Narrative and Final Project

            My boyfriend proposed to me over the weekend. Later we both had our families come together to celebrate.  My dad kept saying he wanted a goat in exchange for my hand in marriage, as part of my bride price.   My boyfriend’s dad said in rebuttal, that he should get the goat as part of the dowry.  My reaction was similar to the GIF below. 

        While I love a good joke, I tried to tell them I was worth at least two healthy goats.  But I started to think about all the old-fashioned traditions that are associated with marriage.  Asking the father's permission to marry his daughter and later the father giving his daughter away are just some examples.  One of my favorites is how women have to wear white dresses because it is a symbol of chastity, but men wear black tuxedos.  Why aren't they required to wear white and be pure?  This was interesting and my mind kept floating back to how I could teach my students about Feminism when it was so engrained in our culture that sometimes I did not even see it?
         The only way I can become better at something is by practicing and students will help me see new things as well.  Something I struggled with last year while teaching my ninth graders the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, was the role and stereotypes women played.  Looking into the tenth grade curriculum for my World Literature class, I hope to have the students conceptualize and grapple with the feminism lens in a more thorough way.  For my project, I began to think about how to introduce the topic of feminism and how to continue the conversation in a methodical way.  Students will begin with dissecting Lesley Grinner's S.C.W.A.A.M.P. and grappling with the hierarchy and positions of power people have in the world.  From there, my technology portion of my assignment only makes me a techno-traditionalist,  because I created a Ted Ed Lesson based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ted Talk entitled "The Danger of a Single Story."
        On a sidenote, I think it is important to state that I feel confident in my ability to become a techno constructivist, but I am working to refine my teaching ability and remember that one of the most important things I took away from the class was how technology is a means and not the end goal.  Also, after having more time to reflect on either being a digital native or digital immigrant, I have realized I bounce between both labels.  Then, I wonder why are we making more labels when we are trying to combat labeling people like we did in our S.C.W.A.A.M.P. exercise.  I wonder if the future of S.C.W.A.A.M.P. will include a digital or technology component.  Now that I have digressed, please continue on to learn more about my lesson plan project.
        My project is working to unlearn the myths that bind us as Linda Christensen has meaningfully expressed.  Currently, I am working on the now what of my project.  Once my students are enlightened; what is our next step?  How do we combat the feminism and the S.C.W.A.A.M.P. ideas?  This part connects to what Simon Sinek deems the most important, "why do you do what you do? What's the purpose?" 
If I were to design backwards, I know the what is to teach the tenth grade world literature curriculum.  My how is going to involve the students using technology and what I surmise from the readings of Wesch and Turkle about the importance of conversation and learning from one another.  The matter of why I want to teach them these skills connects to the various social inequalities my students, and our nation, struggle with as a whole.  The root of my why is to arm these kids with the tools to promote social justice.  Similarly, Dr. Susan Patterson described it in her lecture about how it is necessary to teach empathy in schools.  It is my hope that students will learn from the different points of view to help them keep an open-mind and an open-heart.
       Another part to my lesson plan is incorporating the self-proclaimed, Queen B, also known as, Beyoncé.  Her most recent album has promoted feminism but I want the students to compare and contrast Adichie's feminism with Beyoncé's feminism because one is more proliferated in mainstream media.  My hope is that the students will realize that Beyoncé is not committed to the strongest purpose of feminism and therefore has a weak conviction of what she believes.
       Once students can see how the media is feeding on them and their minds, I hope they are able to change the way they see things for the better.  I am not trying to ruin Beyoncé's music, Disney movies, or brand name sneakers; I just simply want students to comprehend the subliminal messages. 
       My three core beliefs about learning, teaching, and the world revolve around humanity, curiosity, and laughing.  I like to think the Sir Ken Robinson and I could be great friends because our pedagogy is similar, except his last belief is for a bigger push on creativity.  While I absolutely agree with him, I just find that it is vital to laugh. On the same token, in order to make someone laugh you have to be creative.  I am a big believer in the power of one's mindset and if you are able to make learning and teaching enjoyable, then information will be processed more effectively.
        Curiosity is what drives toddlers to simply ask, why, a million times a day, but for some reason that rapidly declines.  But, why does it rapidly decline?  Is there a correlation between young kids accepting the world with the agenda of boys are knights in shining armor while girls are damsels in distress?  Curiosity is the only way I become a less ignorant person.  It has helped me learn about life to try new experiences and I hope to impart that to
others.
        Lastly I want to end with discussing humanity.  Students quickly recall how teachers make them feel.  That feeling is made up of if the teacher made assessment the goal, or was it resiliency and overcoming hurdles.  Did the teacher believe in just the student when they were in their class or did the teacher believe in the in the person the student was going to become?  Fortunately, I have had great teachers in school, in college, and in my life to help show me that.  I know I need to pay it forward and I know I am not the perfect teacher, but I am crazy enough to try to be. 

