A Short Fragment of My Teaching Philosophy

Assessment:

My main goal for my students will be that they will learn and will improve upon the knowledge they entered my class with. Therefore, the assessments I will create will be more for my use in knowing how to move forward with the class than it will be for deciding which students get A’s and which ones fail. Of course, I expect to have to come up with specific data to show my superiors, but that data should come with the assessments I choose anyway. Another goal I have is to provide a classroom with as little stress as possible for my students, as I know it is difficult for anyone to work when they are feeling anxious or stressed. Therefore, I will try to give out as little homework as possible, and instead try to give students time in class to work on their assessments. I also intend on allowing students to opt out of tests by completing projects for much of my class. Choice is another huge part of my teaching philosophy, so I wouldn’t want to prevent students from taking tests if that’s their preferred method, but I know a lot of students would feel less stressed and more excited with a project option. When we do have tests, I will give the students comprehensive study guides and base most of my questions on big-picture ideas, rather than specific bits of information. This method should truly test the students’ knowledge, rather than their ability to regurgitate memorized information.

Technology:

I am not the greatest with technology and would probably still be writing papers by hand if that were an option for me. However, I understand that technology is increasingly important in our modern world and the skills relevant to it are highly marketable. Therefore, I intend to utilize technology a fair amount in my classroom. I especially like the idea of using interactive lesson sites, like Kahoot or Poll Everywhere, to get students engaged in the classroom. I tend to focus a lot on how to help introverted students contribute without being put on the spot, so I am a huge fan of technology that allows students to post anonymously to a conversation that is happening in real-time on the projector. This allows everyone’s voice to be heard without stressing students out too much. This is just one example of how technology can be a huge attribute in a classroom, so I am definitely planning on implementing technology into my teaching. However, I’m sure I’ll still have plenty of technology-free days, because I also think it’s important to be able to connect with peers or with internal thoughts without having to be plugged-in.

Differentiation:

Despite the illusion of students moving from grade to grade, the fact is that every student is at a different point in every subject, and even in every topic within each class. One student may be a phenomenal writer but may struggle with reading fluently. Therefore, differentiation will be important in every single one of my classes, despite the amount of EL or Special Ed. students I have. So many students in our school system are left behind because the “should be at grade level” with all of their skills. It is important to me that I treat every student equitably and I make sure every student understands each of the topics we cover in class. Therefore, I intend to dedicate plenty of focus to providing scaffolds and extra help in my classroom so every student is given a fair opportunity to learn.

Classroom Ecology:

I want to create a community-centered classroom. I will take extra measures to get to know my students and for the students to get to know each other. I hope to implement talk circles in my classes and to make them a regular part of our week. I want my students to encourage each other and work together, rather than create a hostile or even competitive atmosphere. I want my classroom to feel relaxing and relatively safe for my students, a place where they feel free to be honest and to be themselves. Ideally, I’d like a section of my room to have comfy seats and pillows, where students can go to relax or take a quick break from their stressful lives. I want my walls to be covered with student work, because I want to show that it is really their classroom, too.

Bye Week I

This is the first of my two bye weeks this semester.

There is No Such Thing as Politically Neutral

            On page 37 of the Kumashiro reading he states, “To fail to work against the various forms of oppression is to be complicit with them,” This sentence really stood out to me because it reflects something that I have had on my mind a lot lately. I used to think neutral meant neutral, but I have come to believe that it you see a problem and make no effort to change it, then you are on the problematic side.

Throughout this program, we have been learning a lot about different forms of oppression within the education system. A lot of this oppression was invisible to me previous to the start of these classes. Since I’ve learned more about the tragedies that are born from the oppression of students, I have become more and more enraged. I now am starting to see inequity in every aspect of life and I cannot help but to insert “politics” into everything I do. Many of the people in my life who are not experiencing the same educational program as I am don’t always see why people like me choose to make everything “political”. I have had many conversations where friends or family have said something along the lines of, “I don’t like politics,” or “I try to stay out of politics,” or “Why do some people have to make everything political?” When I hear comments along these lines, it really gets under my skin. I think part of the reason it bothers me so much is because it reflects what I might have said a few years ago. Also, phrases like this clearly tell me the speaker comes from a place of privilege. They view these issues as just another thing to cause arguments, rather than issues that are actually ruining lives.

