My Inspiration

My aunt, Mary Lou Cook, is someone who has inspired me. 

Her father was the Judge of Probate in the city of Shelton, Connecticut and her mother was a stay-at-home mom.  She graduated from Shelton High School and went to Southern in the 1950’s.  She graduated from Southern and become a special education teacher in the Shelton Public School System.

What I find so inspiring about her was that, not only was she a special education teacher when many special education children were hospitalized, she was the first principal of a school for children with special needs called Ripton School in Shelton.  She remained principal for about 10 years until she became the Director of Special Education for the city of Shelton.  She remained director for 15 years, and when she retired she took a job with the state of Connecticut as an advocate for students with special needs.

What is so inspirational is that it was not until she was diagnosed with lung cancer that she ended her career fighting for what was right for students with special needs.  I can remember going to visit her in the hospital, when I had to wear a mask and robe because her immune system was so low, and she would ask me question about my job tutoring students with autism.  Even though she must have been in so much pain, she was still interested in what was going on in the world of special education.  She really was an amazing woman, and I hope that I can be half the woman that she was someday. 

My Favorite Moment in History

Asking me what my favorite moment in history was is kind of a weird question.  One of my favorite topics to learn about in history was the Civil War.  I liked learning about the different wars that made up the Civil War, and I appreciate the outcome of the entire thing.  One of my favorite eras in history is the roaring 20’s.  I love the clothes, and the music, and the frivolity of like as depicted in The Great Gatsby. 

Both of those are very interesting, but I prefer talking about myself though. So, for this blog I’m going to write about my favorite moment in my history.  That moment lasted 4 years, but when I look back now it seems to be a blink of an eye.  That moment is my time in high school.

I was not an awkward kid growing up.  I played 2 sports, and had a lot of friends.  I had friends from every group; the jocks, the drama geeks, the science geeks, and a bunch of upper classmen too.  The people I ran with were all good kids.  I was actually more afraid to get into trouble.  I was so afraid to get in trouble that my friends now tell me that I was a Goodie-Two-Shoes (As Adam Ant sang, “Don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?”).  I got good grades without really trying and my parents gave me just enough freedom to do what I wanted within reason.  I had my first steady boyfriend in high school, so I knew that I always had a date for any dance.    

Looking back, I think it was my favorite moment in history because I didn’t have a care in the world.  I understood that I wasn’t a grown up yet, but I was responsible.  I wanted to grow up and move out, and I’m happy that I did now, but I wish I had to careless life of a high school kid again.  I really do understand the statement, “If I knew then what I know now…”  It had been said to me so many times growing up, but it took becoming an actual adult to understand what it truly means.    

Adolescent Conflict

I know most people will probably write about bullying because it is a hot button topic in the lives of adolescents, but I’m not going to do that.  I’m going to write about divorce.  I think this is an important topic to write about because it affects so many families.

I do not come from a family of divorce.  I suppose because of this I am not writing on good authority, but I do know many people who come from a family of divorce or have gotten divorced themselves.

I couldn’t imagine what a child can go through when their parents are divorcing.  It must be so scary.  Listening to all the arguing, having one parent no longer live with you any more or to having to move completely must be frightening for a child to go through.   

Because parents are the ones who are experiencing it firsthand, the child may have to take a backseat.  This is where being a teacher, and understanding what the child is feeling is so important.  The child will need someone to talk to, someone who will listen and help them. 

I also think that the child will need someone to relate to what they are going through.  Because I have not experienced divorce in my own home, I can use realistic fiction books about divorce to help my students.  One of the key ideas in a piece of realistic fiction writing is to help the reader connect to what the characters are going through.  I know there are many books about divorce that I can use to help my students get through such a difficult and confusing time in their lives.

My Rambling Video on Valerie Strauss

If you are watching this video, I apologize for the rambling I did.  I was literally going through the screens for the first time.  I also am still dealing with a virus, so sorry about the pop-ups.

My Fictional Hero

I really didn’t have a fictional character that I looked up to as a child.  I have to admit that until 8^th grade, I really didn’t do much reading for pleasure.  And the books I read in 8^th grade were mostly Stephen King or V.C. Andrews novels, and for those of who aren’t familiar with that work there are no good heroes in those stories. 

A book that sticks out in my mind that I enjoyed as a child was Bridge to Terabithia.  I remember liking these 2 books as a kid, but not because I found any of the characters heroic.  I was drawn to books about make believe places.  My brother and I often played games where we would imagine ourselves in faraway lands that didn’t exist in reality.  Reading about them helped my imagination grow. 

