Self Evlauation

Jason,

I hope this format is okay with you, otherwise I will beg Peter or Paris to print it all out and bring it in to class in a beautiful folder.

While working through this class, I was also in 5 other classes..

Learners with Special Needs
Literacy in the Content Area
School and Society
(this class)
Modern Middle Eastern History
Quantitate Reasoning in the Early and High Middle Ages

This dizzying concoction of classes along with working retail, nannying and working 20 hours a week at Augsburg Fairview Academy through the LEAD fellowship program at Augsburg was interesting to say the least. I made a big mistake taking this all on at once, and I paid for it. I have not been taking care of myself the way that I should, or my dog. I am working to get back towards a healthier life as my student teaching begins, which might sound like a joke, but I really believe that student teaching will be easier and more rewarding than what I just out myself through.

I thought at most I should get a B- in this class because I did not think I was committing the time to it I should have. By Thursday night I was usually on my fourth day of waking up at 6:30 to nanny, and going to sleep at 10 when I got home from class with out breaks in between. So I had to have been slacking. Looking back on it, I wasn't. I got the readings and reflections done regardless of how confusing your expectations were of how, where and when we were meant to have everything done. I felt super sick (probably from exhaustion and the air in that room) for quite a few of your classes but I stayed and participated. I utilized your readings, which I really enjoyed compared to the readings for my other classes, while I was in an extremely urban classroom. I struggled with the text and continued to question it. I still do not completely understand the intention of this class, so I was using it as if it was a second educational philosophy class, so even with our clear intentions I assigned intention to your work. This blog is filled with examples from my work, connections to past work and other parts of the class that I felt lead to my final grade. (I also now want to ask all my my future student ever to create a blog to show me what grade they think they deserve in my future classes)

Through reflection, and attentiveness to class I think I should get an A. I probably got more out of your class than many other students because of how outspoken and reflective I am. I know this was your first time teaching the class, and structure might not be your favorite thing, a response every week would be awesome, as would getting to finish the Emdin and Michie book together as a class. Possibly breaking up into small groups before speaking all together for student to further clarify what they want to say in a large group discussion while in class, and that could all easily be facilitated online with the right expectations set at the beginning of class. Not only did I dig deep into your content, I am also critiquing your teaching style. Hopefully those words do not hurt my grade but instead help it by showing how invested I really have been in your class.

I hope you have an amazing christmas, and I will catch up with Paris to see what happens in class Thursday. I will be emailing you with future philosophical dilemmas as my path goes on.

Best,
Jessie Livingston

The boy with the Red Flower (Nablus Edition)

http://jlivjourneytoqaf.blogspot.com/2016/05/arts-english-and-little-bill-withers.html

Head over to this blog post from a bit ago, this is a big reflection on standards, what happens when we do not allow creative freedom for young children?

Standards and their place in the classroom

Jessica Livingston

ESE 325

Standards Paper

Standards Paper

Standard 1, subject matter. 

A teacher must understand the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the disciplines taught and be able to create learning experiences that make these aspects of subject matter meaningful for students.

Standards, a way to try and insure that all students in the United States are getting a quality education. When looking at the code of ethics I found something similar in the language of the materials. General and broad, a way to encompass as much potential good while expelling as much potential bad as possible. Subject matter in my specific content area is rather broad, History, Economics, Anthropology, Physical Geography, Political Science and Sociology, possibly psychology also. Do I understand central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of all six of these disciplines? Of course.

