Middle School Chaos

In response to Gootman's article on Chaotic Middle Schools, I must say that I am rather surprised with some of the changes that are being made to improve students learning. Just on the first page I was shocked to see that one particular school in South Carolina is actually separating students into boy classrooms and girl classrooms. I don't think this is a good idea at all. We cannot allow our students to control our classrooms. I understand the reasoning behind it, as middle school is definitely the time where boys and girls become most self-conscience, flirtatious, and distracted. But I don't see they should be separated from one another. By doing this, students are missing out on other student's interpretations of literature, media, websites, etc...There must be a more appropriate and less drastic change that can be made so that this doesn't have to happen anywhere else. If I had a son or daughter I most certainly would want them to be in a co-ed classroom. Just because they may be more "distracted" by the opposite sex doesn't mean we should separate them. I would want my child to receive an equal distribution of male/female opinions in the classroom as well as in life. If we separate them now, we are shunning them from the social aspect that school brings. In my opinion this is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

On the other hand, in regards to another new idea brought about in Brooklyn that school doesn't begin until mid-morning as opposed to the crack of dawn, is a great idea in my opinion. Now I know I may be a bit partial to this, as I love to sleep in and could essentially sleep all day, however, I feel as though people in general are far more productive in the latter morning hours. 9:00 is the proposed time for grades 6-12 to begin, and I couldn't agree with this time more. My high school began at 7:15 and I remember dreading hearing that alarm at 6:00am. At these wee hours of the morning students, especially teens, are lethargic, unfocused, and simply worn out. Why not begin school a bit later? Now I know this doesn't hold true for all kids, some are early risers who give their best performance in the morning. But if I were to guess, I would bet that the majority of students would be more than willing to begin the school day a couple hours later. I wish when I was in high school this was being considered. I truly feel that I would have been able to perform better all around.

Again, I know this is a very difficult topic to write on, as children in middle school are coming-of-age and are very different from one another. So what is the solution to the many problems at the middle school level? The best answer I can give is to think back to when I was around that age and what were the things that I liked/disliked when it came to school. Again, I hated getting up so early in the morning. Breakfast at 7:00am was a complete drag and it was so hard for me to become motivated for the long day ahead. I remember my favorite classes being those that allowed for class collaboration. I enjoyed getting into groups with my peers and meeting new students. I definitely would not have liked being seperated from the boys, because let's get real here, a lot of times in latter middle school years, the main reason you went to class was to sit next to your crush. Gym, art, and music classes were also still the most popular, but student/teacher interaction was key. If you didn't have a teacher that was personable, there was no way anything productive was going to be done.

After reading this article I can really say that I feel somewhat sorry for middle school teachers, as it is such a tough age for both student and teacher. I can understand why this is such a huge topic of interest, as the years one is in middle school are some of the most important years of one's life.

New Media Literacy

Finally Jen, Charity, and myself thought of an idea for our new media literacy project that is due by the end of the semester. The goal of our project is to give new insight to media literacy and show how it can be applied in the classroom. Based on Hobbs' book, we found some very useful and helpful information that will help us begin this very difficult take. What we are planning on doing is combining a media literacy critique of the popular TV show "Family Guy," with a podcast involved as well. In our project we will be looking at questions on who exactly is the intended audience of Family Guy, is the show directed to any group of people in particular, who watches it, etc... We also have several other questions along with video clips from the actual show that we will put into our project. We are really excited to do a project like this because we feel that a popular show like "Family Guy" will be an easy topic for adolescents/college students to understand and relate to. We will definitely keep you posted on our progress, as this is an ongoing project that should be fairly time consuming. Wish us luck!

