Course Synthesis: What I Have Learned

As I have taken this course, I have found myself paying a lot more attention to the ways in which my clinical teachers use literacy instruction in their own classrooms. I have seen some strategies that were absolutely brilliant and others that did not work so well. For example, in a history class that I observed, the teacher had a list of thirty vocabulary words for each unit. She had the students choose ten words and write “concept cards” for the words explaining what they were, who was involved, and why they were important to history. She told the students that, while they needed to know what all the words were in order to help them understand class discussions, she did not feel it was necessary for them to define every word. This worked really well because when a vocabulary term came up in class, the teacher would ask if someone had written a concept card on that word and the student would then have the opportunity to teach their peers what they learned. This was not only a great vocabulary instruction technique, but also a good opportunity for students to practice their oral language. At the end of the unit, the teacher would also have the students choose from a word bank on the test and define five of the vocabulary words. Students could then earn up to five extra credit points if they could define other vocabulary words. In contrast, I saw another teacher give his students a list of forty vocabulary words. The students were given no explanation for defining this many words and the activity was never used in any other context. I think that this class has shown me how important it is to not just teach vocabulary but to teach why that vocabulary is important and how it can be used to read texts outside of my own discipline.

Also from this course, I have learned a lot about employing oral language in classes. I think that the way our class was structured showed good ways to incorporate oral language into a classroom. We worked in pairs, small groups, and as a class to express our ideas and opinions, which gave everyone a chance to participate in the discussion at some point in time. Too often, people see history as a subject that is set in stone, where the facts are not open to debate, but this class gave me some great techniques to use in my own classroom to help students see how they could truly interact with my content instead of just accepting the information that flowed from me. I loved that we got the opportunity to go out on “skinny branches” and that a classroom environment had been established where we felt like we could do this.

I think that the greatest overall takeaway that I got from this class is that classroom environment can foster learning in a way that simply giving information cannot. This class was very different from many of my other classes because it was a true community with complex relationships and where everyone got the opportunity to get to know each other and to have interactions with their peers and a relationship with the instructor. This sense of community made it easier to take a risk in learning because there was no feeling that someone would ridicule you if you were wrong. I think that creating a climate where students feel safe is something that is hard to do but it is vital to teach students the many forms of literacy that are required to read the world around them. I hope to be able to do this by having one-on-one conferences with my students, even if it is just for a few minutes, at least once during every unit. This will help students to see that I really care about them and what they are learning and that they are not “just” another student.

As I reflect back on this class, I also found that every thing that we do in our class is a chance to help someone learn. Using blogs or glogsters will appeal to some students, while talking about multiple cultures will appeal to others. I think that sometimes, teachers have a tendency to dismiss the many things that they can teach their students by incorporating many different forms of literacy in their classroom as it being something that is “just” a supplement. Whenever I hear someone say it is “just” something it makes me think of a quote from Finding Neverland, where J.M. Barrie says, “Just? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That's like saying, ‘He can't climb that mountain, he's just a man,’ or ‘that’s not a diamond, it's just a rock.’ Just.” I hope that I never see something as being “just” a supplement because, this class has shown me that what be a supplement for one student is the entire lesson that will be taken from class by another.

As a future teacher I have learned many things in this class. I have learned that good listening skills are a form of good literacy. I have learned that we can teach everyone the same thing but each student will learn something different. I have learned that, sometimes, you have to ask someone else to tell the class to shut up. I have learned that post-it notes may be the greatest literacy promoter in the world. I have learned that there is no such thing as reading something the “wrong way” but that there are “better” ways to read things. I have learned that it is probably a good thing that George Mason didn’t have a Facebook page. I have also learned what critical literacy is! Mostly, I have learned that you cannot just teach students from a book, you have to be the book and give your students a lot of texts to read because every gesture, every facial expression, YouTube movie, and word that comes out of your mouth is laced with meaning.

Motivation and Your Discipline

T-Sal’s Hisherstory Class: Zombie Apocalypse Survival 101

Hi everyone! Welcome to history class! I know that many of you are not exactly excited to be in a history class. I’ve heard this before. Many students tell me, “T-Sal, history is SOOOOOO boring! Who cares about dead people?”  First of all, it is not HIStory, it is HIS and HER story. In this class, we are going to get things from a lot of different perspectives and so, we need to be clear that this is Hisherstory. Okay?

Moving on…

Who cares about dead people? *Raises hand in Hermoine Granger fashion* Me! Why? Because my knowledge of them is what will help me to survive the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse while those of you who don’t know hisherstory are doomed. Why am I better off because of my knowledge of hisherstory? When you learn about dead people you learn about their strategies, how they affected others’ lives, their weaknesses, and their strengths. So, when these people come back as zombies, you know how to outsmart them. True fact.

