Week 7: Wrap Up

In our parking lot exercise today, my favorite idea put on the board was the one Alyssa brought up having to do with teaching critical literacy. This is something that was not really taught to me in high school. We always just sat and absorbed what our teachers told us, what the authors wrote, and what we saw happening in the world. It was not until my AP lit class that I learned how to read critically. My AP lit teacher told us that even though the text is our main source, we still have to examine every factor that went into that text. It was not created in a vacuum. Its main influence is the biases of the author, which is influenced by the history and culture of that time period, and so on.

I don't believe that this needs to be limited to Advanced Placement classes, and obviously it does not need to be limited to ILA courses. We learned in this semester that any subject and any text can be read critically. Because so many students are taught to just absorb absorb absorb, we are going to have to shatter this idea about school and build up a culture of critical literacy.

Week 6: New Media Frenzy

There were all kinds of new media learnin' happening today. I really liked the new Voice Thread as a way to get students to reflect in a fun new way. Rather than assigning a paper, assign students a podcast. That way students still have to write out a script, but then they get the chance to perform it. The students will be more willing to perform, and even collaborate via a new media platform rather than in front of the whole class. Even better, you can replay these podcasts in class to address ideas and questions brought up by students.

The RAFT project was something that I was not into initially, but once we got going it got super interesting. The best part was that we got to decide what we wanted our project to be. So the students who are talented artists, comediens, or writers can all participate in a way that makes them shine. One of the important factors of motivation is autonomy. So, this is assignment is a great way to get students motivated because their learning is coming from their own interests.

Power & Race

Overall, I am really happy with the way our (Race) presentation went today, but I'm also really glad that it was paired with the Power presentation. I suppose that Power kind of goes along with all the subgroups, but it was a really great way to synthesize all of the discussions going on across our courses right now. 

The Power group presented really great new ideas about the correlation between power and information. I don't think we really came to a consensus, but I don't know if anyone really can. Overall it just sounded like the censoring of information by any public institution is bad, whether that is the state or a public school system or the public library. Concealment of knowledge from the public is a misuse of power by the state. 

I saw a great quote about this the other night on Pinterest: "The books that call the world immoral are the books that show the world its own shame" - Oscar Wilde

The big issue is that for the most part the government is run by the racial majority. Which means that the majority race gets to decide what goes into "public knowledge" and on a smaller scale, what goes into public school as the "canon". That's our real issue as teachers. We must deconstruct the idea of "normative" and seek our own personal self.