So here we are, almost at the end of the term and I still am struggling to come up with posts for the blog. During mid-semester conference I said I would write about the readings, however, this week we don’t have any so I am stuck not knowing what to write about to fulfill my goal from the conference.

I’ve decided  to take this time to reflect on past readings. Which ones were our favorites and why we liked them. I know for myself I found quite a few of them rather interesting and so I figured I would discuss them now, there are of course that I was not found of, one being ‘Why Johnny Can’t Write’ which was expressed openly in a past post. However, I wanted this post to be in positive light. So I am going to discuss the ones I liked and I would like for my fellow students to do the same in the comments!

My favorite readings by far have been; Students’ Rights to Their Own Language, “I Just Wanna Be Average”, Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, and Becoming Literate: A Lesson from the Amish. I liked these readings for different reasons but a majority of my reasoning is because they are all so different. I also really enjoyed how a lot of them had a personal narrative with them making it easier to get through.

Out of all these readings though I connected most with Becoming Literate: A Lesson from the Amish. I think that I connected with this because it was the furthest thing from relatable for me. I don’t know anything about the Amish and I don’t know much about why they do the things they do but I felt that this article discussed a lot of things that I could relate to in a setting I could not which was only more intriguing for me. I think that this also got down to the root of some of the larger issues that people discuss in literacy communities.

What do you guys think, what were your favorite readings and why? (:

You’ve read the same article multiple times for multiple different classes. I don’t want this to be a negative comment, I love re-reading articles and find it a great way to learn something you didn’t learn the first time (or the second, or third). Pencils to Pixels is one of those article for me. I can’t remember all the classes I’ve read this for, but as soon as I saw the name I remembered previous discussions I had about it. Though I value re-reading I am choosing to ignore this paper for the topic of tonights discussion. I’m going to focus on my uncertainties within our other reading for the week, Hyper and Deep Attention, which is something that is all over our news today and as a teacher am often asked about.

I know my mother isn’t the only who thinks I am crazy for jumping from one task to another at the tip of a hat. I’ve always been one of “those kids”, my mother got multiple diagnoses from teachers saying I needed to be medicated. This conversation about ADD and ADHD was in the paper throughout, and I found it refreshing that she seemed relatively against artificial chemical intervention. I struggle a lot when it comes to doing school work and it typically takes me twice as long as some of my friends, but I feel that I am a pretty good student and I question whether I would feel that way if my parents had chosen to put me on medicine. First question would be how many other people feel they are more hyper attention? Do you feel that technology and media is what caused you to be that way as the article begins to discuss on page 193.

Now, I admit I have hyper attention tendencies, I also can be extremely attentive. When I read novels, I fall into a world that isn’t my own and I read a book front to cover in two days. When I am writing I fall into another world. I write for hours at a time and don’t stop to think about anything over than what I’m doing. I think that this is a great skill to have, but can also be damaging. I once was late for work because I didn’t want to put the book I was reading down. I’ve had to pull over while driving because I got a great idea for a poem and I end up sitting and writing for a half an hour making my road trip a little pushed back. So my second question is – how many of you can see a little bit of both styles within yourselves? Do you enjoy this? Would you rather have one over the other? If so, why?

Overall, I’m curious about how you all feel about this topic and college. Do you think that there are ways both styles independently can work well in higher education? Can it hurt higher education? I personally feel that success stories don’t come around often enough in this topic but I feel as though they are all around us. I personally know that I struggle with some of the things she mentioned in her article, however, I am about to graduate undergrad and go into a masters program (hopefully, fingers crossed everybody)! I don’t want to brag, but I feel as though more of these stories need to shine and I hope if someone has one they are willing to share!

P.S. I don’t want anyone to feel they have to label themselves in this article. I was simply labeling myself for easy transitions back and forth between the article! I thought sharing my story would help let others open up if they share similar issues, but if not that is absolutely fine! Or if there is someone who is offended by something I wrote please feel free to communicate that with me, I am by no means a master at this topic just something I wanted to discuss for the evening.