I guess because I liked reading about magical make believe lands, you can say that those places were my heroes.  I loved that in Bridge to Terabithia Jesse and Leslie created Terabithia, a magical forest kingdom that they could escape to.  Terabithia grew to be my favorite character in the story, and was a hero to me because it was a place to hide from reality.  I was jealous of Jesse and Leslie for having a Terabithia.

Now I can say that I like strong female characters.  I would love to be Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games or Tris from Divergent.  I think the give girls growing up now someone to look up to and aspire to be.  These girls broke the mold of a hero being a man and show that girls can kick some ass too!  How can they not be my heroes?!?! 

Investigating Valarie Strauss's "Common Core's Odd Approach to Teaching the Gettysburg Address"

The article I chose to examine was Valarie Strauss's “Common Core's Odd Approach to Teaching the Gettysburg Address”.  I was originally drawn to the article because I really liked learning about the Civil War when I was younger, so I wanted to see how they want to teach it now.  Little did I know that they aren’t teaching about the Civil War at all and I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed! 

The idea of teaching the Gettysburg Address without giving students any background knowledge is insane to me!  Strauss writes, “The idea here is to plunge students into an independent encounter with this short text.”  But how can they have an independent encounter if they can’t connect with the text.  Not knowing or understanding exactly what it’s about will not help them gain any knowledge on what was going on in our country at that time. 

What also irritates me with this goal is that it expects students to get frustrated and struggle.  I know that when I had to read in school I would just give up if it was too difficult or uninteresting to me.  The article states, “Some students may be frustrated, but all students need practice in doing their best to stay with something they do not initially understand.”  Strauss goes on to write that the close reading approach levels the playing field because it does not give any background knowledge.  I understand the students need to persevere through difficult work, but not all students can cognitively handle a piece of writing like the Gettysburg Address without any additional information. 

What I find very interesting is that it seems that Strauss agrees with me.  She understands that giving students tasks such as this makes school “wildly boring”.  They are not expected to make any connections in what they are reading, just draw from the text itself without knowing any other information.  It also makes sense that she believes that this standard mimics standardized testing where students are expected to answer questions from a text that they have never seen before.   

Ultimately, what I really appreciate about this article is that Strauss understands the missed opportunity that we will have as teachers by not being able to help our students form a connection with this text.  This standard believes that asking students to make a connection will not bring them closer to understanding the Gettysburg Address, but I have to disagree.  The point of this speech was a memorial service to all the fallen soldiers of the war.  By asking students if they have attended a funeral before or experienced death, the teacher is helping their students make a critical connection to the text.  This connection breathes life into the speech and helps the reader gain a deeper understanding.

Common Core Standards and Shifts

Anchor Standard	Instructional Shift	How to Teach It
RL.2.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.	Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.	This can be taught by having the students read the stories Little Red Riding Hood and Little Red Cowboy Hat. Once they read the 2 stories they can fill out a Venn diagram to show how they compared and contrasted the central messages in each.  The students can draw pictures that show their comparisons.
RL 3.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.	Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.	This can be taught to students by having them read a fable, folktale, or myth of their choosing.  Once they determine the central theme of that story they will write a fable, myth, or folktale of their own with the same theme.  This will show that they understand how to identify the key details because they will have to include them in their own writing.
RL.4.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.	Determine the theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.	This lesson can be taught by choosing a featured poet.  Each student will choose a poem from this poet, determine the theme of the poem, summarize what the poem is about, and write their own poem using the same theme.

 

My thinking about this is to have the students engage in writing their own pieces of literature at every step. In second grade they can fill out a Venn diagram showing their comparisons and contrasts.  In third grade they can write their own fable, myth, or folktale to show the central theme and key details of a piece of writing.  For fourth grade the students will be introduced to poetry and can be asked to begin writing their own poetry. I think it's important to have them writing in every step of the way. 

I also find it interesting that the standard for 3rd grade expands on the goal from 2nd grade by having the students not only determine what the central theme of the fable, myth or folktale is, but also having them explain how it's conveyed in the story using key details.  I find this to be an interesting way to introduce students to identifying key details in a story.  I also like that from there they expand even further for 4th grade by introducing drama and poetry.  I can remember in my experience I didn't read a play until 6th grade, and I really enjoyed it!  I would've much preferred reading plays earlier in my education rather than some of the junk I was forced to read!

I Hate Poetry

I am going to preface this blog by saying that I really don’t like poetry and I’m only doing this because I have to.  Please don’t judge me too harshly! 

