This class was different than what I was expecting. I thought it would be all about composition of essays, but I ended up learning and challenging myself in completely different ways. First of all, I neve thought anyone could convince me that video games were anything but dull, mindless, violent entertainment for teenage boys, but the Gee book made such amazing points that made me look at video games as tools that are actually valuable for learning. I enjoyed the parts about schema-building and getting to try things over without really being penalized (the psychosocial moratorium idea), which we later incorporated into the reading inquiry we did. Seeing how editing and revising works helps students realize they don't have to create perfection, or get the the last level of the video game, on their first try. The concept that he introduces early that I had never considered was that the more challenging video games sell. This he tried to incorportate into a classroom setting by encouraging teachers to make assignments more stimulating, engaging, and challenging with rewards. This is such a novel idea to have been derived from analyzing video games. This idea of working within the regime of competence is directly related to many things we are taught as Liberal Studies students; children learn best in the zone of proximal development, or in another class we called it FLOW, where you are challenged and it's not so easy you're bored, but not so difficult you get frustrated and quit. This is so important to adapt to a classroom and for each individual because tehri levels will be different.
The Harvey book had some great suggestions that tied in with many of the articles we read for the inquiry and for the memo and reported on in our wikis. One of my favorite ideas I saw in both were letting students choose their own topics and having them read like writers in order to learn to be better writers. In one assignment in my junior year of high school our final was too look back on our portfolio of work since our freshman year and make some conclusions. One that I made, which was the basis for my essay, was that if I cared about the topic and was interested and engaged, or if I got to choose what I would write about, I ALWAYS wrote much deeper, more meaningful essays and that was consistently reflected in the grades I received. This really is such an important idea for encouraging students to write. In my assignment sequence project I made sure the students were allowed to pick someone they wanted to read and write about. Learning to read as writers was a theme that was repeated in the inquiry articles and in Harvey's book where she had examples of students breaking down articles and saying what the article was conveying within each paragraph and using that as a model for how you should write. This is so important to help students learn the different ways there are to format your writing and that the fundamental part is that you are engaging the reader and getting across the important points, so having this model shows the students how and where to do that.
I've always thought that teaching writing is one of the hardest concepts for teachers. I don't remember being taught. It's not like math where it's seemingly black and white or like science where you follow a formula to determine something. Even history has dates and people and landmarks, but writing is so abstract. There are so many ways and it seems like there can be no "right" way to write, but the ideas from the inquiry reading articles and the Harvey book show how as an educator you can help your students improve their writing by modeling for them, co-authoring, letting them choose a topic of interest, having daily short writes, and many more.
The most difficult assignment for me was the digital document. It wasn't only difficult because of my challenges with getting all of the technology pieces to amalgamate, but it was my topic that I found to be toughest. It was a very cathartic experience for me, though, to discuss and put down my feelings about these people that I loved who have died recently. I had been trying so hard to get through these things and move on that I hadn't dealt with my feelings, but this assingment allowed me to turn to microscope on myself and experience my emotions and convey them to others. I obviously had serious difficulties with the technology as well, but despite all of the hours and frustration and blunders, I'm glad I learned a little more about technology and my computer, and that I've made something that I will value for the rest of my life as a snapshot of my feelings at the time. This is not the kind of advanced composition I was expecting, but I've written a million essays and while I have some I value, this digital document more deeply reveals what I could have never expressed verbally in an essay.
I'm not going to do the credential program and I won't go on to teach at this point in my life, but I have absolutely learned many valuable things from the readings, class sessions, and assingments. Just some of the concepts can be used in a broader way than just to teach English or writing and those are the ones I will value the most. I still don't like video games personally, but now I can appreciate the value and learning tool they can be.
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