Guest Speaker Questions

I am very excited for the guest speaker to come in today. I plan on asking him questions mostly dealing with his experience in education as a Palestinian. I'm not sure if he went to high school in the United States, but I am particularly interested in gaining some insight and clarity to the following questions:

1) If you did go to high school in the United States, do you feel like your school had an inclusive curriculum that appropriately educated students about your culture?
2) If you did go to high school in Palestine, how do you feel the education values differ over there?
3) Do you have any Palestinian or otherwise Middle Eastern literature in mind that you feel would be great contributions to an English classroom? How do you feel about Kite Runner?
4) What do you think the greatest anxieties facing Middle Eastern students in America are today?
5) What suggestions do you have for me as a future English teacher in embracing my Middle Eastern students, Middle Eastern culture in general, and incorporating Middle Eastern studies successfully into my curriculum?

Thoughts on "War, Terrorism, and Our Classroom."

I came across two articles from the " war, terrorism, and our classroom" site that I would absolutely consider using in my classroom. The first one was an article called "Not in Our Sons Name," written by the parents of a man who was lost in the World Trade Center attacks. In the article, they talk about their reactions to the grief they felt and the way the government seemed to be handling the attacks. They said:

"Our son died a victim of an inhuman ideology. Our actions should not serve the same purpose. Let us grieve. Let us reflect and pray. Let us think about a rational response that brings real peace and justice to our world. But let us not as a nation add to the inhumanity of our times."


The article then suggested using this in the classroom by having the students read it and then respond the the following prompt:

Discuss how Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez would respond to the policies of the U.S. government in the weeks after they wrote this letter.

Find a newspaper letter to the editor about post-September 11th events - terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, the new anti-terrorism legislation, etc. - and write your own letter in response. If you like, write this from the Rodriguezes' perspective.

I love this idea because it breeds empathy for those directly effected by the attacks, but not in a way that calls on violent vengeance for the death of their son, which is a sentiment I feel many people instantly gravitated to.

Another interesting article I found on this website that I would consider using in my classroom was "Letters to this Universe," where students write anonymous letters addressing the issue of how they personally deal with the grief of losing someone. Everyone drops their letters into a "Letters to the Universe" box, afterwhich the box circulates the rooms and students take turns pulling out a random letter and reading it to the class. I like this idea because it connects students to each other, but more importantly to humanity. It allows them to understand that everyone deals with grief and although there are different ways of coping with the sense of loss, it is an experience that is shared universally.

Teach Me!

I am a little ashamed to admit that I honestly don't know a whole lot about the middle east. I know the names of various countries- Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. I know that they speak several different languages, Arabic and Farsi included. I guess a bit about Islamic culture and traditions too, but I'm pretty ignorant as to many of the actual beliefs of Islam, other than that Mohammed is their prophet, they don't drink, they refer to God as Allah, celebrate Ramadan with fasting, and worship the Quran. I also know a bit (a very small arcane bit) about the ancient history of the middle east, such as, we get our coffee drinking habits from that region.

There was a pretty large middle-eastern population at my high school and for a little while around tenth grade I hung out with a crowd of them a lot. I picked up some vulgar phrases in Arabic from them and learned a bit about the family life habits of some middle eastern families living in America.

Realizing that I pretty much know absolutely nothing about the middle east has made me extremely eager for this unit to enlighten my feeble little American brain.

451

I love Fehrenheit 451. I've been a huge fan of dystopian literature for a few years now, and am so glad that we were assigned this one because I hadn't read it yet. I'm very happy that I can add it to my repertoire of dystopian lit knowledge to hopefully bring into a class designed around this important genre someday.

That being said, it always amazes me how so many of these books follow the same general format-- boy is a perfect member of his sick sad society, boy meets free-thinking girl who corrupts him with her "perniscious" influence, boy grows disillusioned with society, boy and girl strike back (sometimes together, sometimes not), something messed up happens to girl (death, total forced assimilation into said society), boy runs off to live in the wild amongst renegade intellects, society crumbles/stays at large. I like to think me and my boyfriend's story so far pretty much adheres perfectly to this construct, sans the part about something messed up happening to girl...yet...!