The true tragedy of people who claim to be apolitical is that these are often people who hold power, people who could really make a difference if they wanted to. When I hear my friends and family identify with being apolitical, I try to explain to them how it is irresponsible to be apolitical in a world with such lop-sided suffering. I have found that I can’t really tell them this in a general or abstract manner, because they typically move on from the conversation without giving it a second thought. Instead, I’ve come to bring up specific examples of what is going on in the world. For example, I might tell them about how public school funding is directly linked to standardized test scores and how those standardized tests cater to middle class, white kids. When I bring up specific issues, the person I am talking with often stops for a moment to think about how what I just said is a major problem. They don’t always move on to try and fix said problem, but I think awareness is the first step.

I think everyone should be made aware of the different forms of oppression in the world and how oppressive systems have served to hinder or benefit their own lives. As a future teacher, I feel as though it is almost more important for me to understand how oppression works than the average person. If I fail to see how systems of oppression, especially our education systems, function in our society, I could easily ruin countless student lives without even trying. This is why there is no such thing as being neutral in politics. If I don’t notice and stand with those who are oppressed against those in power, I will be allowing an oppressive system to continue without any resistance.

This week, I’d like to share with you a piece of writing, entitled “If You Don’tFight Against Oppressive Structures, Then You Support Them”, by Hafsa Musa, published in the Huffington Post. They write about their experience as someone who identifies as “queer, non-gender conforming, trans, black, [and] mentally ill.” As someone who holds a lot of privilege in our society, I found this piece to be really impactful and eye-opening. It furthers my belief that I should stand and fight with those who are oppressed by our society.

-->

A Work of Critical Fiction

            *Trigger Warning: The short story linked in this post contains references of physical violence, rape, and torture.

Throughout her chapter entitled Narratives of Struggle, Bell Hooks explains the meaning and importance of critical fiction. From what I understand, critical fictions are unconventional, fictional works that entice the reader to use their imagination while they also demand that the reader empathize with and think critically about the experiences of an oppressed people. These works tend to challenge ways of writing and ideas that are consistent with the dominant (white, hetero, male, middle class, etc.) society.

            One literary work that I believe fits into the category of critical fiction is “Krik? Krak!”, a collection of short stories by one of my favorite authors, Edwidge Danticat. It has been nearly a year since I’ve read this work and I have no time to reread it at the moment, so I will focus on one particular story in this book that I think does a good job of covering a lot of the main themes and of representing critical fiction. This short story is entitled, Epilogue: Women Like Us.

            “Krik? Krak!” is a collection of stories about the lives of different Haitians. The short story, Woman Like Us, is a narrative in second-person point-of-view that talks about a woman’s experiences of growing up and the expectations placed upon her. It talks a lot about how she was expected to be able to cook, clean and braid her hair well. She was expected not to speak, embrace her sexuality, or write. The end of the story demonstrates her resistance to these expectations when it says that she wrote down and memorized her female ancestors’ names, so they would continue to live on. This short story is broadly about gender norms and the expectations that women can only do certain things and act a certain way, specifically looking at Haitian culture.

            I believe that Women Like Us. is a strong example of critical fiction. It is a vibrant fictional story that is written in a way that allows readers to use their imagination to create a picture of what Danticat is explaining. This short story encourages readers to think critically about society’s expectations of women. Danticat challenges the dominant culture by writing about a strong female character – who comes from a long line of strong women – who resists the expectations placed on her. It encourages readers to build empathy for women. At one point in Bell Hooks’ chapter, she mentions that “… revolutionary critical fictions prophetically construct and name the transformed future” (page 60), which Danticat does at the end of this short story when she shows the main character’s mother telling her to write down and memorize the names of the strong women who have come before her; as readers, we can assume that the main character will continue this tradition in the future if she ever has children.

