The wooden shack place

While reading this article, I felt that I could relate to Robert in so many ways. For one thing,we both group up in urban cities, lived in apartments and have parents who come from the islands. In fact, when I read the poem and interpreted in very much like he did. I made many of a assumptions that he had. I understood things to mean one way when they really meant another. Like Robert, the mentioning of Sears in the poem made me believe that the young girl came from a middle class family. Like Robert, shopping in Sears means to me that you come from a higher social economic background than I did. Like Robert, I know real poverty.
Honestly, I started to feel quite dumb, for the lack of a better word. On the other hand I also felt I could relate to Mike Rose. As a teacher, when we bring something in to the classroom, such as a poem, we have certain expectations from the students. We think we know how they will react, interpret and understand it. We fail to recognize all the diverse backgrounds our students have as well as all the prior knowledge they bring into the classroom. This article brought me to an "aha" moment. As a teacher I am guilty of having frustrating moments when one of my students doesn't see things the way I would like to them to. But after reading this article I thought back at the times when my own teachers probably didn't understand where I was coming from. I promise to go easier on my students from now on.

Review of Earlier Blog

After reviewing my earlier blog and the article on Expository Writing, I started to change my mind about some of the things I wrote earlier. Although the article offered good strategies on how to teach Expository Writing, I began to think that the lesson cycle included too much too fast. I wondered, how much time would be left for review? How would the teachers cater to the students who had difficulty in one area and not the other? Although I would still use some things in my classroom (the chart), I think for of their ideas are a bit "old school". For one, the vocabulary activities were a bit typical. I think there are so many different ways of teaching vocabulary that would have made it much more interesting to the students.
I still think the article is a great help for teaching expository writing but as I stated earlier, I'm concerned with the flow of the lesson and how it deals with students who don't grasp certain skills as fast as others.

What should colleges teach?

The article written by Stanley Fish, "What Should Colleges Teach?" caught my attention immediately. It is a hot topic among college students who often complain that they aren't being taught useful skills that they will need later on in life. These students are left to wonder to what extent will they need to know the symbolism is Candide? How will this knowledge help when they become graduates who lack the skills to write proper resumes? It is a problem I encounter with my own fiance , an accountant whose job requires that he constantly write detailed reports, employee assessments and client feedback. Although a genius in math, he struggles to write the simplest emails. He is not aware of how to probably use past tenses or other grammar usage. In his freshman comp. class, he spent the semester reading Dante's Inferno and the first book of Gennesis. Again, these are valuable reads but it would have been beneficial to spend sometime reviewing writing skills. I think there is a notion that no one really talks about, the fact that no one really prepares you for college writing. In high school we write essays and in college we write papers. Although the they might seem the same, these are very different. The level at which one writes a college paper is much deeper in thought and critique. You sort-of jump in to college and think you know how to write. I was one of these people. And then you get a shocker. It is because of this that I completely agree with the ACTA, someone needs to be held accountable for this. Stanley Fish makes a good point when he says that composition should be considered as an essential skill.

Expository Reading and Writing

My first semester in college, I was one of those students who had a tape recorder. I had to capture every single word the professor was saying. It wasn't enough that I would take three page notes because at home when I would read them, I would realize that I had three pages of junk. The fact that I could not take proper notes stems for the very root of what this article is talking about. I wasn't able to distinguish was important about what my professor was saying. This is the same as not being about to read an excerpt and extract a main idea from supporting details. What I find about the lesson created by these teachers is that is is incredibly rich and amazingly, covers EVERYTHING you come possibly think of when it comes to expository writing. It will planned and structured. The chart of signal words and phrases that correlate with expository structures is an excellent idea and I could see it perfectly hanging in one of my future classrooms.