Sample+Essay

Reflective Letter for Final Portfolio and Livetext
Dear Reader, My primary goal as a secondary Language Arts educator is to be a teacher with a capital T, as described by Nancie Atwell in her text, In the Middle. I want to inspire and spark the interest of my students. I plan to collaborate with them in their learning and model good reading and writing skills. I want to give students the opportunity to construct their own meaning from a variety of texts, learn critical thinking skills and develop their writing skills. I believe in using student-centered teaching techniques to engage and maintain the interest of my students. In my Unit Plan The Giver : What is the Price of Freedom? I use journal-writing and small group discussion to engage the students and encourage them to make connections to their own lives. I have always had a passion for English Language Arts. When I pursued my first degree in Business Administration, I had so many English and Literature electives that I received a minor in English. After graduation, I worked at Ford Motor Company for about eight years as a programmer and a systems analyst. I left the business world when my second child was born and focused on raising my children. Over the years, I have volunteered countless hours at my children’s schools and I knew in my heart that I wanted to be an English teacher. So I began pursuing my post-baccalaureate teaching degree. As I have advanced though my classes, I have no question that I made the right decision. Reading and writing are two major joys in my life and I have thrived in the university learning environment. I have learned more effective writing techniques, such as the importance of revising and editing. At one time, I always wrote papers in final draft format and I didn’t use revising or editing techniques. Now I never turn in a paper until it has been through a few drafts, such as the essay I wrote for my Women in Literature Class, Art for the Soul in Jane Eyre. I want to model good writing habits for my students and struggle with them through the writing process. As a teacher, I respect the cultural background of my students, and I understand that some students come from cultures that may influence their dialect. I think it is important to teach Standard English to students, but I believe a teacher must respect a student’s cultural heritage and the traditions of that heritage. It is important to be proficient in Standard English for genres with a public audience, such as cover letters, resumes, or letters to the editor. But there are many writing opportunities when dialect differences provide a rich experience for the reader, such as personal narratives or memoirs. My own experience growing up is reflected in my Teacher as Reader Journal Entry. I grew up learning Standard English in a school in the Midwest, but my mother was raised in poverty in the South. So I had to learn to reconcile the differences in my home world and my school world. I believe this will give me empathy for students who have a similar situation. In my classroom, I would like to use a variety of teaching methods. I would like to do reading/writing workshops, based on Nancie Atwell’s model in her text, In the Middle. Reading/writing workshop is extremely student-centered and it is an excellent way to teach reading and writing together. Genre study, as it is described in the text Thinking Through Genre is effective for immersing students in a single genre, such as poetry. My Unfamiliar Genre: Slam Poetry Reflection reveals how I have struggled with poetry and it discusses my growth during the project. I chose to do the Unfamiliar Genre research project on Slam Poetry because it is a genre that I believe would appeal to secondary students. There are some great hip-hop and other slam poetry that will engage the interest of students. As a teacher, I will be honest with my students about my struggles with poetry. I don’t think a teacher should be viewed as infallible. We all share the same struggles and students need to know that teachers go through the same writing difficulties that they do. Thematic Units are a wonderful way to teach a unit using a variety of genres. My Inquiry Project Reflective Essay describes what I learned about teaching thematic units. Thematic units are often centered on a big question. The text Both Art and Craft: Teaching Ideas that Spark Learning describes how it is possible to develop a thematic unit around a variety of subjects: “I develop units around an author, a kind of writing, a novel, a research project, a single short story, a poem, an audiotape, a genre (such as fairy tales), or even around a concern in my class” (Mitchell 155). I’m very enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by the author’s approach to writing thematic units. I developed a guide for my fellow students on how to plan thematic units based on the Both Art and Craft text titled Planning Thematic Units: Inquiry Project. It outlines the steps that the author recommends for planning a thematic unit and has some ideas for thematic units, such as promoting authentic learning and developing units around classroom concerns. During the inquiry project, I also interviewed a 7 th grade teacher about thematic units in my Inquiry Project Interview. I have found practicing teachers to be extremely helpful to me as a pre-service teacher and also very generous with their time and ideas. It is important to make connections in the unit plans, not only to students’ lives and experiences, but to other texts and materials. The book When Text Meets Text describes in detail how valuable it is to make intertextual connections. I will try to bring in as many genres and connecting material as possible, such as films, poetry, music, picture books, newspaper articles, short stories, and young adult novels. My unit plan on The Giver uses a young adult novel, two poems, a short story, and a film clip. My Tangerine Unit Rationale connects the young adult book Tangerine with the movie The Outsiders. My Book Review of Tangerine summarizes the novel and discusses the value of this book by Edward Bloor. When I attended the Bright Ideas professional conference at Michigan State University titled Great Expectations: Literacy, Language, Literature & Learning, I found another innovative way to make intertextual connections. In my Bright Ideas Conference Reflection, I describe a session titled “ Reading , Writing & Eurythmics: Infusing Popular Music and New Media in the ELA Classroom.” The presenters created a Wiki ( an easy-to-use web page that multiple people can edit) that has literary allusions in popular music. I was excited by this because I think music is a great way to engage and interest secondary students. Another session I attended was titled “Engaging Literature Lovers and Reluctant Readers Through Literature Circles.” This session offered some ideas for diverse learners using literature circles and letting students choose their own books. It was a student-centered approach that appeals to two types of diverse learners: excellent readers and struggling readers. In my Unit Plan The Giver : What is the Price of Freedom? , I developed a four week student-centered inquiry unit for a 9 th grade class with the novel The Giver at its center. In my Unit Plan Proposal, I started out with a few different ideas than I evolved to in my final unit plan. I changed the poetry I was going to use, eliminated a field trip to see a stage version of the novel, and changed some of the learning activities. I believe that a unit plan is always a work in progress, and should be enhanced or changed as necessary. In addition to The Giver, the students read “Jeremiah’s Song,” a short story by Walter Dean Myers, the poem “Confession” by Stephen Dobyns, the poem “What is Family?” by Anitra L. Freeman, and watch excerpts from the movie Pleasantville. The summative assessment is a small group project. It has students create a newspaper for the Giver’s Community looking at controversial issues. The small groups will write news stories, news briefs, editorials, and letters to the editor. I will conduct minilessons on those genres during the unit. The Giver : What is the Price of Freedom? is a student-centered unit that has students writing in a Reading Journal daily, participating in small and large group discussions, and offers them the flexibility to be creative when they do their Summative Assessment. I included an integrated lesson plan on euphemisms on Day 8, because I believe you must teach grammar, vocabulary, and other language skills in context of the books they are reading. The summative assessment also has the students use technology to make their newspaper. I also used technology extensively in my Waterlily Inductive Lesson Integrating Technology. In this summative assessment, students use Microsoft Word, Power Point, and web logs. The web logs, or “blogging” is used to do peer editing by telecollaborating with a class at another high school. Most high school students are very familiar with using blogs, so it is an effective way to engage them in the peer editing. As a teacher, I must be a lifelong learner. It is my responsibility to reflect on my teaching methods constantly and learn from my students as well as teach them. As Nancie Atwell says in her book In the Middle : “I’m striving for the fluid, subtle, exhilarating balance that allows me to function in my classroom as a listener and a teller, an observer and an actor, a collaborator and a critic and a cheerleader” (Atwell, 21). I believe these words with all my heart, and I will carry them with me as I strive to be a teacher with a capital T.

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