I Stand Here Ironing

How does the weight over the iron and the fabric affect the metaphorical meaning of ironing in this story?

The Cask of Amontillado

What things about ourselves or others do we want to bury? What masks do we present to the world?

And then, several weeks ago, I emailed a teacher because I stumbled upon her site via reddit.com. She's using The Hunger Games book to connect with her students. I wanted to know just how she was able to adapt a contemporary novel to a high school academic setting. Here is her response.

Yellow Face

If you ever have the chance to go see a production of Yellow Face, do it. It's a wonderful take on race and the "American Dream" that we all strive to create.

From Yellow Face

We are beautiful when we acknowledge and appreciate our differences without determining a ranking of better and worse. This is my "American Dream." What's yours?

Visual Literacy

"The Things They Carried," by Tim O'Brien, really hits me each time I read it. However, as I worked on my visual literacy project, I found myself breaking down emotionally as I saw the precarious thread that the boat hung on. As that boat swung back and forth in my little jar, barely skimming the ground, I felt the soldiers hanging in between sleep and wakefulness. I felt them as "at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over to lightness, they were carried, they were purely born."

Visual Literacy and the Classroom

From an article entitled "Visual Literacy and the Classroom" by Erin Riesland: The New London Group, a cohort of educators and researchers interested in examining the teaching of new literacies, explains literacy this way: "one could say that its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, and economic life."

Now, go listen to the band Coheed and Cambria. Here's a song called "Far." I know that's not exactly visual, but I'm going to tell you something awesome. This band's singer wrote a series of comic books/graphic novels. I own the first set. The songs are a type of soundtrack to the visual storyline of the comic books. 

So this is what I realized: Students aren't interested in one-dimensional learning. We have to think across plains and find, with in our subject matter, things that they can interact with on multiple levels. This band gives you those multiple levels...and that's why they're my favorite band.

Life is a Dream

In order to put a class on even footing, you have to make things new again. It's the only way to learn new things and keep students interested in the subject matter. Take these images, for instance. 

 We all know what red cotton thread looks like.

But did you know it was so jagged up close? 

And flower petals?

Did you know they were so bumpy?

Ken Robinson "Out of Our Minds with Creativity"

First of all, here's the link to this wonderful TED talk.

And here's where I made my meanings:

My youngest brother being...himself.

My youngest brother is a special kid. He's smart, but he just can't learn the same way other people do. He's insanely creative and just does horribly in school, no matter how hard he works. A passing grade for him is worth just as much (and I tend to think they're worth more) as all my easily won As.

The Things They Carried

My daughter and my late brother

On this most recent reading, the story hit me here.

Multiple Literacies Equal Multiplied Learning

The concept of multiple literacies makes me think of this:

which makes me think of this:

And also this story:

Many years ago in the countryside, an ox pull was held to determine which villager had the strongest ox. The winner pulled 9,000 pounds and the runner-up pulled just a few pounds short of that mark. The owners and the old-timers who had watched the competition began arguing about how much the two oxen could pull if they pulled together. Many bets were placed with people determining the two oxen could pull anywhere from 16,000 to 18,000 pounds. The owners decided to test this out. When hitched together, the oxen pulled well over 26,000 pounds.

This is what happens when we work together. We are all more than the sum of our parts and that is beautiful.

Text and the Construction of Meaning

Part of the goal of this blog is to use something other than words to describe the learning that I've achieved. When we talk about different text and different ways of relating to that text, we each have a slightly different experience based on our own "baggage," for lack of a better term. This concept has alway been interesting to me because it is in those differences that we find the true beauty of the human experience.

"Forever Always" by Octavio Ocampo

So what do you see?

Project Introduction

I've been pushing my way through school in the hopes of, one day, becoming an English teacher. It's been a long journey, but it seems that I'm on the final stretch of my bachelor's degree. This semester, I'm taking my first class that actually focuses on teaching ideologies: Dramatic Performance in the Secondary Language Arts Classroom. As part of a project for the class, I am creating this blog to hold important ideas and meanings that I've made. My hope is that this blog will continue into my teaching career as I continue to learn all the things that make an effective teacher.

Here's the assignment (created by Professor Dwyer of CSUN):

Silva Rerum: A Commonplace Book

Okay . . so here are some ramblings on what a general Commonplace Book is:
Commonplace book (n.):
 an edited collection of striking passages noted in a single place for future reference.
 the notebook in which a reader has collected literary excerpts and personal comments; they are 
frequently indexed so that the reader can classify important themes and locate quotations related to particular topics or authors.
Commonplacing (v.):
 the practice of collecting literary excerpts and personal comments into a journal
 typically the excerpts were regarded as exceptionally insightful or beautiful;
 the act of selecting important phrases, lines, and/or passages from texts and writing them down 
 in a sense, “commonplaces” are words used to identify or explain key ideas
Utilizing the info from above, I am naming the commonplace book you are creating for this class as:
Silva Rerum . . . a forest of things (oooohhhh ahhhhhh)
Here are the parameters:
1. You must include a minimum of 10 entries. Each entry must directly relate to
the key concepts discussed/studied in class i.e. sign systems, knowledge systems, multiple literacies, teaching/learning, the recognition of symbol & metaphor, “texts” and making meaning.
2. Each entry must include some words (an excerpt not a dissertation!) AND the transmediation of the excerpt into one or more of the other sign systems i.e. numbers, sound, gesture, movement, or images.
3. The form you use for this commonplace “book” can be 2-D or 3-D; it can be a blog or website you create; or if you have another wild idea you would like to attempt, speak to me about it for approval.