10/15

This week I finished Tyrell and it was a great book that I thoroughly enjoyed. I found myself wanting to read more as I fell in love with Tyrell, Troy, and all the other kids in this book. I think Coe Booth does a great job at exposing some effects of growing up poor, growing up poor and Black, or growing up poor, Black, and female. She does it in a way that allows adolescents to recognize similarities and/or differences in their own lives and maybe spur some great conversation about social problems in their classrooms or intimate groups. I can see why this book is appealing to young Black males because it tells the story of what a lot of them experience as a result of the dynamics in this country. Even if they can only relate to a quarter of what Tyrell experiences and believes, the fact that this story is told from a black male’s perspective, let alone a poor Black male, is profound in itself. We don’t get a lot of stories that speak to Black teens and I definitely appreciate Booth for writing a book like this, its exactly what I want to do.

The Beer’s reading is very practical and helpful and I like it for that. It’s not as interesting as Bomer’s text but it still beneficial as it can serve as a great guide for English and Reading teachers. I feel like it’s a book I will always turn to and use for guidance throughout my career. When I got to chapter 11 and she began outlining some real technical aspects of reading, it became sort of scary for me. Although, I was already that some kids in high school are extremely dependent readers and can’t decode words, I am still terrified at failing these students if I end up not being able to help them. In addition, the section on word recognition with the tables about sounds, blends, and dipgraphs was very overwhelming for me. I felt like it was the first I’d ever seen these things (even though I know it’s not) and it just made me worry about my effectiveness as a teacher, having to basically teach reading all the way down to word recognition if I’m unfamiliar with these terms and concepts. It also made me worry a lot about time. At what point during class time do I work with the student who can’t decode if the other students are past that? How do you work on something like this in an hour and a half when there are other areas to cover? How do you not take away from the kids who are reading on level, while still showing significant attention to students who are extremely dependent when it comes to reading? Last week, I felt like there were solutions to these questions and I was okay, this week for some reason or another I’m back to being worried. What do you guys think?

As for fieldwork and working with my CT in her classes, it’s really not what I expected. Although, I’m beginning to fall in love with the students and can’t wait to teach again, I don’t feel like I’m learning much from my CT. Teaching was great because I was able to get some great advice from Anni after the fact. I learned that I need to slow down when I’m teaching (story of my life) because I sometimes go at a pace that suggests everyone knows as much as I do on the topic I’m going over. I also learned that building rapport with the students is much easier than I thought because they were extremely receptive. However, the classroom experience here is still extremely redundant and boring (which my CT agrees with) and I can’t say that I’m gaining much from this experience other than some “what not to do’s”. For example, I have learned that I hate PowerPoint lectures and I want to stay away from them as much as possible. The great thing is my CT does give me a lot of flexibility with the lesson plans, so I’m free to alter most of it to my liking. This is good because I get to do a lot of practice with ideas I may have or come up with and have Anni guide me through those ideas and practices, which is great. Nonetheless, I feel like everyone else is having such awesome field experiences and I’m extremely jealous because I was hoping for those types of experiences as well.