 

I Hate Poetry

I hate poetry

With the fiery blaze of one million suns

I hate poetry

          Alliteration, couplet, metaphors make me sicker than drinking Ipecac

I hate poetry

          I would rather shove needles under my fingernails

I hate poetry

          It is the WORST form of writing that was ever created

I hate poetry

          And I’m never going to write another poem again!

 

Again, please don’t judge my writing on this blog!

         

 

 

This Assignment Is Finally Over!

Writing my narrative essay was really fun, but ended up being really difficult.  I really loved my topic and was excited to be writing.  It was what went along in trying to write a children’s book that was so difficult. 

I really enjoyed the peer review when writing this assignment.  There was a lot of information that I wanted to include in this essay, so I found myself missing some key ideas that my peers pointed out to me.  It also helped to hear what was confusing to them, so I could reword it to make better sense.  I even had some friends not in our class read my essay and help me revise it.

What I found most difficult about writing this piece (that’s to say after the difficulty I had even choosing a topic) was “dumbing it down” so that it was at a lower grade level.  First of all, I didn’t realize that you can check the grade level of your writing in Microsoft.  Second, I had no idea that writing what I thought were simple sentences would come out to be at an 8.8 grade level!  It took more time trying to get my writing to a lower grade level than it did to write the piece to begin with!  With that being said, my essay is completely different than what I started with.  The only similarity is that it’s still about a boy with autism.

With all that being said, I did really enjoy the narrative writing assignment.  It was a lot of fun to do and I really liked being able to share it with people.  Who knows, maybe I can send it to a publisher…probably not.

Narrative Essays

Holy crap writing a narrative essay is tough!  First of all, coming up with a topic was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.  There are so many things to write about that picking just one is difficult.  Because I could think of a topic, I tried to choose a genre.  Yup, that was harder.

Needless to say, I finally decided on a topic, and (with the help of Dr. McVerry) chose to do a piece of realistic fiction.  I realized that I wanted to write a piece of work that could be used to introduce students with autism to a young class.  I wanted it to involve picture, so I was torn between realistic fiction and a picture book.  I wanted realistic fiction because I wanted my story to be realistic, but made up.  And I thought about a picture book because I think that kids are drawn to illustrations and they help them understand a story.  Little did I know that picture books are more picture than text, so that made my decision a little easier.

I really enjoyed writing my first draft.  It was fun to reminisce about the time I spent working with students with autism.  I liked being able to tell a story about how these students are just like everyone else and should be treated that way.  It is a topic that is very close to my heart having had been involved with this population for the past 12 years.

Peer Revisions

So I wrote a rough draft, and I have to say that I didn’t hate it.  Let me rephrase that, I wrote a rough draft and I actually enjoyed having it reviewed by a peer.  I didn’t really change my writing process at all.  I really wasn’t into the topic, so I waited until the day before it was to be reviewed to do it, I sat in front of the TV for background noise, and I typed and revised as I went.  That’s just the way I work, and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

What I really enjoyed was having a peer review my work.  Other than the usual grammatical and spelling errors, it was interesting to hear what someone other than my teacher thought of my writing.  I liked that she had different ideas and thought about things differently, but was not necessarily on the same page about what needed to be changed or fixed.

I have to admit that some of the things I was forced to change because of the peer review I wasn’t happy about.  It was just an informational essay, so I felt that not a ton of it needed to be changed.  I was informing my audience about realistic fiction.  I also like the way I write, so it’s hard to admit to certain flaws.  But, as a whole I think it was a really good experience.

My Typical Writing Process

  

  

The writing assignment for the informational and narrative essays has forced me out of my writing box.  Up until this assignment, my writing process has always been the same.  I get topic assigned, wait until the day before (or that day sometimes), sit in front of the TV with my laptop, and type. 

Typically, I only write because I have a paper due and it's about a subject I could not care less about.  Because I couldn't care less about it, I procrastinate until it's due because I have no interest in writing about it.  Hello, my name is Stacey and I'm a procrastinator.  I also prefer writing in front of the TV because I need background noise.  I can't listen to music because I end up singing along and can't focus.   

I revise my paper while I type.  I'm not the kind of person who can sit down with a graphic organizer and plan a paper.  I type and feel a flow with my writing.  Once the flow stops, I stop and reread what I have written.  I like to type until I can't anymore because I can replace words, or move sentences around.  That's another reason why I prefer to type instead of write a rough draft; writing takes too long and ends up looking messy (it must be my OCD).