While observing last week, I noticed that so many teachers do not know how to deal with classroom management. I observed for a different teacher because my teacher was absent and it was a completely different experience. The students did not remain in seats and just walked around the classroom as if it was a free period or lunch. I also noticed that the teacher sat with one group of students and did not even get up to see what the other students were doing until 20 minutes passed and the period was half over. The students took forever to start the assignment and it was a very quick writing assignment. They had to write about a memory in their life to include in their memoir. I think as a teacher you need to make sure your students are constantly on task because once you let them go off course for a minute their going to take advantage and continue to act out. The only time students should be allowed to walk around or go off task is when a teacher specifically says that for the last 10 minutes of class you can catch up on anything for the class or read. Other than that, there really shouldn't be too much time for them to go off task. The teacher must show that she is involved too. She must be there for all the students not just a select few.

For future teachers:

How would you react if your class was acting out and going off task?
What is your classroom management strategy to get them back on task?

revised content lens essay

Dinamarie Tsoukalas

            According to Duff Brenna, “All literature shows us the power of emotion; it is emotion, not reason that motivates characters in literature.” In other words Brenna is saying that characters are affected by their feelings, which could be anything from happiness, fear, love, or anger. He is also saying that characters are not affected by their rationales or explanations. This is shown to be true in Night written by Elie Wiesel, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Setting and imagery are used in these two novels to depict the main characters’ emotions. These characters are also emotionally affected by the common themes in the novels: inequality and injustice.

            Elie Wiesel used setting to bring out the depressed state that the entire Jewish race is in during the novel. One setting that depicted how emotions affected Elie is when he was on the train to the concentration camps. Wiesel depicted these trains as horrific and disgusting. Fear for death and what will happen next caused Elie to remain strong and protect his ill father from other people on the train. The next setting was Auschwitz where Wiesel uses imagery to show how unsettled Elie was; he looks back and sees thousands of people marching behind and along dead bodies after dead bodies. Elie continues to march, not because he understood why this was being done to him and other Jews, but because he was angry at the injustice he suffered. Elie even started to deny his faith, something that he believed in so dearly, because he was distraught at the fact that his family and friends were taken from him.

            Harper Lee chose the setting of Maycomb, a racist town in the 1930’s, to depict the emotion of not only Atticus, but of the whole town of Maycomb. Atticus defended a black man because he was driven by his emotional belief that everyone should have the same privilege of receiving a fair trial no matter what skin color. He was not rationalizing the outcomes of his decision because after he accepted the position his town looked down upon him and his family; since he was very emotional about keeping justice he overcomes the discrimination. Lee also used imagery with Boo Radley’s house. He depicted his house as a “haunted mansion” and a horrible place to even go near. The town didn’t go near his house because the town was emotionally afraid of difference. They were unhappy with change which led them to be judgmental and neglect anyone that showed a slight difference, unlike Atticus.

            Both novels shared the same themes, which are the existence of inequality and injustice. It is this existence of inequality that forced Atticus to be a lawyer for Tom Robinson and Elie to continue fighting to survive in the concentration camps. Both of them were faced with discrimination because of their beliefs, but they remained strong and exceeded everything that was put in front of them. Social discrimination, religious discrimination, and even a father’s death didn’t stop both of these characters to stand up for what was right.

            The two novels, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Night by Elie Wiesel both prove the quote by Duff Brenna. Both novels showed that emotion is what drives a character to perform the actions he or she makes. The main emotion that was prevalent throughout the two novels was fear of the unknown.  The two novels also showed how not only are individual choices affected by emotion, but society and political choices are affected by emotion too. 

Dinamarie Tsoukalas

                According to Duff Brenna, “All literature shows us the power of emotion; it is emotion, not reason that motivates characters in literature”. In other words Brenna is saying that characters are affected by their feelings, which could be anything from happiness, fear, love, or anger. He is also saying that characters are not affected by their rationales or explanations. This is shown to be true in Night written by Elie Wiesel, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Setting and imagery are used in these two novels to depict the main characters’ emotions.

                Elie Wiesel uses setting to bring out the depressed state that all if the Jewish race is in during the novel. The novel starts in Sighet, where many Jewish are living during the 1940’s. Then the setting is moved to the trains that the Jewish were taken to concentration camps. Wiesel depicts these trains as horrific and disgusting because there is no room, people yelling at each other for tiny rations of food, and it reeks of death. The next setting is the actual concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, where Elie describes the marches the Nazis made them run. He uses imagery to show how unsettling this scene is. Elie looks back and sees thousands of people marching behind and then after an hour he marches along the side of dead bodies after dead bodies. Throughout these two scenes Elie stayed strong not because he understood why this was being done to his father and himself, but because he wanted to survive. He ran in fear of what was going to be done to him.  The last setting was in Buchewald, where the Jews were freed, but Elie was never emotionally free. He described himself in the mirror as, “a corpse gazing back at me”. He was never going to be the same because his emotions were altered from discrimination and from being treated like a slave.

