Claire: All Done

Genuinely this was my favorite class I’ve had in college. Everything about it was super interesting, even the gaming presentations that I had zero interest in. I feel like this class made me think a bunch and reevaluate how I learn and what my literacy practices are and it all just blew my mind.

The tradition sense of literacy is read this, write that, but I don’t see that as learning at all. The most beneficial part of this specific class to me was the article groups. I 100% understand why we did the readings and the reflective blog posts for the beginning half of the class, but that was the part I could have lived without. To me it wasn’t that engaging and I just wanted it to be over with. But as soon as we got to the article groups I was all in. It was so fascinating to see all the ways literacy differ in schooling and how people might apply things that are relevant to this day and age. One thing I have a problem with is the reading that is forced upon us in English classes. Like originally these old books were chosen because they addressed controversial issues and the readers could personally relate, but now days we see worse things on South Park, so students are not fazed by the readings and don’t learn. I believe the idea of learning is directly connected to the clichéd idea of fun. As soon as I am bored I learn nothing because I have lost my interest. For example, the hip hop group was great because it took something that student were generally interested in and turned it into an assignment. They had songs everybody knew and we all broke them down and it was genuinely hard, but I was so engaged I couldn’t help but learn. Or the maker culture for that matter. In high school they tell you to read a bunch of old book, but you never do and just spark note your way to an essay. My freshman year was an engaging class because we took books and instead of writing, did things with them. Like for “Of Mice and Men” we had to build a scene. I built a barn out of popsicle sticks and had hay in it and then brought a blonde Polly Pocket from home to use as Curley’s wife and set up the scene where she dies. Or for “Romeo and Juliet” where we got into teams and made videos all over campus acting out the play. These are the book I actually remember. I learned things form these books because the activities associated with them were fun and engaging.

My ideas of being a future teacher have changed so much because of this class. It literally makes me want to throw every idea of teaching and learning out the window and start from scratch. I want to be able to use the ideas from the article groups to keep my students engaged and learning. Yes there will be reading and writing, but hopefully I will be able to choose options that they are interested in and give them the options to choose what they want to read and keep them active in class and base the standardized lessons around those reading/activities. Basically it sounds like I want to work the system.