Let’s talk (:

I thought I would start out my post being positive and remind everyone that there is only 50 days and 4 hours until the end of fall semester (at least for this class)! Three cheers for everyone who has made it till now, I know that I am barely hanging on right now. However, I thought that since I have a midterm tomorrow (one that I am pushing off studying for currently) I thought that I would talk about test taking in this post.

As an English major I never take tests and so I’ve grown to hate them, but I know not everyone is like me so my first question is..yey or ney? And why? I know I hate test taking because I don’t think that it is an accurate sample of what I know. It is more of a “let’s see what all she can memorize and cram into her brain the night before” kind of sample. Way long ago when I was a freshman I was in a Jewish Studies class that was about the Holocaust. At the end of the semester our professor told us that we had learned (for me memorized) over 115ish dates. I don’t know about you, but when I think about the Holocaust dates really don’t come to mind. I think about the stories, what is was, who was in charge, why it was happening, etc. To be really honest I couldn’t tell you 95% of the dates that I “learned” what I could tell you was some incredible stories. This is just one example of many that I have experienced where I felt that my test was only testing me on what I knew at the moment.

There are a few exceptions to this of course, my ASL classes there is no chance in h-e-double hockey sticks that I could learn everything that are on my exams the night before. It is something you either know or you don’t depending on how frequently you’re using the signs. I still hate these tests though, but for a different reason. The pressure. I don’t feel as though I succeed well under pressure and my nerves get to me very easily. Just recently I took a small quiz for ASL and I threw up the night before because I was so nervous. That kind of pressure is no good for a student like me. I don’t thrive on late night paper writing or all nighters. I fail.

So as a future teacher I ask myself, “will I give out tests?” Well for me it is a simple answer, probably not very often only because I am focused more on writing but I feel as though if I were to teach a literature class I would most definitely have comprehension quizzes. So does that make me a hypocrite or does it make evil for placing the burden on my students that I have always hated. I am not really sure what it makes me, maybe you can tell me.

So does testing make us better or worse? I would have to say it is neither here nor there because I am sure there are some people who would rather take a four hour exam then write a two page paper and then there are some who would end up in tears and throwing up their dinner when they are forced to take a twenty minute quiz.

My future teachers what kind of teacher do you want to be? Will you be understanding of your students who are like me or will you hold them to higher standards because you know that they can do it (because if I can, anyone can). Curious about everyones thoughts on test taking regardless of it they are related to my questions and for those of you who have upcoming midterms may the odds be ever in your favor! (:

I typically choose not to write my posts on the text we read for class because we do so much discussion about it in class that I feel I am rehashing similar ideas during that time. It also gives a break to the typical classroom style conversation, however, I could not pass up writing about this. To be perfectly honest this article was riding on a fine line of offensive and honesty. Let me explain.

I do agree with a lot of what Sheils is saying. Today our writing/speech is no where near developed as it was back in the 1800s. If you look at literature from that time frame it is extremely well written even beyond some of the people I look up to in the world of writing. I do agree that through the years that we have gotten lazy, myself included. I believe the reason this article made me so frustrated is because it felt like a personal stab at teachers. Children are learning through their teachers and to say they aren’t learning what is needed to write/read/speak at any decent level of English is virtually saying teachers aren’t doing their jobs. Ouch, that stings.

I work incredibly hard with all of my children from young three’s to late twelve’s on their reading, writing, and speech. I am constantly working on changing bad habits such as saying, “what?” to “what did you say?” or “pardon me”. This isn’t just about manners, it is also about having them intelligently express thoughts. I spend hours sounding out letters with three year olds and have them practicing writing their name quickly after their second birthday. I have reading sessions in the morning before school with my older students. I have them read books such as Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter so they have exposure to more challenging vocabulary. This article is basically saying all that I do is not really helping at all because kids now a days still can’t read and write. After reading this article I was half tempted to just say, “Well you can’t write either Marril Sheils!” She can. This wasn’t a personal attack there are exceptions and I understand that which is why I am able to agree on some topics, but for some of it my anger blinded me.

