My name is Greg Barmby, and this is my first (well, second besides EDCI 336…) attempt at blogging. Not having much experience with blogging, I am curious to learn this "new" type of technology and how I can use it.
Writing in English has never really been something I have done on a regular basis, and I struggled with it in high school and through various parts of university. Luckily my first degree was in music and the only writing I had to do was writing music, which was and is much easier than writing an essay! In fact, even the word ‘writing’ to me has always meant writing music. I suppose part of that has to do with the fact that I learned to read music at about the same time or maybe even before I learned to read written text, so it has always been easy for me to ‘read and write’ music, but the writing in terms of ELA always been a challenge for me.
As for the question posed in this assignment – I am really not sure of what to expect in terms on ELA in the classroom. I remember very little about ELA in my middle school/high school experience, there are some latent memories of book reports and Shakespeare maybe, but somehow I managed to get through Grade 12 English having never written an essay. I never learned anything about the standard 5-paragraph essay that everyone else seemed to know by the time I got to university. In this respect, it’s difficult to know what to expect because I have little to compare it to, and have not seen a traditional middle grades classroom since I was in middle school myself.
I expect:
· ELA will look very different than when I was in middle school.
· ELA will look rather chaotic at times.
· ELA will sound rather cacophonous occasionally.
· ELA will be like nothing I have experienced before.
· ELA will be a teaching challenge worth pursuing.
Above all else, I expect to learn as much or more than my students.