            I would love to use this short story in my own classroom for several reasons. First, it is by one of my favorite authors and I love it. More importantly, though, it would prompt students to build empathy, make connections across different works and cultures, and learn by example how to resist the dominant culture and society. This would also be a convenient text to use because it is quite short and fairly accessible, yet well written. I would use this piece to facilitate conversations about gender (obviously), but also about the intersectionality between the main character’s gender identity and racial and ethnical identities. This work would fit well under units on fiction, short stories, or imagery. I’m sure there are plenty of other units I could fit this piece into, but those are just a few ideas.

            As I think about using critical fiction texts in my classroom, I am becoming excited. This graduate program has encouraged us to think about how to diversify the texts we use in our classrooms, but I have found it difficult to think about texts that broaden students views outside of the views found in texts by old white men without choosing texts just because they are written by people outside of the dominant culture. I feel as if this chapter by Bell Hooks, as well as a couple of other texts, has given me a new way to think about how to choose texts. Specifically, I now will be more focused on choosing texts that purposely resist the dominant culture.

-->

My Multi-Modal Project (1.0)

            For my multi-modal piece I decided to make a graphic novel detailing a few events that fall under four different sections of my identity. I covered how my race, religion, gender, and nationality affect how I think and move through the world.

            When we were first given this assignment for this class, many people seemed to be relieved that we had the opportunity to reuse something we’ve created for a similar assignment we had for our Classes, Schools, and Communities class. I, however, saw it as an opportunity to redo the assignment. The first time we did this assignment, I made a slideshow with pictures and conducted a presentation. While I was able to demonstrate my beliefs and facets of my identity, I did not feel like the format of my product was me enough. This time around, I decided to utilize some of my personal interests – drawing and storytelling – to show parts of who I am.

            I enjoyed the process of constructing this piece. I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to cover all of the different pieces of identity that were listed on our assignment sheet, so I started by choosing the four sections that stand out the most for me in my life. Then, I thought of two times these sections have made a difference for me and drew a picture for each event. I was calmed and satisfied by the freedom to express myself through drawings, but this process was also a little emotional as I waded through some tough or challenging memories to find a few to put on the page.

            As I created this piece, I decided to name it “A Snapshot of My Identity”. This decision came from the fact that while each page covers a deeply personal and real part of my identity, because of time limits versus the amount of work required for each page, I was only able to cover a tiny part of my identity. Even within each category, I was only able to cover a little bit of huge parts of my life. I was able to cover some of the big events or feelings that have been brought up throughout my life, but there are countless silences that just could not be touched while using this format.

            My two classmates who viewed my graphic novel asked about a couple of the silences within it. One of their points in particular that I found to be interesting had to do with the final section of the graphic novel, which covered my feelings of nationality. The basis of these pages were that as a child, I blindly believed that the U.S.A. was the greatest country in the world because that’s what I was told by the adults around me, but the older I get, the more and more I realize all of the problems this country has. One of my classmates asked if I held any pride in my country, and where that pride might lie. This question has stuck with me this whole week. I know that I feel pride in parts of my country, but it is so much harder to pick out the good things, especially when we live in a time where blatantly ignorant and hateful people are at the wheel, and so many people are fearing for their lives. After pondering this question for a long time, I’ve come to the basic idea that while our government generally disgusts me, I do find pride in what some of the average citizens of America are pushing for. Maybe it is just because I am living in a city (rather than the tiny rural town I come from), but I am noticing more and more people pushing for basic human rights and equity for all, people holding each other’s hands and giving assistance to those in need, people coming together to fight the hate. I know there really are great things about this country, but this is the one thing I am clinging to for pride in the U.S.A.

            Moving forward with this piece, I’m not sure if I will continue with the graphic novel format. While this has been a great process for me, I feel I cannot get enough of my story out with just a few pages. I’m not really sure what I will try next, but I hope to uncover some of the silences within the next version of this project.

            As for my resource for this week, I decided to choose a video that is both relevant to my struggles with finding pride for my country as well as to current events. The internet has blown up with a recent Nike ad featuring NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, stating "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. This ad has made a big splash because Kaepernick was one of the first NFL players to kneel during the national anthem in protest of injustices in this country, such as police brutality. I've decided to link this post-game interview with Kaepernick, where he explains his decision to kneel and protest for those who don't have as much of a voice in our society.