While Fehrenheit451 pretty much adheres to that same plot structure sequence by sequence, I like the little twists it throws in with professor and the whole concept of there being no books at all. I'd love to teach this book to an upper level high school class-- I'd also love to teach it to my more disillusioned students, as I think theres quite a bit of connection one could draw between the attitudes of beatty and the other firechiefs and much of the way education seems to be run these days. I'd be interested in finding a way to get reluctant/resistant students really interested in reading ithis book.

Boy Meets Boy

I enjoyed this book a lot as it initially reminded me of Francesca Lia Block, whom I love. The characters were inspiring and very relatable, i thought. I liked that Paul was the central character whom all other characters stories were shared through. I also liked the focus on the adolescent issues often construed as "cliche" (relationship woes, friendships, even fashion). Juxtaposing the normalcy of these issues with the surrealism of the setting and of the general attitudes/ideas of the characters was clever and a good move on Levithan's part. I myself was big into memoires in high school and i think i would have really enjoyed reading this as a teenager.

When considering teaching this book my first questions were what kind of unit it would fit into and what kind of themes to draw from and teach. I wasn't really sure at first, the literary merit seemed somewhat pale in comparison to the entertainment value. However, I do think this book would be great on a coming of age unit, a stereotypes in literature and life unit, or when when teaching the qualities of magical realism and stream of consciousness. I would consider teaching this book in conjunction with Block's Weetzie Bat (which touches on similar teenage issues and LBGT issues but with slightly darker undertones) or even Romeo and Juliet. My only real criticism of this book it actually seems a little too innocent to me; i recall couples doing a lot more than kissing when I was in high school, but thats just my own experience. I do think the innocence is a plus when placed in the context of using it in defense of teaching this book.

Hey Girl Hey

Loved the drag show. I can't really say that i didn't expect I would; those types of shin digs are usually up my ally...by "types" i don't specifically mean a drag show per se, rather, i'm referring to any gathering of people with interesting, unique personalities ready to showcase themselves and their interests to everyone. Being in the atmosphere with all that good crazy energy made me miss a few of my gay friends whom I haven't seen in a while but I know would have loved to attend. I was instantly put in a good mood. I was also very impressed with Chris Praedel's (sp?) rendition of Fergie's Glamorous. I'm glad he wasn't too reserved about dressing up like a woman and dancing around on stage. I think everyone was proud to see him among the rest of the contestants just doing his thing and showing his support. I don't want to go turn this entry into another of my Live and Let Live rants, but it seems like that's where it's heading..not really sure what else to say other than that I think it's awesome that the Sexual Orientation group requested our presence at this event.

As a side note, i would highly recommend the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch to anyone interested in in LGBTA issues, particularly to those fans of Outspoken's drag show.

Ok, so additionally:

I think that the LGBT community is portrayed through the media in somewhat of a minstrelsy fashion. On reality TV shows and on sitcoms like Will and Grace, there seems to be a prescription for gay men as being flamboyant, promiscuous, and brash. While they characters themselves are charismatic to audiences, which may indicate a surface level of encouraging societal acceptance/appreciation for homosexual men, it is still an example of marginalized peoples playing up their stereotypes to a dominant mainstream audience, in this case, heterosexuals who buy into the prescribed image of gay men. I do feel that there is a little more room for lesbians to be portrayed uniquely in the media, as in shows like The L Word. However, lesbian scenes tend to include sexier "lipstick" lesbians, which i assume is thought to be more visually appealing to a mainstream audience.

Group Teach Self Evaluation

Planning and Organization:
My group did a very good job planning and organizing our group teach. We met several times to discuss the material in Christensen's book and each of us had an idea of what we wanted to discuss at the points when we would each be the respective "spotlight" presenter. We decided to organize our unit based on the essential questions; our first question was more open-ended and broad, dealing with the process of building classroom community. This was where we decided that Maureen and Bracey would introduce discussions and lead activities in line with this question while Marla and I would contribute to the discussions and help with activities. Our essential question for day two dealt more with the deeper implications of Christensen's book; about the difference between teaching-tolerance and implementing and anti-racist curriculum. Marla and I, then, would present information we found that coincided with this question and with specific complex themes Christensen's text while Maureen and Bracey contributed to discussions and helped lead activities. I think our unit turned out really well overall. Things seemed to go smoothly (despite some technical difficulties on day two) and the class seemed to learn a lot despite the seeming lack of discussion participation on day two. The most difficult part of planning this unit was getting all of our information to coincide seamlessly in the coursepack and in our actual presentation. It was also difficult to decide how to present this topic in a way that would provoke a response from our peers and not indimidate them into silence. We also wanted to conduct the charting stereotypes activitiy in a manner that would not reinforce racial stereotypes, which took some brainstorming on ways that we could avoid that reinforcement and critical analysis of the activity all together.

