Writing Amid Literature

"As English teachers our major responsibility is to enfranchise students in our classes to such a degree that they think of themselves as writers, as those who use written language to both discover thinking and communicate thought, who boldly try varied forms of writing, using them to meet their needs," (131). I completely agree with everything about this thesis. There isn't much to elaborate on about it. It's direct, and exactly what every English teacher should implement in the classroom. It's foolish to suggest that students can learn about reading and writing without enjoying what they're doing in class; by varying the forms of writing within the classroom, students can enjoy learning. "To appreciate great literature and writers... we must link students with the greats who have written."

I really enjoyed this reading because I agreed with everything that was said, I enjoyed the examples of creative writing given, and I respect and admire the teaching methods the author thought up. My favorite part was the Walt Whitman assignment. One of the greatest essay prompts I have ever seen. I love to see teachers  use creativity to create a learning environment for their students, and it seemed that the students were completely engaged and excited about their "test".

On a related subject, my favorite quote out of the whole chapter is "...we teachers would do well to keep in mind the origin of essay, a word derived from the French term essai, which means 'to attempt'," (157). More often than not, teachers hand out standard essay prompts to students because they have to assign essays or want to see what the students have learned thus far. However, having the same type of prompt for years on end leads students to become bored and uninspired by the assignment at hand. Teachers need to attempt new ways of testing, and teaching, so that students are constantly inspired to learn and try new things.

Will My Name Be Shouted Out: The Play

Firstly, I didn't like how O'Connor was so judgmental of his students about their work. When the student's continued to not side with his opinions, O'Connor states that "I concluded, to be perfectly honest, that my students were stubborn, stupid, or inattentive," (111). I'm glad that eventually he learned enough about his students to revise his opinions of them and realize they have experiences that shaped their opinions that he can only barely grasp.

Secondly, I'm not sure of how effective bringing religion into a conversation with his students was. It seemed as if no one knew what he was talking about anyway, so I didn't really see the point of him even approaching the subject. There were plenty of other ways to describe how people idealize being nice to their enemies in the face of opposition without even mentioning religion. Yes, the christian faith especially focuses on being nice to others and the Commandments and all that, but he could have just stated, "People should love their enemies," or "If your enemy slaps you on one cheek you should turn the other one to hi and let him slap you again," and see what responses he received from it. They would have been extremely similar responses, and he wouldn't have had to broach the sensitive topic of religion.

Thirdly,  I really enjoyed the play the students and O'Connor created. A lot of the dialogue was very simplistic and "told" me facts about the characters rather than "showing" me, but that was because it was all taken from students' writing and they told instead of showed. Ideally, O'Connor could emphasize "showing" the next time he does a project such as this. I really enjoyed the ending of the play, when it flashes from present to past and explains people's backgrounds as well as their feelings of the event. It was emotionally compelling as well as informative about events after the fact. It was put together well and the students seemed to be very proud of their work, which is most important.

I Don't Remember What The Prompt Is

Because I don't remember what the prompt was, I will write and elaborate upon the discussion we had in class about others' blogs from the last reading.

In the first blog, the writer states that he/she wants an open classroom with less emphasis on grammar and punctuation. He/she says that a teacher can't be a stickler for details if he/she wants his/her students to be comfortable with writing. I disagree, because I think that students can only be truly comfortable with writing once they can implement most of the rules. A classroom can still be an open classroom even though the teacher is a "stickler" for details. How are students supposed to become better writers if the teacher doesn't enforce grammatical rules?

An open classroom, to me, means a student-centered class. One that is focused on group discussions, projects and working together, rather than a lectured class. In the tenth grade, I had a teacher who was an extreme "stickler" for grammatical errors. It was extremely difficult to receive an 100 on any work. However, it was a student-centered class with lots of discussions and partnered work. We did many assignments, in groups, that were based upon learning grammar and in-depth sentence structure. So, even though she was hard to please, students were still motivated to share their work and participate.

A classroom that is focused on having students work together to come to a conclusion about something helps students learn better than any sort of lecture they would be given by a teacher. Almost all people are hands-on learners, meaning people learn through experience and making mistakes. Therefore, teachers need to think of new, inventive ways to keep students learning. Teachers should try to avoid repeating assignments because then students become accustomed to that type of activity, and cease to learn from it. Every lesson must be different than the last, so that students learn new things through new ways of thinking.

