Bright Ideas Conference

April 12, 2008

This is the first conference that I have ever attended and I must say that I did enjoy my experience. When the group that I decided to go with started planning on going to this conference I did not know what to think. I had no expectations and I thought that we were going to some other school that we would not know anyone. I was totally wrong when I got there.

When we walked into the building, it was so quiet. If we never saw the sign we would have never figured out where to go. We already thought that we were late, but we were right on schedule. The check-in was easy, the people weren’t too friendly, but maybe that was because it was so early in the morning and all these different people were so excited. After check-in we notice that people start coming out of this room and that is when I notice all the people that were from Western. I didn’t feel like we were the only ones there anymore. It was nice seeing familiar faces, because it gave me a chance to tear away from my group.

I love the schedule they gave in the folder with all the sessions, I felt organized and structured. I also felt that they gave us enough time in between each session to decide were we wanted to go next. The first session that I decided to go to was the about incorporating Multi-cultural voices in the classroom to relate to the students lives. It was great. The lady was so personable and I felt that she had character, which made it easy for me to relate to her. I thought that we were going to end up going into these sessions and these people were going to be all stuffy and boring, but this lady wasn’t. She was so laidback and fun.

I did an activity in this session. We had to get into a group and read from this book called, The Brimstone Journals by Ron Koetge. Our group had a chosen character named Lester and we just read all his journal entries about his schooling and life experiences. It was rather interesting. Then we answered some questions about the things we found out from the readings and then had a group discussion. It was nice to learn the connection between the characters in the book and the presenter told us about how we could use these in our classrooms. I loved this session, because it made me think about what I want from my students and how I want to be able to connect to my students and from my students to make connections in reading literature. The presenter gave us a handout of all these different Multi-cultural voice books and I was very pleased. I love getting book list, that will expand my book collection.

Another interesting thing that I found is that the she had work in an Alternative school and I started to think to myself that I could see myself working in an Alternative school because I think you have more say in what you can teach.

After the second session, which I did not enjoy as much, we had lunch. Lunch was wonderful. I love sandwiches and this was very fulfilling. Me and one of the others girl had been talking about lunch on the way up to the conference and we were criticizing it, saying that it was probably going to be skimpy, but we were wrong. We both enjoyed our lunch.

Overall I did enjoy the conference. It was very comfortable and laid back. A lot of students were in jeans and tennis shoes and I wasn’t expecting that. I thought that it was going to be very structured and boring, but I did have a good time. I thought that the sessions were very hit and miss, you get one extremely good one and then the others just did not turn out well, but I’m happy that I went and got to get to experience this experience. I was especially happy to see all the familiar faces from classes that I have and friends that are in the same major as me.

Presenting Image Grammar

WOW!!!! THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN. Ashley idea about doing a French theme for our group really worked out well. I was very happy how our first day of presenting went well.

Being in front of the class and teaching, brings back all the reason that I love to teach. I love to have a good time with students. Even though these where my classmates, I love the rush that get.

I love the way Image Grammar's chapters flow together. How they all intertwine with each other and build off of one another. I thought that we looked and sounded great. When we first came into this project, I was thinking to myself, "How in the world are we going to teach for a whole hour and fifty minutes on this book." But it worked, actually it wasn't enough time. There is so much information in Harry Nodens' Image Grammar, I wish we had more time. I was also scared that our classmates would not be interested in our topic, because its about grammar and it is kind of complex. But I'm glad that our classmates where engaged in our topics and seem to be interested.

I had fun. I didn't think that I was going to be all that excited about presenting, but I was. Group projects don't usually work well with me, but this was interesting and I learned stuff. I'm happy that I was in the group that I was in and I absolutely loved presenting my information today.... IT WAS MAGNIFIC!

Poetry Group

It always amazes me how many forms of poetry are out there. When this group was schedule to go, I fought with myself, because I do have this grudge about against poetry, so I wasn't sure about how much information I was going to be willing to take in.

I know I said this in class already, but whenever I think about writing poetry, I get so uneasy, because I feel that I poetry is too complex. I feel that poetry should not be analyzed, because it is so complex only the author knows its true meaning. When writing poetry I feel that no one will understand where I am coming from, know one will get it. I must admit that I am intimidated by poetry. But I also have to admit that the different kinds of poetry that this group brought to the table made it rather interesting.

