Austin Mann
Blog Post 2
Dr. Mason
2/21/2015
Hello everyone! I am
continuing my illustrious student teaching this semester, and it is going
fantastically. However, I am very busy with all that I have to do between
lesson planning, studying for my PRAXIS, and working on my KPTP, I am feeling
like Tom Hanks’s character in Cast Away when he is lost at sea on his make
shift raft weeping uncontrollably over losing his volleyball friend Wilson.
Graduation is just around the corner and I have a list longer than Santa’s
naughty list of items that I need accomplish before that fateful (and glorious)
day arrives. Now that multiple classes
have been added to my busy schedule, I am having had a hard and very difficult
time trying to find time for my lesson planning. It has been a hard and
anguishing time over the last several weeks. I have been having trouble trying
to figure out how to get students involved with writing and class discussion
specifically, as many of my students are seniors and already in the mindset of
summer vacation. I have had an especially hard time with my seniors. I cannot
tell if it’s senioritis or if they are just too unwilling to write and
participate.
When it comes to discussions in class, my CT really loves
to get the students involved with the activity of the day. I however am not my
CT, and I am not pronounced with my discussion leading as she is. My seniors
are currently reading The Glass Castle by
Jeannette Walls, and I am having a really hard time getting them to discuss it.
They seem almost afraid of what others might say, but always after class they
come up to me individually and ask me questions on why the author doesn’t just
leave her family, or take another course of action. I am preparing to do a
lesson that Smagorinsky suggests in his book Teaching English by Design. In his book Smagorinsky writes about
how we as educators can put an author on trial. Smagorisky writes “Students who
do not like an author’s or narrator’s deployment of characters may put the author
or narrator on trial, prosecuting them for crimes against the characters.”
(Smagorisky 34)
I feel like this would be a great way to mix
things up and get the students involved in the book like I know they are. Since
the book we are reading isn’t fiction and is the account of the author I would
more than likely place the parents on trial for their misdeeds to their
children. I am reading other ideas that Smagorinsky has to offer, but my
question to you wonderful people is this. What would you do to get your Seniors
who have come down with senioritis to do to get them active in the lessons
again? Would you follow Smagorinsky’s ideas or do you have one of your own? I
hope you all have a wonderful week! Keep doing what you do best and smile!
Work Cited
Smagorinsky, Peter. Teaching
English by Design: How to Create and Carry out Instructional Units.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008. Print.
