Personalized Learning

   Personalized learning is a new trend that is starting in schools. Instead of teachers standing at the front of a classroom teaching students, each student is equipped with a laptop or iPad that is teaching them the lesson with the teacher being more of an assistant. There are advantages and disadvantages to this type of learning but overall this trend isn't helpful. Students learn the most when they interact with other students and the teacher. Our readings for this week focused on personalized learning and what it means for future classrooms.

   The Coiro piece- Let's Get Personal detailed the differences between personal learning and personalized learning. The most important quote from the personal learning section was "technology is not critical for learning to be personal." Personal learning focuses more on students setting goals for themselves with help from the teacher. This article also detailed why personalized learning was ineffective for a few reasons: students spend most of the time on a computer, students need discussion to build knowledge, and overall interaction with other students. I think it's important we stick to the main point of students coming to a school: to interact with their peers and teachers. Students at any age need to make friends with other students and discuss ideas or problems they have with a human teacher.

   The Couros article Developing Teacher Candidates in a Networked World reminded me of some practices we use in our own class. Ideas such as having a positive image on social networks, class hashtags, and blogs in which we post and comment as a class are all things we do in our class. I've enjoyed using these ideas so far, it feels like a more appropriate use of technology. An important quote from the article was, "teachers need to understand the reality of students' digital lives in order to make education relevant and engaging for today's young people by bringing the digital into the classroom." If we can find a balance with technology in the classroom I believe we will have much more attentive students.

   The Roberts and Mahoney piece also brought up interesting elements of a personalized learning setting. One idea they mention is the sheer amount of data collection that is gained from personalized learning. The authors mention that this information could be used to create a "homework profile" much like Netflix creates a movie profile based on your interests. While most elements of personalized learning are destructive to learning, I like this idea. With a computer figuring out what a student is good and not so good at based on their homework, it could suggest websites or other problems to help. I think this would only be effective in area such as math, but still I think it would be effective. There still should be teacher input of course, with more tips on why they are doing something wrong and how to fix it. Still, I have found websites such as Kahn Academy helpful in figuring out problems.

   We should not give up on schools as we have them now. Students coming to school to interact with teachers and peers is the tried and true method of school. While there are some advantages to having a digital classroom, the main reason stays the same: students need human interaction to grow and learn.

Without teachers in schools we wouldn't have cool moments like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0jgcyfC2r8

Poetry (Christensen & Macaluso)

   This week we read about a topic that is personal to many students and teachers: poetry. Both authors, Christensen and Macaluso talk about how poetry can bring real life events into a different light. Through poetry, one can make an experience real for the reader. By putting the audience into their own shoes, poets can tell stories that go deeper than the normal conversation. 

   Christensen encourages her students to write poems that incorporate some element of their personal life. This could be a family member, part of their native language, or a meal that is special to their family. This allows teachers to gain insight into their students' lives, as well as gauge their skills as writers. One idea that I thought was great from the first chapter in Teaching for Joy and Justice was the brainstorming activity Christensen did with her students on creating a poem. She first had her students look at the different parts of a poem. They looked at the verb "raised" for example, and asked for different words for raised. This allowed the poem to evolve within the classroom.

   The Malacuso article also offered insight into the world of poetry. Author Kati Malacuso recounts of writing a poem for a poetry class. She creates a poem out of an elderly couple in the supermarket. The poem she creates puts the reader inside of her head. She makes the audience feel that they are there themselves in the supermarket, beside the old woman who is afraid of her husband not returning. I believe the most important thing Macaluso says is that she could explain the story piece by piece, but she would rather not. She states, "This explanation would have been accurate, but it would not have done justice to this experience. It needed a poem."

This video shows author Linda Christensen explaining how important writing is for both teachers and students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVV4JZNohhQ

Emdin, Gallagher, & Christensen

   For this week's readings, we took a look at Emdin talking of coteaching, Gallagher speaking about students creating personal writing, and Christensen diving into writing for justice. All pieces of writing had great amounts of information in it. All three provided insight into how students think and feel about writing. A main theme I found throughout was that students care much more about what they're writing about if it is personal to them.