Will My Name Be Shouted Out: The Bensonhurst Project

I'm glad that O'Connor thought his students' writings turned out so successfully. I really liked what he said about relating writing to political and social importance. It's important to teach your students that their writing does matter, so that they are still motivated to continue writing. And in actuality, many move on to write things that actually do matter in the world. Through writing, we can show the reader other perspectives that they may not have thought about before and hopefully get the reader to understand these perspectives. Through understanding, we can create a safer world for future generations because there will be less fighting and arguments over differing opinions and views.

Another thing I liked in the reading was how O'Connor read students' work to his classes in order to make them motivated to make their writing better. Sometimes all a student wants is to be better than someone else, and sometimes they just want to be better than themselves. A challenge could be all a student needs to get started in writing. Reading other students' writing also shows the classes what mistakes were made, and how to fix them. Often, an example is needed in order for students to really understand how to fix a problem.

A good thing about this project was that there were so many characters involved with the story. The amount of characters made it so that students had a variety of choices of what to write about. It leads to more interesting writing from students because O'Connor didn't have to read the same thing over and over.

Lending Library Preparation

How would you react if you had to teach poetry to 9th graders? What would you teach and why?
I would dread teaching poetry, period. However, if I had to teach poetry, I would find the weirdest and craziest poetry I could find (keeping the age of the students I have in mind) and create lessons based on them. At least if they're weird, crazy, or different the lesson will be interesting.

You're given an AP US Lit class your very first year! Lucky you! A veteran teacher advises that you teach what is most familiar to you first for the first 2 months... What's that?
I would probably teach To Kill a Mockingbird. Because I was taught that in the past, and enjoyed the book, I feel like I would have a lot of material to work off of.

Uh-oh! Drama teacher quits! You have to submit a list of 5 plays that you'd teach. Can you do it?
Probably not. I'm not even sure I've read five plays. I've read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and parts of Othello. I suppose if they didn't have to be classic Shakespeare plays and move more towards musicals, I could teach The Sound of Music or Fiddler on the Roof.


I say "writing about nature," you say:
Lord of the Rings. There are so many beautiful scenes in those books that you can't possibly not pay attention to the images in your mind while reading.

3 Favorite writers/3 most despised things to teach:
Favorite writers: J.R.R Tolkien, Mira Grant, and James Rollins.
3 most despised things: poetry and Shakespeare. I don't really have a third thing.

Will My Name Be Shouted Out: Creating a New Project

I really like that O'Connor, instead of using the same lessons he had been giving, changed his lesson plans to make his students' writing better. Most teachers would just continue their lessons as if all their students were writing brilliantly, because either they're too set in their own ways or can't think up a new lesson. O'Connor's idea for the Bensonhurst Project was a good one. I know that when I'm told to write one story from different perspectives, I enjoy the writing assignment and usually produce good writing. His fear of students not wanting to do the project because they have to take the narrative of the "bad guys" was a reasonable fear. What O'Connor should have know, though, is that secretly everyone wants to be the bad guy occasionally. It spices up life and makes things interesting. Also, emotions associated with "bad guys" such as anger and sadness are easier to portray than ones associated with "good guys", such as happiness and fear.

It's also good that O'Connor waited until after the holidays and his leave of absence was done before he started the project, because a continuous stream of classes is needed to have well-executed and thoughtful projects handed in. If I was really excited about giving my students a project to do, I don't know if I could have waited until after the vacation was over. I know that a lot of my teachers would give us projects to do over the holiday vacations, but they never turned out as well as they would have had I done them in class or during a work week.

Greatest Creative Writing

When I was in my senior year of high school, I took a creative writing class with my best friend. We were really looking forward to writing lots of new short stories, since we had been doing it on our own anyway for a while. We wanted more feedback than just the feedback we gave to each other. However, we were disappointed by the creative writing class. Instead of creating lots of literature like we had thought was going to happen, we just wrote lots and LOTS of poetry. I mean tons of poetry. A whole composition notebook FULL of poetry. My friend and I didn't even like poetry, and this increased our dislike for it.

