Found Journal

There is only one class that I look forward to at Wright State this quarter: Studies in English Education. There are about 14 of us in the class, including our professor. I know and love everyone in the class, and our professor is someone we've know all throughout undergrad. She is extremely down-to-earth and nothing but encouraging and helpful to us student teachers. If we ever have a problem, we just let her know and we have an answer within 24 hours. She's willing to drop whatever she has planned to help us out. You have no idea how awesome that is!!!

Right now in class, we are reading a book called The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. I've only read the first two chapters, but so far it has been telling us how important it is to be reflective about how who we are, because it affects our teaching. Palmer says, "Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or for worse." We teach who we are. If we are extremely grumpy people, we will be extremely grumpy teachers. If we are visual learners, we will more than likely design our lessons for visual learners. Instead of writing a typical journal response to our readings, our professor is having us keep a "found journal." A found journal is a journal where we collect and paste an object from the classroom into our journal and connect it to Palmer's writings. If the object cannot be put into the journal, we have to describe the object. People have written about Band-Aids, detention slips, bulletin boards, and gum wrappers. My friend wrote about a gum wrapper that was signed by a student. The student told her that one day he was going to be a professional football player and that his signature would be worth a lot of money one day :) She is in a 7th grade classroom as well. All in all, it's a great way to reflect on the book and a great way to keep a scrapbook of our time student teaching.