Building a Community within the Classroom

Throughout her chapter, But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally
Relevant Pedagogy, Gloria Ladson-Billings talks a lot about what it means to 
use culturally relevant pedagogy. I thought the title of this piece was perfect 
because as I read through it, I found myself thinking, “But that’s just good 
teaching.” The part of this text that interested me the most was when she talked 
about the study she did with eight teachers who found success teaching African 
American students. This section caught my attention because it reaffirmed 
many of my own beliefs about teaching, including a lot of beliefs I picked up 
over this past summer of classes.

As she studied these eight teachers, Ladson-Billings found that all of them took 
pride in their profession and their community, and they believed that all of their 
students were capable of success. They also built a strong community within 
the classroom and ran their class as if the students had just as much of a role in 
that community. I think these commonalities between successful teachers are 
very important to note as I move closer to running my own classroom.

I believe that building a community within a classroom is one of the most 
important aspects of teaching, and one that many educators tend to miss. 
Throughout my graduate career already, I’ve heard and read and seen over 
and over again how important it is to build a community within the classroom. 
This ideal has been taught in every one of my classes. In addition, a lot of the 
reflecting I’ve had to do for my classes has brought forth the same findings 
from my own K-12 experiences. As I look back, my favorite teachers and 
most cherished role models had all shared some vulnerabilities and built a 
sense of community within their classrooms.

 When I think about community-building in a classroom, I think about my 
favorite teacher, my middle school/ high school band director. He stressed 
everyday that we need to listen to each other and build connections in order to 
improve our music. We would spend a lot of time within the classroom 
together, but also outside of it. We would spend hours at pep band gigs, go on 
trips together, and even have “Band in the Park”, where we would gather in a 
city park, have a potluck, play games, and give out end-of-the-year rewards. 
My teacher constantly humanized himself by conducting “Story-time”, where 
he would tell us short anecdotes from his life, and speaking to us as if we were 
peers, not inferiors. Overall, there was an overwhelming sense of community. I 
felt comfortable around every single one of the hundred members in our band, 
even if I had never spoken a word to them. In my high school, the band room 
was a safe haven among a world that caused me a lot of stress and anxiety.

Moving forward into the world of secondary education, I will strive to be like 
my band teacher. My first priority every year will be to build a community with 
my students. I will try to get to know each one of them as individuals and form 
how I teach around them. Building a trusting community within the classroom is 
essential because - as is mentioned by this week's resource, Rita Pierson - 
students will not learn from teachers they do not like.

For my external resource this week, I have once again chosen a TED Talk. I don't 
mean to produce the same sort of sources every week, but I came across this short 
video on building relationships within a classroom and I just couldn't resist posting 
it. "Every Kid Needs a Champion" by Rita Pierson is a seven-minute TED Talk by 
a highly experienced educator who tries to counter the argument that kids don't need 
to like their teachers, they just need to learn from them. I chose this video because I 
thought that it goes along nicely with our readings this week and serves to further the 
idea that community-building is extremely important to education.

Source:

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. “But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.” College of Education, The Ohio State University, 1995, pp. 158–165.

Pierson, Rita. “Every Kid Needs a Champion.” YouTube, TED, 3 May 2013

Incorporating Students' Lives into Their Readings

            One of the biggest points I noticed when reading the text by Rodriguez for this week was that students tend to learn more and become more engaged when they feel some sort of a connection to what they are reading. This is not a new idea for me. In fact, we’ve gone over this very concept several times throughout this program already. However, I think it is definitely worth noting in depth because it is essential to success when teaching literature (or any topic, for that matter.)

            In this chapter, Rodriguez mentions that students feel empowered when they see themselves on the page (Rodriguez 5). I completely agree with this notion. Throughout most of my schooling, I convinced myself that I hated reading. I believed that books were boring, and that reading was a chore. I tried to avoid reading in any case possible. I hated when we had to read novels for classes. Then, one of my teachers assigned a book report. We could report on any (school-appropriate) book of our choosing. I had never really read for pleasure before, so I didn’t know where to start. My friend Jessica, a reading enthusiast, suggested that I read “The Lightning Thief” by Rick Riordan. As I began to read, I noticed a feeling I had never felt before while reading a book; I was actually enjoying myself. That book was the spark that ignited my love for reading.