   I enjoyed the Emdin reading Coteaching because it provided some valuable information about how students react to lessons. If a student feels that a lesson is not relatable to their lives, then chances are they will be tuning out halfway through a lecture. But if the examples given can give students ideas of the real world or something that they have seen before, they are much more likely to pay attention. This is seen through an example Emdin gives as a teacher first gives an example on friction using marbles on a table. While we have all seen marbles before it isn't the most interesting example. When he assigns two of his students to give an example on friction, they use the much more relevant example of subway trains stopping and the effect it has on the people inside of the train. This sparks much more conversation between students. Emdin sees coteaching as an effective way of allowing students to learn from each other.

   I enjoy reading from Teaching Adolescent Writers by Kelly Gallagher. Gallagher speaks from years of experience and gives helpful pointers on how to properly teach students how to write. In this chapter, Gallagher focuses on "fake writing" and how to avoid it. His best advice is to have students find something they are passionate about. This will allow for much more interesting essays. He also suggests that narrowing down an idea to a specific point will create a more concise, easier to read essay. I believe that having a student find something they enjoy to write about will make them much better writers. It will also allow for a more interesting essay to read over. Of course, other writing such as analyzing Shakespeare will have to be thrown into a curriculum. But with the addition of having students write something they are passionate about will be much more enjoyable to them.

   Christensen brings up other great points about teaching writing to high school students. Some ideas were similar to Gallagher's, as she points to having students write about something that is near and dear to them. Throughout the chapter we can see the essays written are from personal experiences. Essays such as these interest the reader much more than what Gallagher refers to as "fake writing." Christensen also mentions the strategy of the read-around, where you share your writing out loud with other students in class. This is what we did last week with our writing history papers. This is an effective way of allowing the writer to see what they should add, remove, or work on.

   All authors gave me ideas on how to get students to appreciate writing, and that I should have them write on personal experiences or things that they enjoy.

Standards & PARCC

   This week we read about English standards and teachers' reactions to the PARCC testing. Both topics relevant to our future careers as English teachers. The readings on the different standards made me think of past discussions we've had in class about the most effective way to teach standards. How does a teacher effectively balance teaching standards and remembering where their students' are coming from economically and socially? The PARCC reading was interesting as well, I had no idea that this test caused a negative reaction.

   The first set of standards we looked at were the NCTE / IRA Standards for the English Language Arts found on ncte.org. While some of these ideas seemed to be pretty standard (haha) others I didn't realize we learned in high school. Standard 8 for example is an important skill learned in high school that will always be relevant in writing papers, "Students use a variety of technological and information resources to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge" (ncte.org). Essentially any college paper will use this standard to cite information from a website, article, or book.

   The English Language Arts standards for students in grades 9-10 and 11-12 both had overlaps and more specific goals based on the grade level. The standards for grades 9-10 dealt with developing ideas, using specific ideas in writing, and research projects. As I mentioned before, these skills will come in handy come college time. I still remember creating research projects in freshman year. Skills such as finding information you need from the library or an online data base are helpful in many situations. The standards for grades 11-12 dealt with these ideas as well as reading standards. For example, juniors and seniors should have reading skills that allow them to comprehend early works in American literature and understand the reasoning behind Supreme Court cases. These skills not only help in understanding the lesson at hand, but help in discovering the meaning behind most other texts as well.

   The final piece we read was Rhode Island Teachers Respond to PARCC: A White Paper by Janet Johnson and Brittany Richer. One of the authors sounds familiar but I'm not sure why. I've never personally taken the PARCC test, the NECAP was in place while I was in high school. During my service learning for my FNED class however, I saw 10th grade English teacher Jamie. While I didn't see much of the test itself, I did see Jamie's class resting after taking a section of the PARCC exam and heard what they had to say about it. Most students were exhausted and the room was mostly quiet. Jamie didn't teach much, just let her students rest after taking the test which is completely understandable. Some questions, as Jamie informed me, had to do with novels that were above 10th grade reading levels. Jamie was disappointed in this fact, and even more disappointed that she couldn't help her students with the questions on the exam.

   This goes hand in hand with many of the graphs found in A White Paper. Most teachers feel like this exam was not only a waste of time, but actually upset students by making them feel they weren't making any progress in school. This is a strong message to seriously reconsider the format of the PARCC or to create a new test entirely. One of the most important quotes I read from this was, "Teachers want to be listened to, and they are professionals who know what contributes to a positive atmosphere where students feel safe and ready to learn" (Johnson, Richer). If the majority of teachers are saying something is not working, it is clearly time to change it.