I was upset by a lot of this article from the teacher perspective. As a student though, I agree, I do think my writing is sometimes shitty as ever and sometimes when I read peers writing I think terrible things inside my head. But as a teacher I have to put my foot down. Every fiber in my being wants to prove that what I am doing is preparing our future generations and preparing them well.

I am curious though in a class full of future educators if it bothered anyone even in the slightest. I may stand alone and that is fine (I still 100% stand by that I am teaching to my best abilities), but do you really feel as though our teachers are doing that poorly of a job when you are able to see all the hard work that goes into running a classroom? Does anyone else feel that people not in the educational field may not understand the difficulties in getting a child to an appropriate reading/writing/speech level? Do you think that Shiels even considered the large population of kids who are lazy and simply don’t want to learn no matter how hard you try to get to them? Or the kids that physically/mentally can’t get to that point due to restrictions such as learning disorders or even handicaps? Let’s talk about it.

a lot lately. Recently all of my English courses this semester seem to blend into one another and it is like I am in one big English course of 100 people. It is not that they don’t each stand out on their own but we are all talking a lot about language and what all it does for us. So I then started to think, how does language restrict us? Is that even possible? I personally think that it can.

I love writing. Truly I spend a majority of my days writing poetry or blogging. However, as someone who values words just like anything you love, there are possibilities to hate it. For example, the other day I had lunch with a friend. I was telling her a story and I got fixated on one phrase that I just couldn’t think of. I tried to express the emotion I was trying to convey without this phrase but nothing seemed to be doing it for me so after 20 minutes went by of us brainstorming (Luckily she is an English nerd like I am) I gave up and told her that eventually I would text her what I was meaning to say. Do you know how frustrating that is? I’m sure you do. All of us are college students who I am sure have at some point in their career raised their hand in class only to have blah come out of their mouth. An incomprehensible chuck of words come out and you stammer out a, “you know what I mean”. This happens to me almost every day. I blame language for this. If it wasn’t for me knowing key phrases that get straight to the point of an emotion that is almost universal I wouldn’t have thought about one phrase for 20 minutes. I would have moved on with one of the many synonyms we came up with and would have been done.

Another example, every time I write a poem. The end. The point of writing poetry is using language uniquely. Poets are obsessed with finding the perfect combination of words. It is exhausting, my brain is constantly thinking that their are better words out there than the words I have been using for the last 22 years and that I need to discover new ones. Having this mind set can tear the joy of writing right of its fleshy bones.

Our fascination with language and words is something that is beautiful and amazing but sometimes also limits us. Forces us to think too much instead of going with that first word you think of (which growing up I was told was always the right one…clearly I’ve been doing that wrong).

What do others think? Are there any other ways that language can limit us? Is there a way to communicate emotions/ideas/etc. out there? Though language is important is there any time that you almost wish it didn’t exist?

***Warning: This post was written inside the mind of someone (very inside the mind) and then placed on paper. One may need more clarification in which case please feel free to comment and someone will respond with more coherent and understandable thoughts***

As I read through the different texts for Tuesday I found myself continuous stopping to ask myself, “would this make a good post?” Most of the time I found myself saying no. Though everything I read was interesting and important I felt that every time I tried to write a post it got boring and was rehashing the same things that were said in the text. So I’ve been sitting at my computer for the last hour writing, deleting, reading, and rewriting when I suddenly thought of what I wanted to write about. The Process. I am going to define this as: the way in which you read and think to be able to create (and for the purposes of this class create a piece of writing).

Now, this is a strange topic. And I am sure you might think that this isn’t something that has to do with literacy but I think it does. I mean it does already hold the key components of the definition of literacy: reading, writing, and thinking/understanding. For me my most success moments with literacy is during a specific process that I follow to a tee. For me (for the most part), it doesn’t change based on the type of writing I am doing. I’m a poet, so I tend to think outside of the box, but unlike the stereotype I don’t hang out in cool coffee shops with underground art hanging on the walls. So here it goes “the process” more specifically, My Process:

1) I sit in an academic setting. I can’t hang out in my comfortable bed or sit on the couch where I watch movies with my boyfriend. If I do, I run the risk of writing one of the worst pieces of my life that probably talks about either my cats or my main squeeze neither of which should be included in a good piece.