I love how we got to cut up magazines. I felt like I was back in grade school, doing arts and crafts. I was excited about the glue, the scissors and the construction paper. I love the idea of cutting out letters from magazines and forming words to make to poetry. At first when we started I thought I wouldn't be into it, but I found myself really intrigued and anxious to get some good words. I can see high school students really getting into it. And as a teacher, this form of teaching poetry, also makes it exciting for myself.

I also like the list poem. I think I'm a pretty intense poem and I was really feeling this. Overall this group made me realize that I need to stop saying that I hate poetry, because in reality once I get pass the rhyming and the analyzing, its pretty fun. Great job!

Community Group

I absolutely loved the discussions within the group. It made class go by fast and it was very informative and interesting. I thought it was very interesting how they gave the class most of the floor for us to define community and what it means to be a community. I like how they made me think outside of my little world and into the bigger world, it was so exciting.

The game that we played was so interesting. To be able to play a character that I would never know what it feels like to be, felt great. This game not only showed how different communities fall into stereotypes and how different communities come to assumptions of others, but it brought out stereotypes that I thought to be true and even some of the bias that I have. To play as a rich white community made feel that I need to be pompous, rude and racist to others. Even thought this is how I believe this kind of communities to be I never took in the consideration, as one of my classmates mentioned, that even though they might be in gated communities, that these people in this community might not even been pompous, rude or racist. I never thought about it like that. It made me look at myself and check myself. Because even though I beleive I'm accepting to everyone, I really am not. I assume, I judge and I like that this group made me think about those things about myself.

Overall I truly enjoyed everything that this group brought to the table. I glad that I got to experience.

Multi genre Group

It was really nice to get all the information about doing a Multi genre paper. I think that multi genre papers are exciting. The first time I did a multi genre paper was in my sophomore year. I know that it was on Africa writers and I just brought all of it together in three separate papers. It was interesting to break up my paper like that because it made it easier for me to write what was initially a very long paper.

I really enjoyed the enthusiasm of this group. They had a lot of knowledge on this topic. I also enjoyed to debate between the pros and cons of a multi genre paper, because it made me think about all the other side.

When they assigned the homework for us to do our own group multi genre project I thought that it was interesting that they told us to do it as a group. But I never thought that that was what a multi genre paper was about. Many ideas and facts coming together as a project. I wish we had more time to really get into the multi genre project because I would have loved to do more.

Overall I really enjoyed the group , they did a wonderful job and made me less nervous about our group presenting later. :)

Christensen ?'s

1. What do you believe teaching will be like for the new teachers that are coming in and trying to get away from the textbook way of teaching?
2. What is the best way to help minority students learn Standard English? What are your views on Standard English?
3. What is your advice of a new teacher that doesn't know where to start?
   

Christensen Chapter 8

Tracking..this is something that also makes my skin crawl other than Standard English. Coming from a school where the majority of my peers were minorities, I really did not have an understanding of what tracking was until I got to college. Tracking is all the things that Christensen has mentioned of condemning students of and unequal education because the faulty does not thing that a group of students are not capable or student fail because teachers don't modify their curriculum for these students to succeed.

I was a "smart" student in high school. Most of my classes were AP and I never realized my peers that were getting the short end of the stick. I thought that these students weren't as capable as I was and I feel bad for saying that. I honestly believe that my school system did not give student of "low track" classes a chance. They made assumptions and these students usual turned out the way they were assumed to turn out. They stayed in these classes from ninth to twelfth, dropped out of school because they felt dumb or they felt they weren't capable of getting out of these classes. My school system did not give these students the resources or even believed in these students. It makes me sad to think about how horrible my school system is, how being tracked really does go with you until you are completely done with school. I remember when I first came to college I was put in the remedial math class because my ACT scores said that was where I need to be, but during the summer I had teachers that believed that I could Trig and Advanced Algebra. All these students need is for someone to believe in them, push them and help them. Yeah tracking is sad, but what is even sadder is the school systems that aren't doing anything about it.