This has been a strange, long and
hectic past two weeks for me. As most of you know, I spent last weekend in Key
West, FL for my sisters wedding. It was so wonderful to see so many of my
family members and sister’s friends come together in an exotic locale to
celebrate her and her new husband. It
was a good time to do some reflecting, reflecting about our relationship,
reflecting about how they came to be together and reflecting about how much
things have changed in the past few years. So when I returned on Tuesday after
volunteering to stay in paradise an extra day (it took about .5 seconds to
convince me to do so) I was in a good place to start reflecting on my goals as
an ELA teacher.
My weekend in the Keys accompanied by our
wonderful as ever chapters in Dr. Bomer’s book helped me more than I realized when
I first contemplated my autobiographyor as I like to think of it, my
manifesto. Dr. Bomer has a way of saying exactly how I feel in the most
succinct way possible. When it comes to the goal of educating our students he
says “that education, too, is supposed to be activated into the intellectual
life of an engaged citizen with personal and social passions, a desire for
aesthetic experiences and chosen relationships that are maintained by
participation through many kinds of text” (Bomer, 6).
I’ve come to realize that it is one
of the most important ways to continually improve and better ourselves as
educators and actively engaged citizens in our country. There has to be more to
our classes than just handing out grades. We need to help our students realize
that what they are learning in school they can and should apply to their lives
as adults outside of a classroom one way to do this is reflection. My CT always
asks the students after an assignment if they thought it helped them as writers
or readers. I think making the students think about why they do something as well as
how to do it makes a huge difference for them. It makes them see the
“bigger picture” and it gives them a sense of ownership and responsibility over
their work.
I thought at first it would be
difficult to put into words my autobiography. I thought I couldn’t exactly
express why I want to be a teacher and what I will do to be the best darn
teacher possible. As I started writing though, it came to me much easier than I
expected. It was a relief to see that, thanks to my reflecting, I am able to
put into succinct, powerful words my passion for education. Without further ado
here is my manifesto…I mean autobiography:
It was my sophomore year of high
school when I picked up my mandatory copy of The Great Gatsby that I was moved for the first time by literature.
I had always been a great student in my humanities classes but it wasn’t until
Daisy and Gatsby did I realize my passion for anything, really. My teacher that
year wasn’t anything special, she seemed like she was just biding her time
until retirement but the next year my English IV AP teacher really encouraged
my literate life. She was that one teacher for me. Everyone has one. She made
me see how the books we read in and out of class connected to the outside world
and that we were called to engage in this world beyond the fortress that was
St. Mary’s Dominican High School. While applying to college I believed I was
going to go to law school like my brother, sister, cousins, father, uncles and
grandfather before me. I decided to major in English because as an English
major I knew I would be writing a lot of papers and I could fine tune my skills
for writing in law school and beyond. By my junior year, however, I realized I
wasn’t really the lawyer-type. At that point, it was too late to switch majors
without incurring extra years of school, a big no-no in the Mouledoux household
so I finished my undergrad with a dual degrees in English and American Studies
and not too sure what I wanted to do with it. I interned in Austin at a small
publishing house and I really enjoyed it so I spent months sending my resume to
publishing houses all over the country, especially New York. I realized that an
invitation to interview, let alone an offer, was never going to come. I decided
instead to focus my efforts on saving money and going to teach in Thailand. I
always considered becoming a teacher, especially after the special relationship
I had with my English IV AP teacher but I never really committed to it by
joining UTeach or Teach for America. Teaching in Thailand was incredibly
different from teaching in the US for a number of reasons but it really helped
me solidify that being an educator is the career I want to pursue of the rest
of my life.
I want to use literature and
creative writing to make my students aware of the world outside the classroom.
I want them to see their creative pursuits not as just a means to an end, an A
minus or C plus but a way to becoming civically engaged. I want my students to
take more from their English education than comma splices and the dreaded five-paragraph
essay. Their literate lives should embody every aspect of themselves, their passions
their hopes and anxieties. I want my students to read and write with a passion
that I myself am still nurturing and discovering. I want to be the kind of
teacher that never stops learning how to better herself. That is the beauty of
being an educator, you never stop learning and growing. There is always
potential to become enlightened. I want
to treat every day as a new adventure and challenge. I don’t want to get swept away
in the minutia of forms and standardized testing. I think my eagerness to
better myself is a qualifying factor that makes me a good teacher. My
willingness to reach out to my students as more than just names, numbers to be
passed on to another grade in May. This will make me a strong teacher, a
teacher who cares about my students’ development holistically.
In my
classroom I will try to embrace new technology like e-readers, blogs, Google
docs and drop boxes etc. However, I don’t want my students to disregard a
physical book and the act of writing in a notebook. I think these are crucial
for students to really take ownership over their literate lives. I think that
by reading paper and print book or writing in a notebook makes students really
see that they have finished something or created something worth being proud
of. This is a feeling, I believe, is taken for granted in our e-world. I want
to include materials that are pertinent to my students’ lives. If they want to
read books like The Scarlet Letter it
will be made available to them but I want them to feel free to read YA novels
like Pretty Little Liars without
feeling judged that it is not high-brow enough to be found in an ELA classroom.
Making reading more accessible to students who might be reluctant readers will
make them more open to trying new, more challenging books. By forcing them to
read books right away that they can’t relate too will only make students shut
down and unwilling to read in the first place.
I believe being open and respectful to what is already a part of my
students’ literate lives will make my classroom an encouraging place for them
to broaden and nurture their literacy themselves.
