Passing notes, passing ideas. That's Power.

Remember the long ago (or not so long ago for Tina and I...) days of practicum? The first time you referred to yourself as Mr. or Ms.? The worries about filling the time or not filling enough. What if they don't talk? What if they're confused? Or bored? Or tired? Or the computer explodes?

Okay, well maybe not the last one, but all of those feelings of uncertainty ran through
me as I planned and prepped for facilitating class this week. I was brought back to my memories of spending waaay too much time finding waaay to many resources that I wasn't going to get the opportunity to use. Yup, as an undergrad I definitely spent weeks planning my micro-teaching lesson that lasted 30 minutes.

Though the task was a bit easier now that I have almost a year and a half of teaching under my belt, I have to make a connection to the English language learners that we read about this week. As Collier explained, students "do not automatically develop the academic language skills needed to compete" (225). I certainly did not automatically develop the pedagogy skills needed to compete. Being a good student doesn't mean I am automatically a good teacher. Just like being a good speaker of a second language doesn't mean that person is automatically a good writer in that language (as Ken pointed out in his blog and our discussion). There are explicit theories, skills, and codes of power that need to be taught in order to be most successful. It was important that I had a professor who respected and affirmed and helped clarify the ideas I brought to the table (well, GoogleDoc). Because even though I teach everyday, the experience of leading a group of seven adults is different from leading a group of 20 eleven-year-olds.

You were awesome as students in the foreign language lecture, working so diligently at the task. You showed empathy for your own students and realized how you might make adjustments for ESL students (or otherwise), ranging from prompting prior knowledge, to slowing down, to providing a list of key words and definitions. The note passing was a better experience for some than others, which, again, put us in the shoes of our students when we ask them to do lots of verbal processing. If I were to teach this again, I might put the quotes on large poster papers, increase the time with each pass, and maybe have fewer passes. This way we could get out of our seats or get deeper. As Tina mentioned, I loved that the connections to other authors went beyond the author that I had listed in the prompt. It's cool to see the conversation among ourselves grow. I think my favorite part was sharing the spoken word poems ("Duality Duel" by Daniel Beaty and "I Can't Read" by Lamont Carey) and crafting our six word memoirs. You all provided me with a richer understanding of how similar/different the two poets' pieces are and Melissa's question, "Where does Rodriguez fit?" really made us think. The six word memoirs then allowed us to show off our creativity and the learning that we were taking away.

My Six Word Reflection:  Passing notes, passing ideas. That's power.