There were a few good exercises that we did in class, though. My favorite one (at least the one that I can remember the most) involved magazine cutouts. Our homework assignment was to go home and cut out a picture from a magazine, the internet, or a newspaper that had one or more person in it. Then, when we came into class, we shuffled all the pictures together and passed them out among the groups of four people. For three to five minutes, we had to write the background of the person(s) in the photo, or describe in a narrative what was going on in the photo. When the time limit was up, we would pass the photo to our right and repeat the process. We did this for a total of three times, and then shared our favorite piece with our neighbors. I really enjoyed this assignment  because there was a basis for my creativity to shine. I didn't have to think up what my character looked like or how he/she acted, because it was all right there in the picture. I just had to make up the situation, which was nice. I also came up with some really great stories from the exercise, which was really nice. It was loads better than the poetry I'd written all year.

Will My Name Be Shouted Out: From One School to the Next

O'Connor really enjoyed the poems his students created. They were deep, meaningful, and insightful. The only problem was that his students didn't see the deep, meaningful, and insightful things within their own poems. All they saw was the task completed, and the literary techniques implemented. All the poems that they thought were their best works were the ones that O'Connor found the most unoriginal. I'm glad that O'Connor finally transferred over to writing short stories instead of poetry.

I could have a biased opinion on this because I don't like poetry myself. I know that I can write potentially good poetry, as can just about everyone else in the world with the right guidelines. But I don't know what makes good poetry. I am just like O'Connor's students in the sense that I know how to write poetry, but I don't how to create good poetry and know that it's good. I feel like there are very few people in this world that can write truly outstanding poetry, and I am not one of them.

However, I really enjoy writing short stories. Short stories are very simple to write, once you've learned what literary techniques are required in order to create one. Short stories can be about anything at all, just like poetry. But you can tell when a short story is good, and when it isn't. When a short story has meaning, it was put there on purpose, not by accident. When literary techniques are used, they were meant to be there, not put there because that's what is expected.

Teaching in Brooklyn

If I was teaching in Brooklyn, I'm not sure what part of my background would prepare me for that. The city, in itself, is a very dangerous place, and although I live close to it, my town is fairly rural and completely different from it. If anything, my perseverance would help me get through it. As a child, I was forced to solve my own problems because my parents weren't there to help me. I spent a lot of my time in day-cares, so I know what activities are fun for kids, and what activities kids find boring or useless. I've also met kids from many different ethnicities through these day cares, so I don't have any biases or stereotypes. I treat everyone the same, which is a good quality for a teacher to have. Also, I've had plenty of English teachers both good and bad, so I know which teachers to mimic slightly and which ones to avoid mimicking and all costs.

Honestly, I don't think anything can prepare you for teaching in Brooklyn. From what I've heard, teaching in the city is very difficult. The kids are from all different backgrounds and places, and the teacher has to cater to all of them. A lot of the kids are difficult to work with because they're rambunctious, rowdy, and possibly violent. A teacher needs to be very cautious of what they say and do with children like that in the room. And that's not including all the children who are slow learners or mentally disabled.

Free-write: What Makes a Good Teacher?

What makes a good teacher? A good teacher has passion for their subject. A good teacher can teach well, meaning that students understand what is being taught without much trouble. A good teacher is not afraid to not know the answer, but will research and then supply the answer. A good teacher is willing to learn. A good teacher is open-minded to suggestions and student responses.

Students believe that teachers always know all the answers, so teachers feel like knowing everything is crucial Admitting that they don't know an answer, or were wrong is not an option. However, teachers are just as human as students. They are allowed to be wrong, to fail, and to not know. That is one way students can relate to teachers. In a learning environment, everyone must learn.

Writing in High School

I've waited a whole fifty-six pages, and now she's finally gotten to me! She's told to write an essay comparing and contrasting these two books she has read, and is told she needs it outlined. I can tell she's agitated, because she scribbles a very short outline on me and rips me away from my binding very quickly. My top left corner is stuck to the binding, but she doesn't bother to rectify this. The excitement I had felt when she turned to me has quickly evaporated; I thought my use was going to be more fun. The previous fifty-six pages were not abused in this way; She seemed glad to write on them.

I know she liked all the creative pieces she had to write on my friends. It seems that she simply likes creative writing more than structured writing. It seems I'm unlucky. My one-time-use is wasted upon an outline; a mere draft!

What has been written on me seems very unimportant. The person who told her to write this one me didn't even read what was on me. She simply glanced at what has been tattooed on me and put me in a pile with the rest. I feel so useless. Soon I am handed back to her, and she stuffs me in a dark space with some of my friends. She never looks at me again.