When working in the humanities, an understanding of how people work, how they function is a basis for our passion. To extent that even further, not only are we interested in a subset of the humanities, we are also interested in relaying this information to other humans, as teachers. We have been in training for years, some of us for decades to prepare for this. From the minute kindergarten starts we begin absorbing teaching styles, concepts, processes, frameworks and knowledge. Then eventually we get to a point where we all find out that this knowledge is filled with misconceptions and assumptions and we work through setting them right. We begin to notice the flaws in now only our past k-12 teachers, but our current professors in college. I am an undergraduate that has its positive attributes and negative attributes. I remember high school much more clearly, and I am currently working on mastering my content, which is helpful. I am also less learned socially, and I am less sure of my career path. With that known, I have a youthful curiosity about extending my knowledge in all of the tiny parts that make up this grand, overarching standard. Over the last three years I have gathered a bank of content area information that dispels assumptions, debates topics, inquiries about unknown truths and I still have not come to understand the correct ways of knowing that are central to my discipline. I have realized that to gain a concept of ways of knowing a discipline a student must fail forward to find a path that they can continue to use. I had a student write a paper on Martin Luther King last week that cited MartinLutherKing.org, it is a .org and it has MLK’s name in it, so it should work right? I had to sit down with the student and explore the website with them to find out together that it was a White Supremacist page. "Anyone can buy a URL", I can tell my students that time and time again but learning the skill of how to know things that are central to the discipline is a personal, learned experience, not 5 words that I constantly repeat. In history whether we are supporting assumptions or dispelling them, we are supporting a narrative that students are forming in their minds. Was Woodrow Wilson a racist or a great president in the history of America? Maybe he was both? How can someone be great and racist at the same time? How do we have intellectual conversation about this? And lastly, do we even care? Should we inquire further?

I have the capabilities to uphold this standard, and I also have the capability to question it. To utilize it to my students advantages, and provide them with a space where they can grow with me while working out how to meet these standards.

Turkey plans for a vegetarian

While writing these I had to step away from the victimhood and pity that came come with white privilege. I had to get out of the liberal bubble I was sitting in with my friends touting on and on about how the white people murdered all the Indians. I had to begin to look for a diversity of ideas that did not cling to a view that we all enjoy, being a horse with blinders on. I began to look for more.. and I quickly found it.  

Thanksgiving Lesson Plan:

Goal: world-wide view, having an understanding of what is similar to thanksgiving that others celebrate around the world

Entry Ticket: What is your favorite thing about Thanksgiving?

Intro: In the US many of us celebrate Thanksgiving, if you speak with people from other countries they often mention that they have nothing like thanksgiving in their country. With the Turkey, the stories about Indians and Pilgrims (whether they are true or not) all the side dishes and the pie. Even newer traditions like the Turkey trot or a walk among the stars after dinner.

When we look a bit further into the history of thanksgiving we can see that it is a Harvest festival.

(Write definition of Harvest Festival)

an annual celebration that occurs around the time of the main harvest of a given region.

Today we will all be looking at different Harvest Festivals around the world. The list on the board will be your options. I will need you to break up into groups of 4 and assigning tasks among the groups.

The tasks will be Recorder, Researcher 1, Researcher 2 and Speaker

The topics are,

Canada

The Yam Festival in Ghana

The Harvest Moon Festival in China

Chusok (Korean)

Têt-Trung-Thu in Vietnam

In South America

Succoth (Jewish)

Pongal (January 14) in India

Baisakhi (April 13) India

 Lohri (January 13) India

 Onam (mid-August) India

 (Erntedankfest) in Germany

 St. Martin Celebrations in Germany

You have 30 Minutes to answer 5 W’s and an H about these celebrations.

Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.

The last 10 Minutes of class will be Snap presentations! Speakers be ready to share some info!

Thanksgiving Lesson Plan 2

Goal: Identifying multiple perspectives of the participants at the symbolic first thanksgiving. Using MLA format practicing citing sources, and putting ourselves in the shoes of people that we will be either celebrating or mourning this week.

Task: Worksheet for students to fill out guiding them on research about the Origins of thanksgiving.

Hint: Initial Tribes

Pokanoket

Narragansett

Nauset

Introduction:

We all have heard about the history of thanksgiving, and two main stories circulate. We all know with our historical minds that the truth is most likely somewhere between these two, so where is it? That is what we will be looking for today. You can work in groups or alone, or as an entire class, the goal today is to walk out of class with a solid idea of who was involved at the first thanksgiving and identify the perspectives of all involved.

I will be walking around listening in, because I can almost always learn something new during this activity. I might also join in with the class if we do this in a whole class activity. I will give you 5 minutes to grab laptops and figure out the grouping situation together as a class.

Thanksgiving Worksheet

Who were the Native groups involved at the first thanksgiving? Three of them exist, please list them, a short description of the Tribe and how interactions with the Pilgrims went. Please cite your source at the bottom of this page in MLA format.

Who were the Pilgrims? Where did they come from and why did they come to the US? Please find a Primary source (+1 Extra Credit Point) or a secondary source about the Pilgrims interactions with the Natives, what was their perspective? Please cite your source at the bottom of this page in MLA format.

