Eng 099 Lab, Week II

One of the reasons I decided I want to go into Adult Education instead of K-12 was that I truly enjoy teaching and hate the prospect of having to first discipline the kids constantly to be able to get two words of teaching out. Here I am now in a college class, instructing the one-hour weekly "labs" of the basic English level at LaGuardia Community College Writing Center, and these students cannot get past interrupting the class and having side-conversations with classmates long enough to just do the work they are asked to do! I understand, these students are mostly freshman, fresh out of high school, but I am becoming very frustrated with these kids who are not willing to grow up, so to speak.

I'm trying to be helpful and even tell them listen, if you don't want to do the work here and would rather read and write your assignments at home, that's fine. Just stop making so much noise by talking amongst yourselves and laughing and so disrupting other students who are trying to get real work done here! Honestly, this just discouraged me a tad bit today. I don't know; maybe my frustration comes from my most recent sleep-deprevation and other personal troubles I've had in the past 10 hours just today!

Teachers make mistakes, alot.

Today, as I was grading the students' "vocabulary" exercise, I realized that this one student has not bothered to look up the correct definition for half of the words and so gotten wrong self-made sentences and the other half of the words that he did look up the correct definition of, had very shallow sentences that doesn't show the meaning of the words. For some reason, this frustrated me a little, that all these other students did their work to the best of their ability and this one guy didn't even try!? Though I did not "mark" his whole sheet with angry red-pen remarks but I wrote in capitalized letters "WRONG DEFINITION" for the 3 words and just crossed out the other 3 sentences.

When I showed it to my lead-teacher, she suggested I "soften up" my remarks and perhaps write something a bit more encouraging for him. Suddenly, as she said this and as I took the paper back I felt awful about having judged the student like that. Maybe this student did actually make an effort of writing these sentences but he just simply did not understand the exact definitions of the vocabulary words. Haven't I made the same mistakes when I was in high school trying to make these sentences with vocabulary words? If I didn't understand the words completely, it never occur to me to just ask. For some reason, I thought I would somehow figure it out on my own without having to bother the teacher. I'm not saying this student has the same situation, but he could have any other complication.

And sure enough, after class, my lead teacher spoke with the advisor of the CUNY START program and found out that 3 students from our afternoon class have learning disabilities and the student whose paper I "harshly" marked the paper of, is one of them. I'm not exactly sure just yet what kind of disability he does have or if that was the cause of his poor performance of the assignment. Anyway, it really made me ashamed of myself to have judged so quickly. I mean me! The person who always hated when teachers did so with me or with other students!

I guess in the end of the day, even teachers make mistakes sometimes. No matter how conscious they may be of their practice.

Autobiographies: a mid-year Resolution for 2010!

I have decided to make a new mid-year resolution for 2010. Actually every year in January, I make a list of resolutions for that year that I sometimes follow. Interestingly, one of those resolutions always have to do with books: read more literature books, read ## this amount of books by the end of the year, and etc. Today, I've decided I should make a new resolutions mid-year before 2011, to read more autobiographies! When I was younger, I never really understood the point of autobiographies that much. I thought, why read a whole book about someone else's life when there are all these other amazing novels out there with great stories to read?! But when I used to say those things, I was still only into reading fiction novels. However, in the past 2-3 years, I have actually become more interested in reading non-fiction and this is all part of my "reading for pleasure" in addition to college-worth readings.

To put it briefly, my mid-year resolution, or just one of my goals for Fall 2010 is to read more autobiographies of great people who lived many years ago (Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Gandhi, Simone de Beauvoir, etc) and some living today (Obama, etc). I've just recently learned and truly believe that when you read the real life history of a great person, then reaching their level of greatness sometimes seems more achievable. So, I'm hoping to read, as much as I can really, for this term. So far, I finished reading "Teacher Man" from Frank McCourt, which was sort of an autobiography of his life as a child, student, and teacher. Now, I have just begun reading Richard Wright's "Black Boy", whom I only learned about from the Reading Writing course I co-teach at Hostos. So far, the first 70 pages are very engaging and I'm really enjoying myself here.

Now, I just want to see how much this new found-passion of mine will hold true in what I actually achieve.

Tired of co-teaching already, I think.

