy
• Death, love, and the liminal space between them

Christina Rossetti: Who Shall Deliver Me?

• Who is this "someone"? Is it God, herself, or a man?
• Grace can take away our pain; very religious undertones
• Lots of self loathing and anger
• Similar themes as found in Paul's letter to the Romans

Emily Dickinson: "For each ecstatic instant" and "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant"

• Self-worth
• In "Ecstatic" Dickinson alleges that happiness is bittersweet; you can't know happiness without some pain, which is what Austen alleges in Persuasion
• Little structure
• Truth is ambiguous and can be many things

Persuasion response

Anne grows up a lot in this novel; by the end she can't be persuaded as easily as she was by Lady Russell. She is also very perceptive which allows her to form better judgments based solely on her own observations. There is very little discussion of gender save the scene toward the end when Anne and Harville discuss the constancy of women in love; their discussion flows over to art expression in which men have more advantage and tend to paint women in a poor light. Another image of women is the role of Mary Musgrove in the novel; she is ironically made a mother, but her number one concern is herself. She uses her children to get what she wants, such as the case of her son's injury. Anne is definitely presented as the heroine of the story, but does that make her the modern heroine? She doesn't possess many of the characteristics we expect to find in heroines, but she is strong of character, expects people to do good things, enjoys intelligent discussion, and strays from gossip and persuasion. If not a modern hero, she was a hero for her time, at least. Anne also has much of the Elliot pride in her, but it affects her differently than it does Sir Elliot or Mary; instead, Anne takes pride in elegance of mind and amiability. I think this makes Anne a more realistic character; she has her flaws, but they aren't overwhelming, and she puts her abilities and mind to good purpose.

Modern day comparison: Cinderella

Themes:

• Upward class movement: juxtaposition of lower class men who are amiable and caring to upper class men (Elliots) who are vain and arrogant
• Beauty: Anne versus Elizabeth
• Pride
• Assumptions that lead to pain or embarrassment
• Persuasion v autonomy
• Confusion is huge throughout the novel; Wentworth and Anne are confused regarding each other; Elliot trying to win Anne; internal struggle, too
• Humor: Mary and Sir Walter are hugely funny; they are foil to the complicated arena of Wentworth and Anne, and they serve many similar functions as the comedic foils in Shakespearean plays
• Suppressed emotions

Austen in context:

• Women in this period are supposed to be fragile; they can't express anger, but boys can express anger if it is in a directed arena; they are considered weak
• Passionate and intense feeling are only acceptable if they serve the family=family unity is extremely important, as Anne proves through her fidelity to her family's happiness
• Within novels, emotions are never really conquered because there would be no rebellion and no room for growth
• The healthy way for a young man to focus his anger was through politics or work; Wentworth proves this by immersing himself in the navy
• 3 most threatening emotions: anger, fear, and jealously. Anne experiences some of these, but she doesn't allow them to rule her, making her the picture of emotional perfection in the Victorian Era.

Multicultural strategies of Teaching

Collected from Romo, Serrano, etc:

1. Create multicultural clubs
2. Bring student experiences into lessons
3. Travel
4. Focus on guided learning rather than being the popular teacher
5. Keep learning and reeducating yourself: "The real purpose of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things"
6. Reflection!!!!
7. Challenge harassment
8. Allow for opportunities to speak and write about multiculturalism
9. Cultivate student esteem and responsibility
10. Help students understand peer pressure
11. Mentor
12. Respect on both sides
13. Socially engaged students/citizens
14. Use simulation and role-playing
15. Need to be intentional
16. Struggle for students
17. Challenge student assumption and be aware of our own attitudes
18. Take risks
19. Validate students' culture and experiences
20. Remain open to new perspectives
21. Humility, flexibility, courage
22. Feedback is important--develop accountability groups with the staff
23. Education should shake up our world views
24. Be aware of silencing
25. Hold students to high expectations
26. Be open and frank with students

Overwhelmed

I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. As a teacher, I want my students to learn so much that I don't think they are going to be exposed to before. I want them - my English students - to know and care about their environment. They are just as responsible as anyone else for the climate, and they should be aware of that. So many people are ignorant these days, and that's just ridiculous. And it would be so easy to work that into our curriculum. My 12th grade teacher did; I wrote a paper about it. Furthermore, students aren't exposed enough to politics; I certainly didn't know all the facts surrounding the Iraq war; I voted for the president that my Dad voted for. Students should be well-informed and excited to be participating in their community. Of course, most of my students won't be of age, but I can still prepare them and make them curious. This, too, can be implemented using a paper or project, but I'd really like to find a novel about it that would be relatable. Maybe Anne Frank would have a good correlation? - I could argue that Germans weren't aware of what was going on around them, so my students should be aware....Or maybe something different.

Also, students should be expressing their own opinions; a journal is perfect for this because it allows them to get their own ideas out. Maybe that's how I'll get them interested in all this stuff. Because I also want them to be aware of their surroundings and aware of the racism and discrimination in their schools and homes. Journal entries prompting them to discuss this would certainly raise awareness; and we could discuss it in class. A good book to tie this in: Anne Frank, while I'm on it! Also, The Color Purple is good, the Awakening, and the Merchant of Venice. Another way to promote multiculturalism is to have my students read a diverse selection of books: Their Eyes Were Watching God; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Good Luck Club; When I was Puerto Rican; Merchant of Venice again; Arabian Nights; Fall Apart; Frankenstein.