Lang. Investigation #2

In my earlier days in school, I never really questioned the way that I was taught because it was the only thing that I knew. My teachers explained to me that "this is the way that things are done" and everybody does things this way. At least when I was young I had no outside influences expect my family and school. Those were my two main sources of information. As I got older, I realized that there was diversity in terms of learning that I had never imagined. I am not saying that what my teachers did early on in my academic career was wrong or unsatisfactory. But rather it was appropriate for the audience and situation. Rules that we have discussed in CO 301D such as don't start a sentence with "and" or "but". These are things that are infused into our minds when we start writing but as we get older the rules become obsolete. The challenge for teachers is to have language, terms, and rules in the classroom without restricting the growing mind too much. These rules on constantly changing even in how they are being taught in early education. This is a good sign because what I have learned in my stages of the education field is that adaptability is essential and perhaps the most important skill that a teacher can possess. Having preparation of the type of language that you want in your class is important but what is more important than that is being able to change that language to better help your students learn and achieve their goals. The teachers that I have seen do this are the teachers that help their students retain and use the material they are expected to learn, especially in language arts subjects. If a teacher just attempts to but heads with his or her students because the students are not using the same rules or articulating the same language, that will not allow any party to grow. In classrooms where we had an excellent cohesion of language, rules, and respect, there was an understanding of different learning and literacy skills. This was an understanding between both teacher and students and between student to student. I have played sports all my life and I think learning from how I was coached has helped me to become more aware of how to teach my future students. Analogies between coaching and teaching seem to fit very well, and I see the meaning in them clearly. I use such an analogy when thinking of a teacher/coach setting precedent for language/rules in a learning community. For example, if I were a coach, how can expect to go into implementing an offense when I do not even know if my players have the fundamentals necessary to run the offense effectively. If they can't pass or dribble how can they do deeper things such as run plays or communicate different things to do to the other 4 teammates on the floor. This idea works in a classroom as well because how can I except a 10th grader to write a persuasive essay if they don't understand the structure of sentences or paragraphs. Understanding what you can do as a teacher as well as what the student can do in your particular subject is important to the language in classrooms. So what I take from this idea of language and rules is that the teacher needs to adapt what will be expected depending on the needs/strengths of his or her students.

Language Investigation #1 : Language in Groups

When I think about communities that I am member, I also must think of the people within in those communities. The first one that comes to mind for me is my close group of friends. I have 5 close male friends and we do almost everything together and hang out almost every weekend. The main part of our language that distinguishes us from others is simply that we have known each other for a long time and use certain words and "inside jokes" that separate us from others. If a new person joined our community and attempted to use lingo in our popular topics which include basketball, people we know, video games, and things that are fairly particular to our life. I think experience is the main part of our community and is the root and base of all of our language. The other community that I am part of is my work life. I work for BASE Camp at Kruse Elementary. This is an after school program where we have between 20-30 kids before and after school. I work with 2 others at this job and like my friends the basis of our community is experience. It is not like a random person can come up and talk about the funny thing our kindergartener did during snack. It just does not work that way. It is easy to relate to each other because we all put as much as we can and time into our jobs as possible and therefore we always have something to talk about. The language that we use is pretty exclusive because it is about things that we went through and went through together. This increases the strength of our relationships and creates a closer community. Overall, I found out that experience and the people that experience those same things with you are the basis for how you use language.

Memory Vignette

When I think about the things that have effects on our life, one of the first things that comes to mind is adolescence. As I have learned in my education courses, this time of a persons’ life can have a huge effect on their decision making and life choices for the rest of their life.
When I think about my own experience during this time, I realized that the thing that kept me grounded was having an idea to look to. Whether it was my career or just how I wanted to be happy in the future. A mentor whether it is a parent, teacher, coach or just a good friend is essential to a person success both academically and socially in these tough years. Being able to make mistakes and learn from them is the beauty of this time in a person’s life. It can go astray if a person does not have a good group of friends or an adult in their life to learn how to make the decisions possible.
In my role as a teacher, I hope to help students find these individuals or ideas in their own life and let them see how these values can help them no matter what they do when they are done with school. Students sometimes have the drive to do something but just don’t know the best way to do it and that’s where I come in. While at CSU I hope to acquire skills that will allow me to help my future students in the best way possible.