2) If I am writing a piece on a specific bit of text I can not take notes. My idea has to pop off the page and inspire me to write something. Most of us want to write something we have an actual opinion on and that is hard in academic writing because not everything we read is going to hold some deep meaning. However, if I read the text and have a moment that makes me stop for a minute and actually think instead of simply sight reading it is usually a good place to start.

2a) This doesn’t always happen unfortunately. So in the odd chance that nothing comes to me at all I do this thing where I read the text again but in the mind of my teacher or mother or someone other than me that I hold in high regards. I try my hardest to think like them while doing so and most usually something else will pop up that will be interesting to them and so I will talk to them about in hopes to have a positive reflection on the text and then write on that.

2b) Even that will sometimes fail though. Which leaves me to no other option but talking to whoever assigned said piece. Most times they work with you to help you find an interest and write the best piece you can on a not so hot topic.

2c) But if for some reason I have an unbelievable horrific experience with that said person I go to my last and final resort. I sit and take notes on an unbelievably boring topic and knock out a half-assed paper. (Sorry Professor Vee, I have full faith that I will never use this method in your class though)

3) No music. This is a rule that is unbreakable. I will not play music, do you know why? Because I play my favorite song (Giants – Bear Hands) and then three hours later I could tell you everything that has ever been written about the band and the song. It is called being sidetracked and it is the arch enemy of anyone who writes for a living.

4) One hour. I spend at least one hour reading or writing specifically on whatever it is I’m trying to accomplish. For example this post. I have done nothing but focus on the readings for Tuesday and writing this post. I didn’t check my Facebook or text my BFF’s.

5) The last step of my process is writing. I have to at least try to write and see if anything comes out worth keeping. If I don’t write anything how do I know nothing worth writing about was out there.

So for me that is usually how I end up writing a piece that I am proud of. One that I think shows my education is being put to good use. So what I am curious about is what everyone else’s process is. Some of you may not have one. All of this leads up to my bigger question. Do you think that these processes or lack there of have helped or hurt your relationship with literacy? Do you think that if we were to teach children building blocks to “writing well” it would be beneficial?

My own response to this reflects on the five paragraph essay. I grew up learning this process as a building block to writing a good essay. Guess what? I hate that method now and refrain from it as often as possible, however, my process which I described above greatly reflects that certain steps lead to better outcomes in my writing. I am driven by following rules which is why I have created this process for myself which has helped me further my relationship with literacy by creating great pieces of writing. However, others may feel differently. What do you think? Are you a law abiding citizen or an outlaw in the world of literacy.

When I visited my old elementary school two years ago and told them how I am an English Writing major I didn’t get any strange looks. That was odd to me. Because from second grade to fifth I was in a reading program that took individual students who were struggling with reading and writing and gave them some extra attention to get them up to speed with their other students. This is one of the first memories I have of literacy; the small classroom,  six other kids, and the yellow guider to help keep our eyes focused on the words we were reading. As an adult looking back on this situation I can’t help but be embarrassed by what was then my inability to read and write. Due to all the hype in the media today about illiterate children and adults it has received a very negative connotation. But as a kid then I remember coming home and telling my mom all of the things I learned in Ms. Spon’s class. At that age I didn’t know how to feel embarrassed and I didn’t feel “illiterate”. Now, I know I was what most people say “behind”, however, literacy as we discussed in class today is the ability to articulate and understand thoughts of your own and others for the purpose of communication. I couldn’t do that so by definition I was illiterate at the time. Which brings me to some of my deeper thoughts..I didn’t feel illiterate so is that why I prefer to say I was behind other students. What has been on my mind since class is that intimate relationship we have with literacy and I have begun to think more about the feelings and emotions that go hand in hand with literacy. So I pose the question does having the feeling of being literate/illiterate play into our definition at all? Can one be literate and feel illiterate and vise versa? These are just some thoughts I’ve been toying with and some may not make complete sense but I figured it was worth throwing out there.