Blog Post #5

My three core beliefs about learning, teaching, and the world. 

1) Humanity is everything.

2) Keep up constant curiosity.

3) Laughing is necessary.

How I have been brought up plus what I have learned during my short life has created these three core beliefs.  I say that humanity is everything because my students need to know that we are both teachers and we are both learners in the classroom.  I am not perfect and I will never give the illusion that I am.  I am a work in progress. 

Similar to the first one, I want my second core belief to keep up constant curiosity.  I truly believe that when we stop learning, we stop living. 

Lastly, my grandfather taught me about the importance of laughing.  He was always making people laugh.  Also, I truly believe in the power of laughing while learning.  In order to laugh it accesses a different part of your brain that your analytical side.  Plus, we all make mistakes and it is important to laugh and learn from them.

My core beliefs connect to my project, but at the moment it is not blatantly obvious.  It is subtle.  My project does not scream it's all about me, and I must fix that.   

In bullet or paragraph form, write about THREE core beliefs you have about learning, teaching and the world.  Use the This I Believe narratives as inspiration, and look back to the work you did in class after watching Simon Sinek’s talk on WHY.  Then, in the same blog post, start to brainstorm your final project ideas.  What is your project and does it align with your core beliefs?  If so, how? If not, how can you alter it to be sure it is consistent with what you believe in?  Note: This blog post does not have to be a cohesive as the others — I want you to think of this as a space to work through your final project ideas in relation to your core beliefs (post by Tuesday, July 4)

Blog #4 Wesch and Turkle

I have thought of the different dichotomies and connections between Wesch and Turkle, but I think my review on them is how they are advocating on the same team.  Sure, they have different positions, but their end goal is the same.  I would like to look at the final lines they left us with:
 
"My job becomes less about teaching, and more about encouraging students to join me on the quest." - Wesch
"So I say, look up, look at one another, and let’s start the conversation." - Turkle

Both are advocating for conversations to happen in the classroom, and outside the classroom.  I am so enthralled with how they are united, that I am forgetting why I ever thought they were polar opposites.  I guess I could see how Turkle is committed to the idea of taking away technology for students to understand the art of having a conversation.  While Wesch is trying to balance the idea of having 500 students in a classroom and allowing them to discover their own takeaways from history through their own means.  I think the difference is their class size can create a huge change in the teaching style.  If Wesch was able to have more intimate conversations with his students, I imagine he would be more like Turkle.

Here is a clip from John Green about what will be on the test.  #AcademicCrush

SCWAAMPy Evening Post

Blog #5 Stenciling Dissent

I read a few different articles from Rethinking Schools Popular Culture and Media because I could not find an article that spoke to me as a teacher working with emergent bilinguals.  I read Freedom Writers: White Teacher to the Rescue, City Teaching, Beyond the Stereotypes, Sticking it to the Man, More Than Just Dance Lessons, and I began reading 'And Ya Don't Stop': Hip Hop in the Language Arts Classroom.  None of these really spoke to me as a vehicle to speak to my kids.  What I want to discuss in more depth, is the excerpt, Stenciling Dissent: Political Graffiti Engages Students in the History of Social Justice.  (Page 299 in our textbook)  This caught my eye because I recently thought about buying the Che Guevara 672 page biography.  Che Guevara is infamously stenciled on shirts in an iconic stencil fashion. 



