I’m Not Elitist, I Just Parse That Way

January 20, 2008 in Personal Reflection
Tags: 300, guitar hero, paradigm, pedagogy, rapport, super smash bros., teaching

My students have trouble understanding me when I talk to them. It’s hard to divorce myself from my too-recent college experience and remember what it’s like to live with parents, to have an allowance, to be so sick of that third-period government teacher who assigns way too much homework.

If I could get in their heads, somehow figure out how they see the world, try to understand that adolescent paradigm — my word of the week, in part because of the neato “-gm” digraph — I could be such a better teacher. I thought I had some small advantage over current teachers simply because I’m so much closer in age to these students.

I don’t.

OFF: Twitter Folks, My Sort of Disclaimer

January 18, 2008 in Reading Response
Tags: iconoclast, literacy, off-topic, paradigm, technology, twitter

Looking at my Web traffic from this handy-dandy WordPress Dashboard, I’m seeing quite a few people coming from Twitter.

Welcome. I wish I had something more substantial to say. If you’d like, there are a few links you should probably check out, so you don’t think I’m a Luddite-esque technophobe.

Here, I suggest school reforms suggested by long-tenured teachers, reforms that might actually work. Here, I consider multiple forms of literacy, drawing on the example of the Internet. Here, I talk about stuff that really matters.

It Means More than 20 Cents

January 12, 2008 in The Way It Were
Tags: advice, English, moral, no child left behind, paradigm, reading comprehension

I don’t teach English, but my master teacher does. This doesn’t matter except when I’m her substitute.

I used my master teacher’s lesson plan and an improvised method, I taught the class how to understand of this article, originally published in The New York Times.

I’ll spare you from reading the article, but suffice it to say that it was written for adults who understand the word, “paradigm.”  My kids didn’t.