Listening to: Sophie Ellis Bextor - Murder on the Dance Floor
Yay! It's time for my last class of the semester - Community Literacy. It's been a really interesting class, getting me even further interested in teaching English, while at the same time, it has given me a better perspective on the work I was doing over at the learning center. I really, really love seeing people discover that they enjoy reading, or cracking the code that is English grammar, or writing something they're proud of. English as a subject always brought me joy when I was in school - it was definitely my favorite part of the day. I can only hope that I'm good enough to make my own students feel that way.
One of my classmates asked me yesterday why I wanted to teach, and I explained that English was what I loved, and I figured that staying in school would really benefit nobody but myself. She said that made sense. Then I mentioned that, ideally, I'd be teaching middle school. I got a number of weird looks.
Well, someone has to do it, right?
In the meantime, I need to hammer out a decent short story/creative piece as my final project for the Literacy class. I discussed prison tattooing as its own discourse, and the concepts of public and private discourse as they related to prison tattoos. I'm thinking I'm going to take the subject further, and assemble something of a creative "guide" on the subject, both in the messages the tattoos could theoretically send to members of four audiences (the anti-tattoo, the non-tattooed, the tattooed, and the prison-tattooed), and tips for language interpretation. I've become known in the CW department for really messing around with form, so this might be a time for me to really go crazy while trying to explain a concept that is pretty foreign to a lot of people; granted, it can only really be from my perspective, but I'm good at this ^__-
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3 comments:
The father of one of my cow-orkers at the radio station was a middle school teacher. He said the purpose of middle school was to protect the rest of the world from these 12- to 14-year-olds.
Considering how few fond memories I have of 6th through 8th grade, I wish you well. It'll be a challenge, but I know you're up to it.
Middle school is such a tough time, kids are already at an awkward age.
They need people like you, Slicey.
I think the trick is to re-fresh their love of learning before they get to high school, and it's a hard place to do it in.
I hope that turns out to be the right track for you, because the kids would so benefit.
They'll think you're one of the kids. That's what happened to me.
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