Looking back, I realize that I probably enjoyed that book so much because it pertained to my life in a couple of different ways. First of all, when I read it I was relatively close in age to the main characters. I also felt a deep connection to one of the characters and thought the character was practically written for me. In addition, the book centered around a theme of Greek mythology, something I had a deep interest in back then and continue to read about on my own time now.

As I move closer and closer to becoming a teacher, I find that it is important that I look back on my own experiences and place that knowledge next to what I study in class. This practice gives my studies more meaning and credibility, as I realize that a lot of it can be validated by my own experiences. In this case, I can see the importance of teaching my students about things that interest them and that they can connect to their own lives.

As Rodriguez mentions, it is important to bring in texts from multiple different cultures (5). For one, it gives students several contrasting narratives and allows them to make up their own minds about what they think. However, it also allows all of the students to be able to connect with a text. It would be more difficult to connect with a text and to see yourself on the page if every text you read is from a culture that isn’t your own, a culture that repeatedly speaks to the idea that white people are somehow more important.

In addition to bringing in texts from many different cultures, Rodriguez explains that it is important to give students some autonomy in choosing their own materials (9). If they can choose texts on subjects that interest them – like my book on Greek mythology for me – they will be much more likely to be willingly engaged in their own education.

As a future teacher, I intend to utilize all of the above information in my classroom. I hope to incorporate a variety of different texts from authors with a range of different backgrounds into my teachings. I would like to build relationships with my students, discover what is important to them, and make those things available to study throughout my class. I want to make sure that each and every student feels as if their voice is being heard and that people care about and are ready to support them.

           As my resource link for this week, I am attaching The Danger of a Single Story, a TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This past story, I discovered Adichie when my professor for my African Literature class played this TED Talk, as well as her TED Talk, "We Should All be Feminists" for our class. Since then, she has become one of my personal heroes. This TED Talk works perfectly with this week's reading assignment and it is even mentioned in the assigned reading by Rodriguez. In this talk, Adichie explains, with the aid of fascinating anecdotes, the serious dangers and problems that arise when people only hear one version of a story. I would highly recommend that you watch both this TED Talk and her talk on feminism. They are both entertaining and cover topics that are essential to understand if you want to be a good teacher, or even just a good person.

Lesson on "The Masque of the Red Death" Pt. 2

After creating this small series of instructional videos, I would definitely consider using some sort of instructional videos in my future career as a teacher. I think instructional videos can be great because they are not overly complicated to create - although I am technologically challenged and had major issues trying to upload my videos to Youtube - and they can serve a great purpose. They could be convenient to use in teaching my class if I were to have to miss class one day or during a long break from school. I could still give my students direct instructions without having to be with them in person. Another thing I would consider utilizing instructional videos for is to teach my students how to use certain technology. This way, I could open up more options to the students on how they can create their assignments without having to take precious class time to teach them how to use these different types of tech. In addition, these videos would be optional, so the students who already know how to use these technologies can avoid wasting their time on a pointless lesson.

While instructional videos could be useful, I definitely wouldn’t use them to replace face-to-face instruction. First of all, students couldn’t directly ask me questions if I were to do this. Even if we happened to be online at the same time, other students would not benefit from those questions because they wouldn’t know the questions were being asked. Also, if instruction was entirely online, some students - like myself - would struggle with having to deal with technology 100% of the time without having someone in the room with them to help them out. If students’ instruction was online, they could easily skip or skim through lessons, instead of sitting through their entirety and learning about everything I would want them to. Finally, one huge part of teaching is building rapport with your students. If I couldn’t see my students face-to-face everyday, it would be extremely difficult for me to build a strong bond with them.

