Ch. 10: Teaching English Language Arts in a "Flat" World

Looking back on this chapter, I am rather jealous that many of these ideas were not on the forefront of education while I was in High School. My High School literature class consisted of group readings in which we would come together and have different rotating roles that helped the whole group to use diverse methods of understanding the book, however conceptual literacy and synthesis were still not exactly huge priorities in my education, and I have found that I sometimes struggle with connecting ideas to other areas of my life and other subjects in school and I am not very flexible and adaptable. I am a firm believer that learning should be interdisciplinary, and so a goal that I have as a future teacher is to collaborate with my fellow teachers and try to keep the students engaged all throughout the day by connecting what they are learning in one class to another class. I realize that this is harder for High School than it is for Middle School, but like the author said, sometimes we don’t make the goals that we strive for, but having those goals guide us to accomplish more. I wish to also make sure that my students are learning the skills that they need to be successful throughout life, such as sensitivity to diversity and issues in the world. As a future science teacher, I really like research projects. I hope to have a project for my students in which they must do research on a pressing biological issue in our environment and come up with some innovative ways to solve the problem. They will then put together a presentation using whatever methods they believe most suit their personal skills and interests and present the project to their fellow students in a formal manner. I believe that this sort of project will really help my students to develop skills that they will take with them wherever they go, even after the things they learn in my biology class no longer matter to them. The chairman of the Honors program came and spoke to my Honors class today about how participating in certain activities and experiences will really help us to be able to demonstrate the skills that we have developed throughout our education by listing these experiences in a resume. If I guide my students in a similar manner by guiding them to these experiences as well, my hope is that I can inspire them to go out and do those cultural, service, and leadership activities that will allow them to develop those required skils for the future, so that they can maximize their opportunities to lead an incredible life.