10/1

This week Bomer teaches us that “English class needs to help students become more powerful readers”, powerful in the sense that our students will be able have a “critical” yet “satisfying” reading experience.  In order to accomplish this we should not “commodify” every reading assignment into a tedious task, that really only results in the students producing what they think you want them to. As always, I love how Bomer sees reading and the English classroom. Like me he sees it as an intellectual space that houses many different people and a multitude of exciting ideas and beliefs. I’ve always hated when teachers assigned projects to texts we were reading, anticipating that dull project often made me not want to read the text to begin with. Personally, a satisfying reading experience for me starts and ends with “talk”. I love sharing and often learn so much from people’s interpretations and ideas. Another positive reading experience for me is writing, there comes a point when writing about the text is very satisfying when you’ve discussed it with multiple people and have gained so much insight that the words are just pouring out. As a result, I love Bomer’s emphasis of “talk” in the classroom. I don’t think he is as fond of writing but I still do think writing is a very meaningful task (even in the basic form) as long as it’s preceded by a thoughtful conversation. Still, I might be a bit biased because I am especially fond of writing and analyzing certain literature.

            Nonetheless, Bomer suggests that the writing assignments when given should result in the students thinking critically about the text. He also suggests that students should write “to support their experience of reading”. Although I think this is a great idea as it continues to encourage students to establish themselves as readers and are great strategies that can help with reading comprehension, I think I would want to read more about how my students feel about the text, then what they feel while reading it. But then again for struggling readers or those that haven’t moved to that stage yet, I am convinced that the latter would be more beneficial.

            All in all, I really enjoy reading this text because Bomer has a great idea of what an English class should feel like for students and his ideas are also very accommodating, allowing every student to reach their reading goals regardless of their current level.

            Now let’s talk about my field experience! Well, I really don’t have that much experience to discuss, I have been twice, just observing, and the class did pretty much the same things on both of these occasions. Nonetheless, I noticed that my CT has a huge classroom library (well at least in my opinion) which I absolutely love. I’ve been meaning to inch my way towards it to see what’s actually in it, but I haven’t gotten there yet. She said most of the books are hers but some were donated or given to her by the school. The students have been reviewing and taking notes on literary devices because they have an exam coming up so I haven’t really been able to see something I could relate to the Bomer readings. Lastly, I think my CT is very sweet and I notice her continuously trying to build positive relationships with her students which I also love. We discussed how most of the students are reading at about a seventh grade level, which didn’t shock me because a lot of the students I worked with back home were tenth graders reading on elementary levels. But it still makes me sad… (Sigh). Hopefully, nect week after the exam I’ll be able to see some of Bomer’s ideas put into practice…or not.