Honestly, the 21th Century Digital Fluencies came naturally with this assignment, probably partly because my initial creation of this assignment was based off of SAMR and ISTE standards. I think this assignment demands the Creativity Fluency. First, my instructions will serve as an easy “problem” to identify. Then, my students will need to inspire in order to come up with their stories.  Next, they will interpolate to fit their stories into patterns and shape them into workable pieces. After that, they’ll imagine in order to start working at building their videos. Finally, they’ll inspect their final products by 1) completing a self-evaluation and an evaluation of their team members’ contributions, and 2) by reading the comments their classmates will leave them online.

A second 21st Century Digital Fluency I think my assignment requires is the Collaboration Fluency. The students will have their groups established for them when I put them into their teams, but they will have to divide the roles and responsibilities among themselves. Next, they’ll have to work together to envision the final outcome, or their story that will turn into a movie. Then, they will have to engineer their plan on how to create this story and video. After that, they will have to collaborate and complete their individual responsibilities in order to execute their plan and create the video. Finally, they will examine their group work by evaluation the contributions of themselves and their group members.

Integrating these fluencies didn’t really shift my assignment at all. As I stated previously, my assignment fit pretty neatly into the requirements for these fluencies.

See below for the link to my video on the specifics of my assignment, the link to my video on how to use Screencast-O-Matic, and my rubric for my assignment:

https://youtu.be/8EUeCFQK0bQ (Assignment Details)

https://youtu.be/hVLxbCT9Ro4 (Screencast-O-Matic How-To)

Pinterest as a Personalized Learning Network

I decided to explore Pinterest as a professional. I created an education board
 and searched for “high school education” posts. From there, I looked through 
the posts that came up, clicked on links to bring me to informational websites, 
and saved the pins that I found to be particularly interesting or potentially 
useful to me as I look forward to a teaching career.

As I first began searching for posts, I realized that there was a ton of different 
things that came up in my search. There were some general education posts, 
some secondary education posts, some posts specific to different subjects, and 
even posts meant for homeschoolers. There were some posts from experienced 
professionals and some that seemed like a random person wrote it based on 
what they think teaching entails. There were posts with specific lesson plan and 
activity ideas, posts about decorating classrooms, posts suggesting materials to 
cover, posts about disciplinary plans, and advice posts (especially for first-year 
teachers). Some posts offered free materials and others made you pay for materials.

With all of this variety comes both negatives and positives of this particular PLN 
(Personalized Learning Network). As I mentioned, some links required you to pay 
for any help they would provide. Also, there were plenty of posts by people who 
didn’t seem to know anything about education, or people who recommended 
teaching tactics that go against everything I am learning about creating an inclusive 
learning environment. On the other hand, using Pinterest in this way would be useful 
because it would allow me to see what some other teachers are doing. Also, it would 
spark some creativity and give me ideas for lesson plans. Even for some of the posts 
that required you to pay in order to access the materials, I was able to take a sneak 
peak at those materials enough that it sparked some ideas on how to run similar 
lessons that I would create and customize on my own.

As an emerging professional educator, I think the pros of using Pinterest definitely 
outweigh the cons. As is with every resource, I feel that anyone using this tool has to 
take everything with a grain of salt and realize that some things will be useful while 
others will not. I think that if I were to keep an eye out for poor advice and information, 
Pinterest could be a great way to harvest new ideas and stay tuned with those who have 
been gaining experience and knowledge about this profession for a lot longer than I have.

Technology Podcast Featuring my Mom, Sharon

I decided on who I was going to interview before I decided on which topic 
my interview would be. I don’t have a lot of close friends or family who live 
near me anymore, but I wanted to interview someone who I felt comfortable 
with. I call my mom often, so I figured I could easily work the interview into one 
of our phone calls. I decided to interview her about technology for a couple of 
different reasons. First, it is relevant to me as a future teacher and as I go 
through this particular class. Second, because it is relevant to my mother as 
she uses technology everyday in order to do her job. Finally, because it is 
relevant to just about everyone in our modern world as technology becomes a 
bigger part of average life everyday.

