Interpretation

     Hectic is characterized by intense agitation and excitement.  I would define the past few weeks as just such an experience.  My pre-student teaching week went well.  There was quite a bit that I would change about the lessons I taught and I made note of that.  One of the most valuable things that is now in the front of my mind is that kids, even seniors, have extremely short term memories.  I tried to activate prior knowledge for bellwork using a cartoon from the gulf oil spill and they had no idea.  I changed the cartoon for block 2 to one satirizing the government shutdown and it worked much better.   From that point I have been working on my semester plan for student teaching.  I am about 2/3 of the way done and I feel rather good about that.  I am hoping to have a draft for my CT to review over Thanksgiving. 

     There has been a situation that has taught me a lot in the last week.  The question is about interpretation.  When should you teach a piece of literature from a certain point of view?  Furthermore, should you teach an interpretation on a character’s sexuality based solely on what you, the teacher, have self analyzed?  The answer I have come up with is no.  If there is literary, textual, and academic basis for including sexual orientation in the teaching of a work then do so.  For example, one cannot teach the Catcher in the Rye without talking about Holden’s sexuality.  However, if a characters sexual orientation is not mentioned in the text and if it does not alter student’s analysis of the narrative then leave it alone.  The situation really comes down to whether or not you can defend the position that you are taking.  Scholarly journal articles, textual evidence, and other such sources can serve to help you defend your position, use them.

     On a lighter note, I am teaching Beloved in the spring and I talked to one of my English professors.  She gave me some great ideas on a project to help my students analyze the novel.  I ended up using two professors ideas and modified a project to make it more accessible to high school students.  I try to post my version here when I am done.  The basic idea is that the students, instead of reading day after boring day in class, work on the project during class and read outside of class.  The project involves students by having them teach the class using their own guiding questions and prompts.  Students are divided into groups of three and four and then come up with a 15-20 minute lesson over a specific prompt/guiding question they have been given.  They are instructed to use different media if they would like and NOT to read from a text.  I got positive feedback from two of the students who read my project outline.  I gave a copy to my CT on Friday and I will hear from him tomorrow.  I hope he likes it! 

     Overall, my pre-student teaching semester has been extremely valuable.  I feel like the concepts and ideas I learned in previous college classes and observations are coming together in exciting ways.  I still have quite a bit to plan, but it doesn’t seem as daunting as it did before because of the tools I now have to work with.  School politics is a necessary evil, but if you do your homework and back yourself up you will come out on top.