So basically, the other day the teacher for the Reading Writing course at Hostos (I'm not really sure what else to call her & I don't want to use her name) and I were discussing the first CATW lesson. She decided she would hand in a model essay of the test they took in class (that she wrote on her own), analyze it as a class, and have students continue on with the body paragraphs (using an anecdotal response & textual reference) with the "model" introduction.

Immediately, I felt like it is too early to give a model essay to the students since this test has barely been administered yet and instructors & tutors alike are trying to figure out just how to approach the test. Plus, she does not yet know enough about the test to know whether her model essay is actually "model". And of course, according to one of the supervisors at my WC who is by the way a certified scorer of the test, did not feel like there was sufficient integration of the article inside the essay.

However, my real problem with her approach to the lessons was why start with the "supporting details" of the essay when half of the students in this class do not yet know how to summarize? I would think that ok maybe you want to give them your "model" introduction and take it apart with the class and figure out what elements are used. But I would think to ask the students, ok now that you have seen the model, do one on your own. Isn't that the simple pedagogy any teacher would use? So what was the use of giving them a model if they won't be tested on their understanding of it? One can argue, well yes, they are going to reproduce their own "support" of the thesis of the model essay but...it just makes so much more sense to me to first teach them how to summarize. Then, teach them how to PULL OUT a "significant" idea from the text which most students seem to have trouble with. Then, work on putting that together inside the introduction. And only THEN work on learning how to use outside information to support the thesis. Am I totally off here?

All I'm thinking at this point is how last semester the idea of starting to teach after 2 semesters was insane to me and now, after a semester & internship in the summer, all I'm thinking is, I want to start teaching my own class already!

The "new" CUNY test/CAAW/CATW

Though I still have not exactly 'taught' at my Reading/Writing course at Hostos, I have started the "co-teaching" paperwork a.k.a. grading papers. So my co-teacher and I began with a basic assessment of writing using the new CUNY test that is replacing the original ACT test this coming October 2010. Though I did a bit of grading papers and giving feedback to writing assignments in my internship this past summer, I was not extensively given a stack of papers to read and make critical notes about their writing based on this new "CATW" test that has not yet been evaluated by many teachers or whatnot.

Basically, the new test requires students to read a small passage and then respond to it by giving a short summary of the reading and selecting one significant idea from the text and expanding the idea by using outside information like textual, film/tv, and personal experiences to support the thesis. There are 2 classes that I co-teach: one in the afternoons and one in the evenings. The ones in the afternoon seem to have mostly students who seem younger that just graduated from high school. On the other hand, the ones in the evening class are the "Adults" and all seem to come to class straight from their full-time jobs.

Though both groups of students are very dedicated to the class and are hard-working, sometimes the teacher and I feel like there is more energy going on in the evening and there is perhaps a bigger sacrifice taken by those students who manage to make it on time to class and really participate and do their parts. My purpose of introducing my students and the test was to better evaluate their responses to the writing assessment. All in all, there were 5 different kinds of essays that I saw from the students, from both classes:

1) summary of the whole reading with little or no response

• Students from both classes had this kind of essay, but most students from the evening class had this kind of essay
• They were able to fully summarize the text extensively and highlight the most important points with only 1-2 sentences of their own response to each point

2) brief summary in intro and mostly response to their own idea of the topic which was "Friendship" in this case

• Again, both classes had this kind of essay but most of the students who had this kind of essay was from the Afternoon class
• After briefly summarizing the text in the introduction, instead of taking out an idea from the passage they went into details about their own point of view of "friendship"

3) No summary and their own response of their idea of "friendship"

• There were only one or two people who came up with this, which were mostly from the afternoon class

4) No summary and no response to Friendship, miscomprehension of the whole thing (the reading & the directions of the writing)

• Not many people made this mistake, except one person who has a lot of trouble with English so that could've been a factor

5) Took 1 idea out and expanded

• Only 3 people out of the Afternoon class had this & 1 from the Evening class
• Of course, they still could have given more details and support for each of their paragraphs and developed their ideas more extensively, but they actually followed directions more accurately compared to other students in the class

My evaluation is that those students who just graduated from high school and had to pass the English Regents are more used to reading passages and responding to the text critically and/or just responding to the whole idea. Also, they are able to better summarize the text in a more brief manner. There is still a lot of improvement that can be made to both classes' writings but I feel like there are students from the Evening class who have not written for years and are now asked to read and write a response,which can be a very difficult task. It is also interesting to see how some students make the same errors and yet each one stay true to their identity and way of writing.

