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.
Welcome to the Blogosphere, Greg! I was thinking about your comment regarding not remembering much of your Language Arts experiences when you were in Middle School. That might be an asset! Perhaps it will be easier to explore and implement some of the more innovative methods of ELA teaching (like blogging and wikis to support student writing...and podcasts to develop public speaking...).
ReplyDeleteGreat post Greg - I can't believe you were learning to read and write music before the alphabet! I would way rather write an essay than attempt to write a song. looking at how you laid out your expectations, I wonder if this would be a useful task to set middleschool students on at the beginning of a school year. "What do you think learning ELA will/should/should not look like?" Or something like that. Have an awesome weekend!
ReplyDeleteHi Greg, I like your idea of expecting to learn as much or more than your students. A journey through the classroom with the students as opposed to you being the "chalk and talk" leader seems like a great learning environment! I agree with Carol that without having any predisposition of what an ELA class should look like, could give you an advantage in making it something completely new and different.
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