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.