Literature Review

Becoming a teacher in today's society is much different than it has ever been before.  The testing system and curriculum that teachers across America are forced to teach under hinders the value and benefit that high school students are receiving.  This stress on teachers and students requires a greater expectancy and performance from both groups.  Teachers also have to deal with other changing aspects of society, such as diversity and different learning styles.  

Nancy Schnog addresses the problem of testing and harsh curriculum in her article titled "Why teens don't read: English teachers ruin it".  While this article's title may seem to be harsh, the author is a high school English teacher and is therefore able to see an insider's point of view and get feedback from her students.  

Diversity in modern day schools requires an acceptance from teachers and lack of judgement.  In order for a class to function as a community, knowledge of each other's cultural background and ways of thinking is necessary.  Teachers must keep an emphasis on "cultural identity" in our "pluralistic society", according to Elizabeth Quintero's Becoming a Teacher in the New Society: Bringing Communities and Classrooms Together.  She focuses many of the chapters of the book on how families and communities correlate with what goes on inside the classroom.  Students are greatly affected by their environment and a teacher can not assume anything when working with teens.  They must be open to anything and be fully understanding while still remaining fair and critical.

This diversity lends itself to the need to create and use new methods of teaching.  Sue S. Minchew and Peggy F. Hopper are former high school teachers that speak of using humor and fun in the classroom as a means of teaching.  They speak of specific strategies that Language Arts teachers could easily include in their day to day teachings.  

I would like to focus my research on how Mrs. Lynde from Blacksburg High school overcomes the problems of testing and curriculum while dealing with diversity and also accommodating different learning styles.  This will help me better understand what makes the community successful as a unit.

Fieldwork and Interview Results

I went to my interview and field work today at Blacksburg High.  I worked with Katherine Lynde, the English department chair there.  The day went well, and was very hectic.  It was what they call "club day", where organizations meet during school and students get to "shop" for which clubs they may be interested in for the following year.  I first sat in on part of Ms. Lynde's class, and then the "Black Awareness Club" met in her room.  The students were overall very rowdy and inattentive, which she afterwards apologized for.  The first "club day" is always hectic, she told me.  The next class was a "college bound" class in which she mainly handed out scholarship applications and had the students take down notes on different parts of speech.  I then stayed for her lunch period in which I asked her a few questions.  I did not end up really sticking to my interview questions, because Ms. Lynde was very outgoing and sort of went on her own tangents.  It was an overall successful day and I received a lot of advice and background information about my community and teaching in general.

Course Goals

-Learn to become a better "creative writer"

-Learn to do research

-Properly present research

-Wrote on something that interests me

-Learn more about the fields of English and Education for my future career

-Improve knowledge on other people's communities

-Meet new poeple in class

-Gain more knowledge on how to write for my English major

-Be organized with my research

-Have fun and learn lots!

Interview questions

Reminder: my community is a Blacksburg High School English classroom... and I am interviewing the teacher.

1. What path did you take in college in order to become an English teacher?

2. What inspired you to become a teacher?

3. Describe the first day, or year you taught.  How did it feel?

4. Where did you grow up? Is Blacksburg a culture shock?

5. What was your most proud moment in teaching?

6. If you could change anything in the past, what would it be?

7. Are you involved with any other aspects of the school district (sports/clubs/organizations)?

8. What are the students like at Blacksburg High?

9. Tell me a story behind an interesting item you have.

10. What do you like best/least about your present job?

11. If you could give any advice for a future English teacher, what would it be?

Slusher Hall Happenings

It began with an invitation from Erin and Shannon across the hall.  They yelled into my room "Chelsea, come here!" They then asked if I had seen The Notebook and I replied that I had.  They then asked if any girl would watch The Notebook with a guy.  I laughed and replied that they probably would.  They then yelled "See, I told you so!" to Matt, a friend visiting from their old high school.  They then introduced me and my room mate Samantha to Matt and Ethan from Powhatan High School.  They were sitting on the bench that is located at the end of Slusher Hall.  Samantha and I decided to come out and join them sitting on the floor.  We started off discussing the excitement of the first game and made observations of the turkey gobble and the drunken girl who was stumbling on the stairs.  Ethan was sort of quiet with a smirk on his face, while Matt was very outgoing and involved in the conversation.  They discussed how they go to Bluefield College in Virginia for baseball.  Hannah, my room mates best friend from high school that was visiting, opened our door and walked out when she finished changing.  She introduced herself and chimed into the conversation.  She discussed how she goes to Belmont Abby in North Carolina, which is a school that was founded by monks.  The conversation jumped back and forth between Matt and Ethan joking about their rules to Hannah discussing the strange people at her school.  Matt and Ethan told us about a rule that they have at Bluefield that when girls come in to visit guys or vis versa, they each must have one foot on the floor at all times.  Hannah then told us that she sees monks walking around her school and they only have buildings two floors high because that's all the monks could do.  Melanie and Lily's door then opened and Mel walked out and said hey.  She sat down and asked what we were doing, when someone responded that we were just chilling.  She was introduced to the non- VT students at this time.  She then sat and talked about her room mate and how she hates college and wrote "1-2-3 breathe" on her personal white board.  Matt and Ethan then got up and took a marker to write on their board.  They wrote "Hey nice meeting you, be happy!"  About two minutes later Lily walked down the hall coming from work.  She saw the board, looked around at us, scratched the writing off and slammed the door.  Everyone was sort of shocked and felt bad.  We then looked at the time and realized it was 830, and no one had eaten dinner.  Samantha, Hannah and I were going to their friend Jay's apartment, so we did not have time.  We decided to leave and go get ready to go out instead.  We all said our goodbyes and then we went our seperate ways.

"How Do You Know?"

My group all pretty much held the same views on what a fact or an opinion are.  We think that a fact is really just an opinion that has some sort of proof or evidence which makes it true.  Opinions are not proven to be common knowledge.  However, some truths are not universal and can appear differently depending on geographic location or circumstance.  We believe that something is true because society accepts it and an authority figure tells us that it is true.  I also personally think that some opinions are better than others.  Some people present opinions with no basis or logic.  There is no support or reasoning behind their opinions, which makes their opinion look more weak than others. 

I chose Blacksburg High School (an English classroom) for my community to research.  My views on the difference between fact and opinion will help me in my research because I will be able to distinguish between another community's truths that I am not a part of.  I realize that what may be true for them may not be for me, coming from a Northern Virginia school system. I also realize that when interviewing I am looking at opinions, and some may seem "better" than others, but all are important.