Aside from the fact that hisherstory will help you to survive the Zombie Apocalypse, hisherstory is interesting! For instance: Did you know that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (the Spanish monarchs who gave Columbus the money so that he could sail the ocean blue in 1492) had a daughter named Juana. Juana was crazy. Seriously. Her husband died shortly after they were married and she had his body stuffed and dragged it around the castle with her, talking to the body as if it were alive. Gross. I know, but it’s true! You think I’m making this up? I can’t make this up. This is too good to make it up!

The thing about hisherstory is that it is like a giant story that explains who you are and how you got where you are. However, this story is told by billions of people. Every day, you make hisherstory by doing things that people tell stories about and those stories are told from different perspectives, like the story told below.

Seeing things from a different perspective is what hisherstory is all about. Learning hisherstory will help you to understand other people (including your parents) and help you to know your own stories. And, it will help you to survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

I am excited to explore hisherstory with you and to discover your stories throughout the year. Just always remember: A person who doesn’t know hisherstory is like a person without a memory, they can still function but they never really get anywhere – and they definitely won’t escape the zombies.

Discipline-Specific Reading

When I was in fourth grade, I though history was the absolute, most boring subject that anyone could ever think of. It seemed like a regurgitation of facts. I hated history. My teacher didn’t really like history either and made it seem like something that was a punishment. I remember copying passages out of my history textbook and hoping that the book would spontaneously combust. Then, I got into the fifth grade and it was like someone had flipped a switch. My teacher loved history and she made it come alive. We re-enacted parts of the American Revolution and we read books that were fascinating. I found that I actually liked history.

Unfortunately, like most of my students, my first encounters with history texts in a school setting were horrible. Most people think that a typical history text is a giant textbook that is as dry as sawdust and has little or no information that is relevant to their lives.

The most unconventional texts that I have seen used in my discipline is historically based movies. I had a teacher who, for our final project, assigned us to watch any historically based movie that we would like. After watching the movie, we researched the time period in which that movie was set and wrote about whether the movie was historically accurate or not. This was followed by informing us that there were people who actually got paid to do research about time periods and work on movie sets like Pirates of the Caribbean to make sure certain things were historically accurate.

One of the most pleasurable texts that I have read in my discipline (that wasn’t a movie) was Anna Funder’s Stasiland which was about Eastern Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a historical account that was completely true but written like a novel. I couldn’t put it down! I loved it because she kept saying things that I thought “No way!” but that were true.

The most unpleasant thing that I ever read for my discipline, was also the hardest thing that I ever read for my discipline, was Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract. The first time I read Rousseau’s work I hated it because I couldn’t understand it. I was a freshman in college and my teacher had given me no idea how to approach this document and no understanding of what it was about. When I read it the second time, as a senior in college, my teacher gave us a ton of reading to do along with Rousseau. Suddenly, everything made so much more sense, and the reading, while difficult, was understandable and interesting. I could finally see how it applied to what I was learning about.

The difference between my two readings of the Social Contract was that the one professor, who was a highly effective professor, helped make Rousseau’s language understandable and applicable. My other professor just assumed that we understood the document as well as he did and had the same passion for French political history as he did. My other professor assumed that we knew nothing about the document and that we had no interest in it. This made it so he put in a lot of extra effort to help us love it as much as he did.

I hope to be able to apply the same strategies as my second professor in helping students enjoy texts in my discipline. When teachers help their students see how a text applies to their lives and then give them other resources to help them understand what they are learning, students find that, even if the text is difficult, they understand and enjoy what they are reading. Most importantly, I hope to always make sure to share my passion for a text without assuming that students love it as much as I do. I plan to “sell” my text to my students as well as the toy commercials on TV do because helping students want to read historical documents is just as important as getting them to actually read them.

Self-Selected Project: Text Club

For my self-selected project, I worked with Shae Tervort. Since Shae and I are both history majors and English minors we decided to texts that covered both disciplines that we have studied. Shae and I read the book Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson, viewed the 2006 movie She’s the Man, starring Amanda Bynes and directed by Andy Fickman, and also viewed the 1996 production of Twelfth Night starring Helena Bonham-Carter and directed by Trevor Nunn.

Shae and I agreed that we really enjoyed Swanson’s Chasing Lincoln’s Killer but that it would be more appropriate for younger audiences. This book would work very well in an 8^th grade American History class and would be interesting, although not challenging, for students in upper grades. This book is written like an old spaghetti western but with a serious twist that would intrigue and fascinate students. This text would inspire student-selected reading but would not provide them with an in-depth analysis of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, nor would it really challenge readers to think about the assassination in any new way. This book would show students that history is not boring and would encourage students to read for pleasure in a history class. Shae and I agreed that, while we would not assign this book as reading for our classes, we would certainly provide it as an optional reading assignment for a self-selected project and would probably make it available to our students in our classrooms.