To begin the process of creating this podcast, I asked my mom if she would 
volunteer to be my interviewee. Then, I wrote up the entire script of my side of the 
interview. Next, I sent a basic copy of my questions to my mom and asked if she 
had any questions. After that, I recorded the interview on my laptop with 
Garageband. A few days after everything was recorded, I listened to the recording,
 added a couple more points of narration, and cut out unnecessary or awkward 
moments. When I was done cutting everything down and creating small breaks in 
places, I Googled “music without royalties” and downloaded a techy-sounding song. 
I placed the song on the track and adjusted the volume level at many different 
moments so it would function as background music and not interfere with the sound 
quality of the interview. Finally, I uploaded the podcast to Soundcloud and posted it 
on my blog. 

I have been a fan of podcasts for the last few years. I’ve listened to podcasts for 
entertainment, to learn how to live a better life, to gain teaching tips, and more. After 
creating my own podcast, I am even more enthusiastic. After seeing how simple it is 
to actually create a podcast - I’m not saying it doesn’t take a lot of work, just that 
someone as technologically inept as me can do it - I think this would be a great 
activity to bring into a classroom. I think many students would enjoy the process of 
dictating the topic of a podcast, creating their own layout, and putting together a 
polished product that they can share with their classmates.

https://soundcloud.com/user-939001709/tech-interview-with-my-mom

Story Corps Introduction

https://archive.storycorps.org/?post_type=interviews&p=513077

Check out this super awkward audio recording about one influential person from my youth, my middle school/ high school band teacher.

Lesson Plan on Symbolism

Here is a narrated presentation of the first outline of a lesson plan I've ever created. This is a lesson on Symbolism through the use of the short story, "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe.

Media Ethnography Reflection

The graphs and documents below show the results of my two-day observation of 
my usage of media and technology. The day before I began this observation project, 
I spoke with my mother about it over the phone. I explained to her that I thought the 
project would be interesting, but I didn’t think it would surprise me in any way. I 
told her that I knew that I used different types of media and technology everyday, 
in almost everything I do. From the obviously tech-centered activities, like using 
social media or Netflix, to the less obvious, like looking up chords to songs to play
on my guitar or even doing homework, I knew that I could barely make it through 
a normal day without my devices. While I was not surprised by how much media I
consume and utilize in a day, I was a little taken off-guard by what I used it for. 

As you can see on my graphs, I broke down my information into three important 
categories and took a closer look at the media I utilized, the devices I used to access
that media, and what I used the media to do. I was a little bit surprised that I spent 
over 32% of my time watching shows and movies. Part of this surprise came from 
the fact that I initially didn’t think about how much free time I would have this week. 
Due to Independence Day, I only had three hours of classes this week, when I usually 
have four times as much. As a result, I was able to spread my (also diminished) 
homework over several days. Instead of spending most of my time in classes or doing 
homework, I spent a lot of time each day playing games or watching movies. This 
week was also out-of-the-norm because I usually would spend more free time outdoors,
but it was so hot and humid outside - and I hate the heat - so I used a lot more media 
instead.

Honestly, if I were to pick one word to describe the experience of recording my 
media usage, it would probably be tedious. For me, a lot of my use of media is 
brief and fairly frequent. I tend to check my email, Facebook, Snapchat, ect. 
frequently, but for only a few seconds at a time. I believe I probably didn’t check
 these media as much over the course of these two days, mostly because I didn’t 
want to take more time to write down my usage than I did actually using these 
media. 

If I were to assign a project like this one in one of my classes, I would try to assign 
it on a regular week, rather than on the week of a holiday. As I mentioned above, 
my use of media differed from an average week because I had a lot of free time. I 
think it would be more beneficial to me, as well as to my future students, if the 
information collected pertained to an average week. I think this project would be 
beneficial to assign to students because it could encourage some awareness about 
how - and how much - they are using their devices, or even what they tend to use 
them for. Logs like this are great for promoting self-reflection. On the other hand, 
this project might not always be useful because it would be up to the students to 
record their information on their own. They could forget to log some activity, or 
even lie about what activities they pursue, and the entire set of information could 
be skewed. 

Looking at my results, I think it is more important than I ever have that I find ways 
to incorporate technology into my classroom. Our modern world runs around new 
technology, and my results show that my life is no exception to this. Technology is 
often seen as a bad thing, but if used properly, it can be a very useful tool for teaching.