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Anyways, I digress.  So, the excerpt was about a history teacher who wanted to revamp his lesson on the power of protest by bringing ethnic studies to the class.  He discusses the population of his students and how they are immigrants or children of immigrants.  By allowing the students to choose their own topic for their researched-based persuasive essay, he gave them the chance to make meaningful connections to their world.  However, he realized that he had to help the students find out about these less proliferated social activists so he generated a list to help with their initial topic.  Some examples of topics include Emma Tenayuca, Fred Korematsu, and Ludlow Massarce.  All three of these topics, I am sadly not familiar with.  After the students wrote their persuasive essay, the teacher took the time to have his students make the project come to life by making a stencil of their topic.  He says, "Stencils are often used as a form of street protest, not just in the United States, but throughout the world as well, because they're easy to make, quick to apply, and can be used over and over."  The stencils give the feel of graffiti that my students often see in our school's neighborhood.  It is interesting how the teacher received negative feedback from his colleagues who were confused about why Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks were not a part of the project.  Almost as to say that these revolutionaries were not as important as others. 

I am really interested in this project about stenciling dissent because my students could collaborate with my friend, Kevin.  Kevin randomly took up spraypainting and stencils.  He has been asked to do shows and has even started selling his work.  I have included one of his most recent pieces that has different fonts from media companies making up the words, "Media made me do it."  He has the Nike and Disney iconic fonts involved and at first I did not realize it, almost to say that it was a subliminal message. 

I would highly advise reading this chapter because it has a great hands on project that is thought provoking and a memorable activity for students. 

Also, here are two links that were found at the end of the excerpt. 

Just Seeds Just Seeds is a non-profit organization creating social justice awareness through art.

Stencil Revolution is a website where you can by an arrangement of stencils or learn how to make some.  How to make moss graffiti

Blog #4 GoFormative as a Digital Tool

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If I had to give GoFormative an emoji rating it would look like this: 🙆😩😨

Let me explain:
🙆 This guy represents how I was excited to begin and thought that this was the answer to how I was going to teach in the future.

😩 This is my weary face when I realized it didn't save my students' work the one time I used it before.

😨 This is when I realized that I would have to pay for a subscription if I wanted the cool features such as audio responses, which would be great for my emergent bilingual students. 

Formative teaching is quickly identifying what students know and intervening so they can learn more.  My problem with that definition and this technology tool is the amount of time that it may take for students to access a computer and log into goformative.com.  While it is an interesting tool and can be used in a multitude ways, I wish it was already implemented on a learning platform like Google Classroom.  If I decided to use GoFormative, I would have to be completely committed to using it for the whole schoolyear and then I would want all the features, which costs money.  On the other hand, you can easily embed other websites like Vocaroo or Edpuzzle into your assessment without having to make accounts for those sites.  Perhaps goformative will become a bigger beast than Google Classroom.  Ironically, Goformative does not have a PowerPoint feature yet, so here is their explanation of their site in Google Slide Presentation on GoFormative. 

I made an example of things you can use on the site.  Watch my video below.

Here is a picture of what real time work could look like:

Here is a dashboard with all the pretty things you can do with data.

I would be a little leery because I feel like this is only accessible if you have students and the account that costs money.  That is another downfall of the program; I am not able to mess around and try it because I do not have student info.  I wish they gave me a demo with student data.

Also they have a community forum where others can discuss, share, and learn new ways of using the app. 

Overall, it is an interesting website and platform, but if you decide to use it, you should commit to using it the whole year.  I say this because I think it will be important to stay constant with this for your sanity and for the sanity for the students. A part of me hopes that Google Classroom will just buy them out so Google Classroom can have all these features.  Another thought, is that this is not a quick tool unless your students are 1:1 with devices.  I think only with time would this become a quick tool for collecting formative data.  It would take lots of patience as well. 

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Princess Finlay Blog #3

My mom found out I was a girl when I was still in her womb.  My dad chose not to know the gender for either of his kids and when I was born I was a surprise to him.  I would be the second daughter for my parents.  My dad may have secretly wanted a son, but he never said that out loud.  Growing up, he gave us opportunities to learn from.  I learned different things that might be considered boyish in today's society.  We learned to snowmobile, fourwheel, change a tire, or change the oil. 

