Blog #3 My Learning Style

I mentioned in my last post that I am a terrible student; I failed to mention that I am a great learner.

I don't mean that in an arrogant or condescending manner. I simply mean that absorbing and applying and articulating new information comes fairly easily to me. It's something I'm good at. So, in order to figure out, or understand, my learning style, I had to think back to the last time I had difficulty learning a new concept.

In my Junior year of high school I took an Honors level Chem course; partly because I needed a science credit, and partly because there was absolutely no way was I going to learn anything in a classroom full of mere plebeians. I knew science was usually a difficult subject for me, but I was riding the high of an overly successful year of Honors Physics the year before. Honestly, how different could the two sciences be?

Let's just take a moment of silence for Adolescent-Amber. She was a special snowflake.

I was rather quickly disabused of this notion, but the intervening period really tested my strength as a learner. I scraped through that class in a constantly shifting balance between frustrated and apathetic. To this day, I'm still not sure how I managed to get the grade I did. Miracle or teacher intervention: either is equally probable.

That class was taught linguistically (via lecture) with intrapersonal homework assignments, visual model-building projects, and interpersonal lab days. I learned and understood the most about chemistry on lab days.

I need the freedom to openly discuss and think through problems within a small group setting to really achieve an understanding of any given topic.

To that end, small group discussions and Socratic Seminars would be the most helpful for learners of this "intelligence". My instruction should be gently guiding and it should facilitate an open environment for these individuals to learn in.

Not every student does best in interpersonal styles though.
Let' consider how we might teach a poem to different students:

Kurt: Let's propose that Kurt is a Linguistic learner. he understands new material by using words effectively, I would read the poem aloud once, than have Kurt read it aloud as well. Since "I, Too", by Langston Hughes is a response poem, I would have Kurt write a response to a poem as well.

Charlie: Suppose that Charlie is a Logical learner. she need to reason or calculate her way to the meaning. I would ask her first to identify the tone of America when this was published, and then from there I would ask her to identify the broad themes of Langston's work.

Lawrence: If Larry learned independently I would ask him to construct a journal entry picking out any literary devices employed in the poem.

Maria: If Maria was an interpersonal learner, I would have her read the poem and then come up with three questions to ask the class during a Socratic Seminar.

To wit, my three questions about the poem are as follows:
1. If this poem were longer, would it be as powerful?
2. Does this poem stand on its own? Or do you need to read the first to fully understand it?
3. How different would the poem be if it were written by today's 'assigned-to-the-kitchen' minorities?

Blog #2: My Adolescent Identity

When I turned thirteen, my older sister Sarah emailed me a link to Facebook as a birthday present. At the time, this seemed like a really thoughtful and, frankly, awesome gift. We had been in PA for three years now-having moved from Ohio when I was ten- and I was itching to communicate with people my own age and not related to me by blood. I was home-schooled and lonely and Facebook was how I planned to change that. 

In reality all I actually did with Facebook, as near as I can tell after hours of spelunking through my page, was to tell the three friends I had (my sister and older brother JD being two of them) that I was avoiding schoolwork by being on Facebook. Truly, an excellent beginning to my life on social media.

Fourteen was no better, though it did bring with it a change in schools. I started public school in the middle of the year, partially because my mom was fed up with me always being underfoot, and partially because I hadn't done a single math assignment for the class I was enrolled in and would have failed Algebra 1 if I had stayed in the homeschool. You can bet your bottom dollar all of my Facebook friends knew about it.

Starting in the middle of the year made certain things a little strange. For one thing, I was placed in Algebra 1, but I didn't have to learn the first units they had already covered and I had told my mom were done (but which totally weren't). To this day negative numbers are still a fuzzy area for me. 

If we're being completely honest, and I like to think we can be at this point, I'm a terrible student. I put things off until the last possible second; partly because I have ADD and partly for the thrill of coming in just under the wire. I forget homework all the time, and my grades have never really mattered to me. I never had to earn my A's in high school. I did the bare minimum and because I'm an excellent tester I managed to float through three years of high school by the skin of my teeth and the strategic use of study halls. I was more focused on finally having friends than I was on learning anything. The only reason I wasn't more of a class-clown type, acting up for the attention of my peers, was thanks to my natural fear of authority figures, which led to me being a model student in-class. The only problem being that the charade fell apart rather quickly once the adults were gone.

And so, my adolescent years were pretty smooth-sailing for a while. I put in the bare minimum, and I got out the maximum of what my peers were reaching for. Straight A's and a killer social life, every high schooler's pipe dream. It didn't last, and so senior year when the rest of my classmates were picking out decorations for their new dorms, I was having panic attacks about wanting to be an English teacher even though I was failing English. 

The failing grade wasn't due to a lack of knowledge or understanding. It was an essay, worth 200 points, that I had never turned in to be graded. For four months I avoided the eyes of Mr. Berrier in class and deliberately ignored the looming specter of my failing grade because the more time elapsed where I hadn't finished the essay, the less I could bear to even open the document to look at it. The shame and guilt swamped up and I couldn't handle the stress of not having it finished long enough to actually finish it. I couldn't even stand to open up the Word document, because just looking at the file shortcut made my stomach cramp up in abject misery and shame. The essay, originally due in October, only took me (measured in actual writing time) about three hours to complete. But I didn't hand it in until April. I couldn't explain to myself why I hadn't just written it, much less to the concerned guidance counselor who watched me break down in her office over the irony of my desire to be a teacher. 