Youtube Clip

Wow....I must say that after viewing that video on youtube, I'm a little shocked. The information that was incorporated into that clip was extremely intense and it dealt with issues that I have never really given much thought to. I was definitely impressed with the presentation and it really kept me focused and ready for more. It's funny to see a segment as simple as that one have such a huge impact on society. I saw that nearly 115,000 people viewed that particular clip and I cannot say that I'm surprised. It is almost scary to know that within our lifetime we will see these new superior technological advances come about. This has truly made stop and wonder....am I ready for this?This video and Friedman's book have really made me re-evaluate my future teaching strategy. I honestly don't know if I'm ready to take on this huge, new role called "English Teacher." It's definitely time for me to step up my game and really begin to pay attention and follow these new and upcoming teaching trends. One of Friedman's statements really intrigued me a great deal, as I feel as though it directly related to the youtube video. "We cannot hope to fight jobs lost to international competition without a well-trained and educated work-force" (269). In relation to the video, foreign countries like China are far surpassing us in education as well as in the work place. They are more advanced that us, and therefore will be the first to be introduced to this new material.One of the most intriguing facts that was given in my opinion was the fact that 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ's, is greater than the entire population of people in North America. Also, the fact that if you took every single job in the US today and shipped it to China. it would still have a labor surplus. That is incredible! The statment that Li makes on page 268, "There is a deep and widely shared view that China was once great, that it succeeded in the past but now is far behind and must catch up again. If our lab can do as well as the Redmond lab, that could really be exciting" (268). Then Friedman states, "that sort of inspired leadership in science and engineering education is now totally missing in the United States" (268).
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Digital Literacy

In addition to seeing Jennifer Donnelly yesterday, Ashley, Nichole, Kristin, and I also went to Kjersty VanSlyke-Briggs' presentation on digital literacy. During her presentation she covered some very interesting points. Much of the information that we spoke about during the 50-minute session was material that was very familiar to me (since taking English 307). She reviewed del.ici.ous and explained to us how it was useful to sign up for, especially if you have your own personal blog. She also told warned us about some websites that appeared to be credible, however they were not credible at all.

It is important for us as teachers to decipher the difference between those websites that are in fact credible from those that are 100% fictional. For example, VanSlyke-Briggs brought up the website, www.martinlutherkingjr.org Now one would assume by its attractive website and quick links that this would be a credible source in which to base a paper. However, this particular site it not at all what it appears to be. In reality, this site was created by a white supremisist group that despises King and only tells lies about the late Dr. King. There was also another website that she warned us about, one concerning the endangered "tree octopus." Again, from the looks of the website, it would appear that there really is a species known as the tree octopus. They give several facts and photographs of this supposed endangered creature and explain what we can do to prevent them from becoming extinct. Now, let's get real here! There is no such thing as the tree octopus and they certainly aren't endangered. It is important to warn our students of these sites, as there are millions of non-credible sites available at their fingertips. These are just two sites in particular that were mentioned during the presentation that I found quite interesting. Just based on looking at the website, I was fooled into believing that they were credible sites. It is amazing how people can create these sites based on only fiction.

VanSlyke-Briggs also mentioned how her class at Oneonta and our Eng374 class collaborated in a cross-talk on YA lit blog last semester. She stated that we all understood how to blog correctly, but there was a definitite lack in communication between us and the Oneonta class. I think this was just because a lot of us were unsure how to still use the blog. After taking this class, using a blog seems so easy! I definitely feel as though I am progressing well when it comes to this whole new media literacy thing! Let's just hope that it gets even better in the future!

Jennifer Donnelly

It was so exciting to see Jennifer Donnelly yesterday at the teacher's conference. The speech that she gave was so entertaining and well-prepared. I truly enjoyed every minute of her presentation. The most interesting part for me was when she was going through the numerous pictures that she had from the Glennmore and from Chester Gillette and Grace Brown. I actually got goosebumps as she showed the pictures. It is so eerie knowing what happened to Grace and seeing those old photographs of her and her murderer and Big Moose Lake. Her speech on the imagination was creative, humorous, and inspirational. She was extremely well spoken and was younger than I had expected. She looked as if she were only in her mid-twenties!

It was amazing to hear about all of the historical work that she had to go through before writing A Northern Light. I had no idea how much time and effort she spent searching for photographs, brochures, what life was like in the early 1900's, etc...I found it particularly interesting that she found a lot of her pictures on ebay. I was curious as to how much she paid for those pictures. I should have asked!

The amount of time that it takes to construct a novel is incridible. Donnelly stated that she had been planning to write A Northern Light for nearly 10 years before she found an agent. I never realized that it was 100% necessary to find an agent before even having a book acknowledged by publishing companies. I couldn't believe how many times Donnelly had to make revisions to her book before it was "good enough" to be put out on the market. I've always wanted to someday write my own novel, however I never realized just how time consuming and how difficult it was to do so. Donnelly's presentation was wonderful and it was so amazing to see her in person after reading ANL. It was a great experience and I'm very glad that I had the opportunity to see her!