My dad is a firefighter and I can remember the other firefighters saying things to me when I was younger like, "where's your Barbie?"  And I would respond with "I hate Barbie!"  I was never a Barbie collector or doll collector.  I did not fancy myself as a Disney Princess when I was younger, however I am currently joking with my boyfriend that my biological clock is ticking and I have baby fever.  This led us to an interesting conversation about whether or not it was nature or nurture.  Do women actually have a biological clock because that is how we sustain as a species, or is it a myth to keep us entranced in the princess realm?    

Thinking about my nieces who are 4 and 5 years, and were obsessed with the Frozen movie when it first came out has left me feeling like a bad aunt.  They were Anna and Elsa for Halloween that year and I had to stop myself from lecturing my sister about the implications.  This past Halloween one was a bad witch and one was a character from a movie called the Descendants.  They both have implications and stereotypes supporting the female representation. 

I think about the shows I watch with them.  There is Doc McStuffins and Octonauts, which each come with their own laundry list of stereotypes they are fulfilling and rebelling against.

Day 2 A Dream Deferred

Practice makes Practice:
A Dream Deferred
Made with StoryMap

Digital Native versus Digital Immigrant

When I first heard Dr. Bogad say the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant"  I felt that they are politically incorrect.  I feel as though because of the times we currently live in that the word immigrant and native should not be used in a light hearted context.  It opens a can of worms to create more metaphorical terminology that could potentially degrade someone who is trying to learn a new language and culture.     In the article It’s Complicated I am glad to see how they recognized the view, “From an ethnic studies perspective, the language of “natives” and “immigrants” is particularly fraught.”  (I am currently working towards my master’s in Teaching English as a Second Language.)  The implications of people being labeled as immigrant or native perpetuates a stereotype that immigrants cannot bring their own literacy skills to the new culture when they can and should.

Also, why not make new terminology for the new concepts.  For example, I love the idea of calling people either computer noobs or computer gurus.  Here are two terms that will not offend our emigrating world.  Plus, at least when I was in middle school and high school, students were given keyboarding classes to properly train us on a qwerty keyboard.  Nowadays, students are not taught how to type at their fastest rate so what does that do to how their brain is wired to the computer and future endeavors?    

Lastly, I think the implications of saying because students are brought up in a digital age does not mean they are digital natives.  For instance, this is another stereotype because it is making assumptions that all students are using computers in their free time.  This could be incredibly troublesome for someone who is actually an immigrant and has never worked with a computer in his or her life before.  For someone who is a noob to computers we could show them real world examples of propaganda or false news compared to what we see in today’s world.  For digitally literate students we could do the reverse lesson, in order for them to see how propaganda has evolved.  This is one way we can connect what we see in the real world to what we see in the computer screen.

Digital Native or Digital Immigrant? Blog #2

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What Is It Like Being An Immigrant In The U.S.?  

YouTube Video

 My Niece Mila at her Graduation from Pre-School when she wouldn't take a nice picture with her mom.  I think it's funny.

Video from my Phone

     I thought I was a digital native, but I am still a digital immigrant.  I can remember the first computer in our house and the dial up sound it made.  I remember going on AOL and sending a chain mail to my sister, my mom, and my dad.  The person who sent me the chain mail was my sister's best friend.  Thankfully, back then, email was only on computers and not sent to smartphones.  My sister had to hack into my parents' emails to delete the chain mail because it was inappropriate, but I forget why.  Speaking of my parents, they make me feel like I am digital savant because the questions they ask me I always know how to answer.  However, from trying to create this blog, I realize I am a digital immigrant. 
     

Introduction to Tara Finlay Blog #1

Hello everyone!  I have just completed my first year at Providence Career and Technical Academy as an English as a Second Language and English teacher.  Before that I taught English Language Arts to sixth graders at Woonsocket Middle School.  I have also completed a year as an AmeriCorps CityYear member where I worked with eighth graders at Gilbert Stuart Middle School.  This summer I am taking four summer courses and working at the PTech (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) Summer Academy for ninth and tenth graders.  I graduated from Rhode Island College in 2014 with a degree in Secondary Education with a concentration in English and Middle Level Education Endorsement.  I am currently working towards my master’s in Teaching English as a Second Language.