Write a reflection about something you learned from this research, whether it be practicing MLA format or the experiences that the Natives had with the Pilgrims and vice versa.

For extra credit: Write a rose, bud, thorn from the perspective of the Pilgrims and the Natives.

Notables from other responses

While responding to other readings in the class from Emdin's book to Brian working on an alternate form of Public Achievement.

(From my response on Public Achievement)

It is to simple to be easy, being authentic is the only way to create community, with out the real you, you cannot be in a real community. If you want team work and success in the classroom, the first step is to start with being yourself and genuinely curious about all the other selves in the room.

(From my response on Public Achievement)

A camp that I worked at encouraged failing forward, but they forgot about one factor, judgement. Peer judgement makes it hard to fail forward, but in a class with students that you have created a community in, failing will constantly be the quickest and most meaningful way to succeed. 

This class gave me opportunity to reflect on my summer teaching experience in Palestine, I did not think much of my impact while I was their, but I must have had one. Also, globally what are learning environments like? I am looking at a program in Northern India about the differences in learning environments around the world, because of the time I have now had to reflect on my time in Palestine. 

(excerpt from midterm)

Thought when I student teach I will not have much influence over the classroom I am looking forward to the day that I do, I am looking forward to tapestries, and weird rocks from all over the world, and lamp lighting. I am looking forward to utilizing the ultimate potential of the spaces I inhabit. Ayers brought this up in the comic book, and now when ever I walk into a classroom I begin day dreaming about what the dead spaces that exist have the potential to be. 

(excerpt from midterm)

I enjoy living in a fear based narrative, it is safe and that means I do not have to take responsibility. If I am 23 and I still enjoy this how might a 17 year old be who is less aware that we even write our own narratives? Emdin is deep and I will be reading the remainder of his book over break, hoping that I will be able to soak up more of these complex concepts. 

The Michie Compilation

As I prepare to consider my options once I finish at Augsburg, I know that if I stay in the midwest, I will be heading back to Des Plaines. No matter how much I like the idea of some how getting a position (one is opening up) in the social studies department at Maine West High School, where I could bike to school every day, the reality might not be as possible as I want. I know that over the last semester I have begun to prepare myself for teaching in an 'urban' or as Emdin would call it 'neoindigenous' school. Gregory Michie has been one of the many tools that has been useful in preparing for this. Below are a collection of my responses to Michie's Chapters that we read for class.

(excerpt from my response on chapter 5-6)

In this class I have been able to relate to readings from classes I have taken in the past, like my Islam in America class. That has created mental maps that keep the information I learned here ingrained in my mind. 

 

(excerpt from my response on chapter 5-6)

I just found out that Augsburg uses a co-teaching model for student teachers, oh how I wish I had known that before I went to meet with Mr.Nohel from South High School. This excerpt reminds me of how far away I thought the prospect of co-teaching was, compared the the reality that now it is only a month away. 

(excerpt from my response on chapter 1-2)

Gregory Krueger will continue to be a mentor and an example to me of the kid of teacher I would like to be. He might have taught kindergarten, but he has more insight and applicable ideas about young adult minds than I have found in entire schools that I have worked in.

(excerpt from my response on chapter 3)

In another class I have been learning about Universal design, coupled with the readings I have done in your class it reinforces the idea that I need to continue to remind myself that people of all ability levels are sitting in out classroom, regardless of whether their strengths and weaknesses have been identifies yet, it is my job to connect and identify as the year goes on. 

(excerpt from my response on chapter 7-8)

The readings in this class along with my field experience at Augsburg Fairview Academy has continued to make me question how our society works. These girls, are so young and have so much potential that I can see in the classroom but many in our society only see them as future welfare queens. THIS MAKES ME SO FRUSTRATED! (which is good thats the goal of the class)

(excerpt from my response on chapter 7-8)

While leaving Augsburg Fairview Academy I knew that I was leaving many students in a state of stagnation, which is sad but it happens, and we cannot always shield ourselves from this disappointment. I will always hope for students to succeed, but when they do not in academics I cannot give up hope that they will find another way. These students are young, they have time for mistakes and different routes to learn in different ways than I did or than society expects them too.