For the English portion of our self-selected project, Shae and I decided to find a way to integrate Shakespeare into an English classroom in a way that would seem less daunting and much more appealing to students. I read Twelfth Night by Shakespeare and then watched the Trevor Nunn version of the film. We agreed that the Nunn version of the film would be appealing to students but, because the film is fairly long (about 2 hours and 20 minutes), and uses Shakespearean dialogue, students may struggle with watching the film by themselves. The best way to incorporate this film into a classroom would likely be using it as a supplement. We thought this would be a good film to show in class after scenes from the play are read so that students can understand how Shakespeare’s work comes alive much more if it is performed than if it is read.

For the other part of our English self-selected project, Shae and I watched Fickman’s She’s the Man, a movie that was inspired by Twelfth Night. This movie was a lot of fun but was one that probably could not really be showed in a classroom. Since the film was only inspired by the play it shares a similar plot and names but many things have been altered. Since the movie varied so much from the book, Shae and I agreed that it would be best to offer students the option of watching this movie as something that they could do outside of class to grasp the play a little bit better. Students could watch the movie after reading the play in class and compare and contrast the two. This would serve as a final project and also reinforce what teachers are always saying about Shakespeare, that students never believe; his writing is still pertinent today.

Connecting School and Home Experiences

A huge part of growing up in my family was stories. My mom and dad always had a captive audience and my three brothers and I would sit and listen to them tell us stories about our past, our family history. Since my dad is Korean and oral story-telling is a big part of our culture, we heard many stories about where we came from. My mom, too, had stories about our ancestors and our past. However, my mom’s version of the past always included information about other things that were going on while my ancestors were alive. To me, history was a part of growing up. My brothers and I had instilled in us, from a very young age, the importance of remembering those who came before you and what they did. We were always told to learn from the past, to honor the lessons that had been taught and to never repeat the same mistakes that someone else had already made.

 As I have grown older, this attitude s still influencing me because it influences the way that *I think about my discipline: history. I still see history as stories about people who have affected me. History, to me, is very personal, even if the people died thousands of years ago and they didn’t have any immediate relationships with my family. I see history as a series of stories with morals that teach lessons, although some of those lessons have not been very well learned. I know that for many of my students, it will be a struggle to see how these people that they don’t know are shaping their lives today. As a teacher, I think that this will influence my teaching because I will want to help them see how personal history is and how it affects them. I want for history to become, like it is for me, the story of who they are and how they got to be that way.

I hope to draw from students’ own backgrounds to connect them with my discipline. I want each of the students in my class to be able to tell their own stories by understanding the stories of those who came before them. Although I know that not every student will have ancestors who fought in the American Revolution or who sailed across on the Mayflower, I know that secondary school is a time of great identity crisis for many students. By getting to know my students on an individual level, I hope to be able to draw on their knowledge of things that they like and things that they dislike in order to show them where they came from and who they are, just as my parents, the first historians I knew, showed me.

The History of Your Teacher: Tasha Salisbury

Hello and welcome! My name is Tasha Salisbury and I am your history teacher and this is a short history about me. I was born a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I grew up in Logan, UT with three crazy brothers. I enjoy going hiking, long boarding (yes, I can long board), watching movies, reading, writing, and listening to music – not all at the same time, of course. Please do not call me Ms Salisbury. That is my grandmother. She’s old. And has false teeth. I am young. And all the teeth you see are mine. Please, call me Ms. Sal or T-Sal. (These are nicknames some of the students I taught gave me. Want to know the story behind them? Ask me in class, where I will see you soon!)

So, why would a person who is clearly as awesome as your history teacher is, want to teach history? Well, to be completely honest, my love affair with history started when I was in the third grade and my teacher showed us Walt Disney’s, Johnny Tremain.  Aside from the fact that I thought Johnny was super cute, I enjoyed the story. When I found out that the things Johnny Tremain experienced were real, I started reading about those events. I became fascinated with the stories of the past and the different people who told those stories. I was amazed by people like Helen of Troy, Napoleon Bonaparte, George Washington, Che Guevara, and Genghis Kahn. This fascination with peoples’ stories drew me to history. Story is a part of the word: HiSTORY. However, one thing I would like to clear up: In my class it is not just HIStory, it is also HERstory. So, when I see you next don’t just be ready to study HIStory (and I’m not talking about the Michael Jackson album), but be ready to study HIS/HERStory. Okay?

 I know that some of you are only taking my class because you have to.  You look at me and ask, “Miss Sal, why is history important? Why should I care about a bunch of dead people?” You’ll have to find that answer for yourself. After studying history, I have come to see why it is important. It affects what books are written (How many of the novels that you read are set some time in the past?), how scenes in movies are portrayed (Ever noticed how similar the Helm’s Deep scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is to the Alamo?), and even what is said in music (Maroon 5’s reference to Mick Jagger is a reference to living history!)!  So to me, history is important because it isn’t really over, you and I are always making history!

So now that you know a little bit about me, I can’t wait to get to know each of you better!

P.S. Curious about some of the references that I put in here? Go ahead and look them up! For those of you who are wondering who Johnny Tremain is (or what a Johnny Tremain is), there is a YouTube link to a clip from the movie below. Yes, I know it’s cheesy, but I like it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mxc1xN_7dc