                Harper Lee uses setting to depict the emotion of not only Atticus, but of the whole town of Maycomb. The novel is based in a southern town in the early 1930’s where there was a lot of racism. Atticus defends a black man, Tom Robinson, because he was driven by his emotional belief that everyone should have the same privilege of receiving a fair trial no matter what skin color. After he accepts the position his town looks down upon him and his family, but since he is very emotional about keeping justice he overcomes the discrimination and teaches his kids to do the same. Lee also uses imagery with Boo Radley’s house who is another black man. He depicts his house as a “haunted mansion” and a horrible place to even go near. The town didn’t go near his house because the town was emotionally afraid of difference. They were unhappy with change which led them to be judgmental and neglect anyone that showed a slight difference.

                Both novels share the same themes, which are the existence of inequality and injustice. It is this existence of inequality that forced Atticus to be a lawyer for Tom Robinson and Elie to continue fighting to survive in the concentration camps. Both of them were faced with discrimination because of their beliefs, but they remained strong and exceeded everything that was put in front of them. Social discrimination, religious discrimination, and even a father’s death didn’t stop both of these characters to stand up for what is right.

                The two novels, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Night by Elie Wiesel both prove the quote by Duff Brenna. Both novels show that emotion is what drives a character to perform the actions he or she makes. The main emotion that was prevalent throughout the two novels was fear of the unknown.  The two novels also show how not only are individual choices affected by emotion, but society and political choices are affected by emotion too.  

Is the internet helping or hurting the way students learn?

         Today mostly every middle and high schooler have a cell phone with the internet. They have a device in their pockets at every second, so why would they want to sit there for forty minutes and learn about what happens next in a novel or find out the meaning of a poem when they can look it up in a second? Why are we making them read out of an outdated textbook? And why are we teaching them to write if they can just use spell check and grammar check on Microsoft word?
           We have to think of a different way to approach teaching or else our students are going to keep relying on a machine instead of their brain to do the work. When I was in elementary and middle school no one had a cell phone and ten year old kids didn't have myspace, facebook, blogs, or twitter. These just didn't exist yet so it was understandable that we were taught in that way.
           Now it is eminent for teachers to incorporate things such as blogs, youtube (talk shows on prevalent issues that relate to a book/topic being taught), activities for classwork on the internet, and other forms of technology. When it comes to students learning we are not doing a good job relating their lives to this fast past changing world.

"No one manages to write better without teachers"

            When thinking about revision in writing, I realized it is true that only the author can decide when a draft becomes a final draft. As a future teacher and a writer, I want to teach my students how to write to the best of their ability. However the concept of revision is a hard one to teach. Throughout my high school and even college career, I was so proud of every word I wrote and I didn't want to get rid of any of them. When I saw those red marks on my papers it was unsettling, so I can understand how students feel when it comes to revision.
          As a teacher you must also not mark every line with commas and other grammar corrections or else your students will feel like their writing is completely wrong. I think you must chose a certain aspect of their writing to focus on. You should either focus on content or just a few grammar mistakes. It is hard because you feel like it is benefiting them, but in the long run it is only stunting their writing ability.
          In Is It Done Yet, the author tells us that as teachers we must teach our students to find their errors themselves. The students should be able to recognize the parts of speech and make sure the topic is being addressed correctly. In order for the students to be able to revise their writing themselves, we must practice everything from nouns to punctuation, spelling, and forms of writing. It is essential that as teachers we allow our students to become self sufficient with their work.

My View of Writing in The Classroom

          My name is Dinamarie and I am an English Education major. I would love to be a teacher in one year after completing my masters. Hopefully the job market opens up for teachers. Writing is crucial to English because it is a really good method of expressing oneself. As a kid I wrote journals whenever I felt like something needed to be said, but no one could know about it. Then once I learned to write poems and short stories, I began to write all the time. It really amazed me how creative I could be. During my teen years I was a more shy person and I wrote my ideas down as my form of expression.
         In the future I want to teach my students how powerful writing can be, but I also want them to know how important it is to learn how to write correctly. I would love to teach a creative writing or a poetry writing class because I feel it is a great tool for not only expressing yourself, but for getting a job one day in any field. In high school students are thinking about colleges that require essays. Sometimes the colleges require multiple essays and I want my students to be able to write these essays. As teachers we shouldn't just teach kids how to write for the state tests because they will never learn how to write any other forms of writing. Also you might never know just how good one of your students is at writing a scene of a play if you don't allow your students to practice and read all different types of literature and writing.
         I also believe that reading is the key to good writing. The more you read with your class the more your class will not only enjoy writing, but will understand more components of writing. I hope that when I become a teacher I can empower my students to love writing just as much as I do.