In the way of things it was this class that made me absolutely sure I wanted to be an English teacher. It sounds bizarre I know. If anything this class should have made me forswear English all-together and attempt to live the rest of my life as a suburban housewife with tall hedges and all the latest gossip on the neighbor's current sex scandal. But tall hedges make me nervous, and I really don't care about any of my neighbors lives, much less their sexual endeavors. 

Mr. Berrier was also my Advanced Communications teacher, and for an assignment in that class we had to write a speech about our future careers. I had already kind of decided that I wanted to be an English teacher at this point, so obviously that was my topic for the speech. When we performed our speeches in Mr. Berrier's class, he sat in the back row and took notes so he could assess the speech properly. I remember that during my speech, when I first said "I want to be an English teacher", we made eye contact. I think I must have expected him to look shocked, or maybe concerned. I probably expected him to laugh at me. I didn't expect him to nod, like he had confirmed some pre-conceived notion of his, or as if he had already decided how well that would turn out for me. In my mind, this was a challenge. The gauntlet had been thrown and I was ready to fight. 

 As all AP classes do, this one ended with the AP exam in early May. By that point, I already knew I was graduating and after I took the test I no longer cared about it. It either would or would not count towards college but the results were immaterial. In early July I got an email from Mr. Berrier.

"I know that test scores aren't officially released to students until tomorrow, but I wanted you to know that preliminary reports show that you received a 5 on your English Lit & Comp exam!  You struggled this year with time management and it affected your marking period grades, but this really shows that you know your stuff when it comes to English, which should definitely make you feel more comfortable heading off to college as an English major!"

The above text was copied directly from his email to me. At the time of receipt I was eighteen and I took the email like a body blow. I thought he was mocking me, and making light of the genuine struggle I had endured senior year.

Looking back on it now, I realize he was not making fun of me. Mr. Berrier was an asshole, don't get me wrong. He was mean and crotchety and he had a terrible sense of humor, but he was not cruel or malicious, and he was a genuinely good teacher. 

When I was a teenager, or an adolescent if you will, my main concern was the future. I wanted to be past all the hard and uncomfortable experiences that high school wrought and I wanted to be past them now. Being older now, (if only slightly), I can say that I'm immeasurably glad I didn't have the ability to simply skip ahead past these chapters of my life. Although they were hard, and at times seemed impossible, they shaped me into the person I am today. And as terrible of a cliche as that is, it is also the immutable truth.I am glad for the struggles I have endured, and for the teachers that forced them upon me. So, thank you, Mr. Berrier. You'll never know what it meant to me, but I'm glad you almost failed me. 

Blog #1 - My Teaching Identity

Chilling with Cali (aka the Jeep)

When I was in the first grade, I attended a small Catholic school, the third in a preceding line of siblings to attend St. Helen's Elementary School. That year was the first time I had ever been asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" At the time, being seven and only vaguely aware of three possible professions: firefighting, computers -the title I naively attributed to my father's job working Network Security for the local airbase-, and teaching, I picked teaching out of the understanding that firefighting was physical labor (and thus to be avoided), computers would be boring, and teaching involved being at school, which was the most fun I had ever had doing anything. Clearly the smartest choice. 

Since then I've changed so much as a person that I'd be barely recognizable to my seven year old self. Most of the changes I underwent were necessary and character building, although I think seven year old Amber would be disappointed to know I no longer wear dresses, and that my favorite color hasn't been pink for years. Some things stay the same though, no matter how much time has passed, and so, while I no longer wear my hair exclusively in a ponytail, I do still want to be a teacher. Obviously for far more sophisticated reasons now than when I was in the first grade. Now my desire to be a teacher stems from my love of summer camp. An odd connection maybe, but it's the one that brought me here today.

When I was fourteen I was an active member of 4-H, a national youth program that focuses on creating an agricultural presence in the lives of kids from the ages of eight to nineteen. It's sort of similar to the Girl or Boy Scouts in structure, although infinitely better in terms of coolness and fun. Being, at the age of fourteen, now old enough to qualify as a Senior 4-H member, I was allowed the opportunity to reign supreme over a group of young campers as Counselor at the yearly summer camp they hosted. 

It was honestly the most exciting and rewarding aspect of my life to that point. Working with my fellow counselors to keep the kids healthy, safe, engaged, excited, and most of all ensuring their time at camp was both fun and instructional was an immense challenge, but it was the best kind of challenge because it was such a fun one. It was absolutely the best part of my summers, and it's what finally convinced me teaching was the right profession for me. 

When I am a teacher I hope to bring the energy of summer camp to every lesson. I want to inspire my students to think in different directions, to see the ways that English connects to nearly everything and anything you could imagine. I want my students to watch movies and read books and fall in love with words and stories the way I did, thanks to my high school teachers. I want to show them that writing is as much about style as it is about grammar; that essays can be fun to write and even more fun to rewrite. I want my students to leave my tutelage absolutely convinced English is necessary to the full enjoyment of life, whether or not they decide to pursue it any further after high school. I want, above all, to have a meaningful impact on my students lives.
 

Good Guy English Teacher

Internet Culture seems pretty evenly divided on the subject of English teachers. On the one hand we have Good Guy English Teacher, who is that one teacher we all remember from high school who genuinely cared about individual students and inspired your class to achievements you didn't really think were possible.

Evil English Teacher

On the other end of the scale we have Evil English Teacher, who hands out F's like candy, and thinks your analysis of the text was poorly executed. No one wants to be this kind of teacher.

I want to be seen as the Good Guy English Teacher, although I imagine I won't have any difficulty grading a paper with an F if it truly deserved the poor grade.