No matter how many times I start a new teaching year, I always walk
into the classroom with anticipation, optimism, and a small case of the
butterflies. Tomorrow will be my first
teaching day for the new semester. I am
teaching one of my favorite courses—EDCI 466 Literature for Adolescents. This class provides opportunities to explore
good content, try out new pedagogies, and engage in thoughtful, fun, and
productive conversations with future English teachers. This year, I am looking forward to trying a
few new things, but at the same time, I’m grappling with new challenges.
One of the things I’m excited about is doing further work in
core practices pedagogy, an area of research and teaching that I’ve been
interested in for the past year or two. Last
spring, I did some initial work with core practices in EDCI 466; I believe it
was helpful for students, and I know it provoked reflection, rethinking, and
lots of planning for me. If you aren’t
familiar with the core practices (or high-leverage practices) movement, I
recommend checking out the Teaching
Works website. In particular, I’ve
been inspired by Pam
Grossman’s presentation in the Teaching Works seminar series (it’s well
worth watching!). Grossman’s discussion
of how she had redesigned her reading methods course prompted me to revisit my
own syllabus. I’ve integrated some of
her ideas for helping preservice teachers recognize and make explicit their own
reading strategies, and then translate this knowledge into lessons to help
student develop and refine those same skills.
I’m excited to try it out, and I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. No doubt I will learn a lot, and I hope my
students do, too.
While I’ve been thinking about the opportunities to
facilitate the learning of preservice English teachers, I’ve also been
contemplating challenges that are new to me this semester. (I love that teaching is always presenting
new challenges!). This fall, I’ll be
teaching the smallest class I’ve ever had.
There are four students on the roster, with a possible fifth waiting in
the “permission required” wings. I’ve taught classes of 10 o 12 in the past, and
I’ve found that small-group dynamics and logistics require some creative
teaching. Of course, a lot will depend
on my students’ willingness to be engaged and talkative, but I anticipate
moving more quickly through book discussions and class activities. How can we then productively use the
inevitable extra time? EDCI 466 is a
discussion-based course with lots of in-class activities, modeling pedagogical
techniques for teaching literature, and in the past I’ve used a lot of
small-group and jigsaw activities. But
with only four students, I’ve really had to rethink the syllabus. This semester, we will be reading more novels
as a class and fewer as small groups. Also,
we’ll be tapping technology to facilitate discussion and to maximize
participation, reflection, and involvement.
Some of the things I’m going to try are blogging and occasional on-line
class meetings. I’m thinking of ways to
use blogs or discussion boards as versions of digital jigsawing. Again, I’ll keep you posted! And I’d love to hear any ideas you have.
I love that feeling at the beginning of a new school year that I have a fresh start. How many other professions have access to that? I hope your first day went well and that you get that fifth student. You do have a unique challenge teaching a discussion-based class with such a small group. I think your idea of using technology to facilitate different types of interaction is a good one. Twitter would be another way for them to bring other voices and perspectives into the class. I wonder if you could engage in a online discussion with another class. Have you ever used goodreads.com? There are lots of groups, author chats, and different opportunities to engage with other readers and teachers. As a side note, the National Book Festival in DC is coming up on Sept.21-22. There are usually some wonderful YA authors.
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