This is going to be one hell of a semester.

Beginning to Fall

This Fall 2010 came without a warning, I feel. One minute I was working on my summer internship portfolio, the next I was reading an e-reserve and already working on a writing assignment. It has already technically been 3 weeks since school started, and I am still in my Beach/Summer-y mood.

I would like to say though I am quiet excited about this semester. For the first time in my life, what I am learning in my classes at college are directly aligned with my jobs! First, I'm taking Writing Center Theory and Practice and as always I work at the LaGCC writing center! I'm also taking Teaching Writing and Literature and I am co-teaching a Basic Reading/Writing course at Hostos Community College, part of the CUNY Start program.

So yes, I basically will have a very busy semester of school/work 5 days a week and with every minute that I have "free" I have to become prepared for my classes, whether I'm teaching it or taking it. However, this is all good news: to have my experiences of reading, writing, teaching, and learning all in one place this semester!

A Summer of Teaching, Reading, Writing and more..

I would like to start my Fall 2010 Language & Literacy blog with an overview of my summer 2010 because I believe that everything I am today is because of my past, literally.

This summer, for the month of June and July, I continued working at the Writing Center at LaGuardia Community College, where I've been working for about three years now. For the summer term, I was given a lab to instruct twice a week, one hour a day. As always, I wastutoring college-level students in writing while along with the rest of the staff and supervisors trying to figure out the new CUNY test "CAAW" that would be starting up in October 2010. This was the second time I've heard of this new test that would be getting rid of the ACT test and requiring new applicants to CUNY colleges to take the CAAW written exam where students are given 90 minutes to read a small passage and respond to it. During the summer, as a team, tutors and supervisors were trying to figure out how to develop a curriculum and pedagogy oftutoring and helping students with the test in the one-hour sessions given to them in the writing center. Little did I know, that I would be much involved with the new test in the near future.

In July, I began my internship at LaGuardia Community College, team-teaching a textualized GED course for the following 2 months (July & August). I absolutely loved my experience though I had to work a lot: observing & contributing in classes, making my 3 lesson plans andteaching, tutoring the students before class started, and keeping up with a blog every week. In addition, since this internship was basically considered as graduate work, I had to write two 15 page essays on my experiences and research along with preparing an overall portfolio of everything.

My reading journey was either the texts that were required of the students in the GED class to read like small newspaper articles and short texts that all revolved around the theme of career exploration in NYC, or my own summer "reading for pleasure". I tried to keep up with language and literacy along with my other love: literature. So I read Mike Rose's "Mind At Work", "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte, "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt, a Farsi book called "Woman" by Ali Shariati (a philosophical/Islamic view of feminism that is), and Simone de Beauvoir's second volume of "the Second Sex". As you can see, I tried to keep a nice variety going! I did notread as much as I would have loved to, though I love that I always had something to read in hand...

Unlike last summer when I attempted to write a short novel, this time around I stuck to my own ascetic and wrote poetry whenever it came to me, wrote in my journal pages of worthy or worthless memories and thoughts, and even a piece of fiction that was one of those things thatjust had to be written... In addition, for the month of July and August, once a week, as an assignment or for my own enjoyment, I wrote on my LaGCC Internship Blog .

When it comes to language, it is important to also admit that this summer I began a freelance job of interpretation in the medical field for an institute called CP Language. I'm not sure what the CP stands for now. Each assignment they gave me took about 2 hours that paid quiet well, so I did it without asking, though I'm still waiting on a check from assignments I did back in July...

As a whole, I must say this was one of my best summers in NYC. I actually made the trip to the beach several times and discovered the most beautiful one in Far Rockaway. I also took mini vacations with my family and had my share of "summer romance"! It was a hot summer, but one that I learned so much as a student and teacher and a reader and writer! Although as soon as I finished my internship and supposedly handed in my portfolio, I had to attend classes and start another semester, at least this summer, I never got bored!