Team Investment and Participation:
My personal investment to this group was to discuss and analyze all of the material that would be presented, help construct the essential questions, prepare my own discussion and activity as well as include an article into the coursepack, help my group members with their concerns, create the lesson plan for day two, and take an active roll in the planning and execution of our group teach in general. Our group met i think four or five times, not including the times that we met before class on the days of our group teach. I did attend all of the meetings. I contributed the essential question for day two, the idea for the Crash video clips and it's respective writing assignment, the Immigration article in the coursepack, the lesson plan for day 2 (although Maureen reconstructed this from memory for the actual coursepack), some ideas regarding the disney clips activity/discussion, some ideas regarding the brainstorming of multicultural experience activity/discussion, the idea of the orders of day one and day two, and my general time and availability to meet and plan this group teach. There werent really any major conflicts during the planning but anything minor that did arise was simply worked out with some dialogue. Myself and my group members all participated and contributed equally with this huge project and I was glad to have all of their input and help.

Teaching Presense and Authority:
I think that I maintained a good presense conducting the classroom, both on day one when I was mostly helping contribute to discussion, as well as on day 2 when I lead a discussion and activity. I'm proud that I was able to maintain my presense during my "spotlight" time because I faced the most techincal difficulties of anyone in my group and also had a difficult topic to discuss and faced a lot of silence from the class. A challenge I faced was sticking to a topic of discussion when no one in the class wanted to participate or contribute to the discussion. This was really difficult to do because I didn't want to move on so quickly from the discussion of the crash clips and the sharing of the class' writing, but I felt like I had to because no one was really contributing to the discussion at all and I wasn't sure where to go with it from there. As with my Individual teach, I think these are the kinds of things that teachers learn how to handle more with more experience and practice, so I don't feel too bad about it, but I do wish that people would have been willing to talk more during that part.

Incorporation of Writing:
We did a lot of different kinds of writing in our group teach including poetry, brainstorm lists, letters, and freewrites. We incorporated these writing assingments by aligning each one with one of the activities we constructed to elaborate on Christensen's themes. I do think that these assignments benefitted my classmates as future teachers because all of them could be applicable to their own writing classrooms. Even if they chose not to utilize these writing assignments with the activities that we chose to present them with, they now at least know of these assignments and could tweak them to be used with other future activities and units of their choice. Our writing activities were conducive to our classmates as both teacher-writers and teachers of writing. They were first able to be writers themselves and use the writing prompts to think critically about the topics we were presenting. Then, after doing the actual writing, they were able to engage with one another by sharing their pieces of writing and deciding for themselves if they would use these writing activities in a classroom when dealing with social justice and other issues.

Meaningful Connection with Students:
The topic of Social Justice in the classroom is one that has the potential for two opposite outcomes-- one being lots of participation and discussion, and the other being silence and stand-offish students. To ensure the comfort and success of my classmates, I always contributed my own ideas and opinions to the discussions. I also joined in the activities and shared my own pieces of writing with them. I thought that Marla made a great strive in connecting with the class and putting them at ease by reminding them that this is indeed a sensitive subject, their participation and honesty is valued, and they don't have to be fearful of seeming racist during the charting stereotypes activity. I listened to the opinions of my classmates and let them speak their minds even when it didn't coincide with the message that I was trying to get across primarily that of the Crash clips and potentially using that activity in the classroom, which was the activity that I personally created for the class. I innitiated that discussion about the stereotypes playing out in society and getting our students to write from the "other" voices in our society that are often typecasted or misheard/misunderstood. I also contributed heavily to all of the discussions that were innitated by my group members and tried to verbalize Christensen's (and my owon) ideas in a way that would provoke others in the class to respond and contribute as well.