Wednesday, December 9, 2009
President Eyring
Our Hearts Knit as One
I also really enjoyed the part that talked about judgement. It reminded us not to judge to quickly. As teachers, we will be constiantly judging the situation of our students and the classroom. We need to look at the situations that arise with love, compasion, and justice. My favorite concept is that God loves us with justice and mercy. We also need to find that balance in us as we teach our students. If we live it, they will see that, and hopefully apply it to their lives.
kristy #13
Even though this is an educational setting where we cannot talk about the gospel which is the main source of people being knit together- I believe that there are basic principles of human truth that can be brought up and discusses and discovered in our classrooms- respect, love, tolerance, service, etc. As these important things are discovered, discussed and implemented into our classrooms the students will be knit together as one! And even though its not a gospel based situation a great blessing is we always have the Holy Ghost to guide us and help us to achieve this.
Spiritual Literacies
As far as teaching spiritual princples without over proselytizing, I think it's actually very possible to do. I first think that Heavenly Father's princples are eternal, therefore they are intended and designed for all of his children to access - not just His Saints. Therefore, with humble prayer asking for guidance in how to make spiritual principles more palletable for the nonmember, I'm confident He will answer. Also, when you think about it, the Gospel is really basic. (e.g. Love one another, strive to do your best, serve each other, develop talents and abilities). All these things can easily be taught in a classroom; there just might have to have slight semantic adjustments.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Krystle's 18th and final post
Briana's Response #16
Spiritual Unity
Spiritual Literacies-Elisabeh
Another topic theatre can teach is humility. This is an area we need to be careful with as teachers, because we do not want students feeling like they have nothing to offer or that they or their work is useless, because that is never true. But learning to listen to constructive criticism improves art and improves ability to function in a world that constantly has something to say about us and what we do. Teaching students how to make useful comments, making sure they see the good as well as what needs to be improved, and teaching struggles as opportunities to create great art can help students learn to listen to others, as well as see the value in what they do and in what others do.
Heather- "Hearts Knit as One"
Monday, December 7, 2009
Megan's Spiritual Literacies Response
Chelsea's Article Reading
Kristy#13
I liked the examples that were given of a few reasons that yes we all know theatre as an education art is important, yet it is still a good reminder. Some of the examples included: focusing on social benefits that are received by students as they participate in the theatre arts. Which also includes participating in cooperative group work, positive self-esteem, fluency in oral communication, and practice in use of imagination. Another important point included the fact that the theatre can serve as an outreach to the community. and I love how the article also states that theatre in an educational setting is a prosocial force that has the ability to reach young people in a way that traditional education cannot. This is so true and etereemly vital in these students lives because theatre really does reach students in new and different ways that their other classes cannot off to them. Which is why, as the article points out, we need to make sure that when budgets get cut, the theatre programs are not cut with it.
I though it was quite the proposal that was being made about the steps that need to be taken to change the way we talk about theatre education. to turn the focus for and about young people rather than adults. and creating narratives and places there they can find hope, discussions of meaningful differences (which is where last classes lecture comes in handy with the list of "hard topics" that will come up in our classes). I like that the author said our filter should be the lived experiences of our young people, and asking what can theatre help young people discover about their own lives. this is a question that I want to keep in mind as I continue to try to help the students, and also adults, parents, and administrators, but most importantly the students learn in a theatre educational setting.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Literacies-Elisabeth
Another way to combine these literacies is to create art specifically about themselves and their world. Understanding youth culture and mentality can allow a teacher to guide students, but still let them explore themselves.
Heather's Response-December 7th.
Krystle's 17th post
career.' But part of being an artist is the ability to look beyond the surface to analyze the work critically." I think that a key component to this is multiple literacies. It's teaching the students actively with written and non-written texts. A literacy that can benefit the students is putting them in charge of their learning and creation. This allows them to use their bodies to create and explore.
Briana's Response #15
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Student Influence
Megan's Critical Literacies
Friday, December 4, 2009
Cultural and Contextual Literacies
Cultural and Textual Literacies
The goal is to teach in a way that makes all of your students feel included and valued. Many of the activities that were suggested could do that, like creating a community and exploring different cultures and social issues present in the community. I am a great advocate of TIE, and having students explore issues in their lives and create art and motivate change through that exploration. One way to try to make sure that students of all ethnic and economic backgrounds feel represented is to allow them to come up with what they want to explore, instead of imposing an issue onto them. TIE calls upon life experiences and storytelling, and creates and community, all things that the article mentioned would be helpful to Hispanic students. But these practices would be useful to many other students as well. So instead of simply doing something in the classroom because it would work for a certain group of students, choose something becuase it would work for multiple groups.
This article mentioned that schools use the theatre canon, like Shakespeare, too much and that minority students don't connect with it. But the canon contains incredible theatre that, if taught correctly, can pull out themes and characters that can be connected with. So if you combine the canon with writings from other cultures as well as student created work, you can create a setting where students can connect with different cultures, with each other, as well as with the canon, which is still studied for a reason. You don't have to throw thousands of years of theatre out to teach minorities; that is almost racist to assume they can't connect or understand theatre that has been studied for generations. The issue is to find a balance, not swing from one extreme to the other. Don't cater to a group, find ways for everyone to connect.
Contextual/Cultural Literacies
I think the key to tolerance and open-mindedness is exposure so I would like to expose my students to an array of cultures, places, peoples, and backgrounds. I would also like to subtly implement through the entire class learning methods that minorities learn best with. If they are conditioned to learn that way, they would be more receptive to when I implement such methods. I would also like to teach them a respectful way of “questioning”. Because they would probably be exploring ideas, traditions, and values foreign to them, I would want their confusions, doubts, or worries to be addressed, but I want to make sure that they are always sensitive toward the culture being examined.
Contextual and Cultural Literacies
contextual/ cultural literacies
student centered learning
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Kristy #12
It reminds me of a teacher that I knew that taught for a number of years here in Utah and then moved out to Western New York. When it came down to it the biggest cultural difference was religion. And when other teachers even (not just students) found out that she was Mormon, there was a lot of tension and friction to have to deal with. W will probably all face this in some way or another- it may not be us but as the reading talks about, our students on the other side of the border, and we need to be able to understand that so we can support them and help them to succeed. The reading also focuses a lot on the education of Hispanic children, which I think is a prevalent topic, concerning the high amount of Hispanic students. I also liked the 5 key factors that are gone over in this paper about the educational practice of drama which will especially benefit Hispanic children. I also really like that the reading talked about Theatre as a Catalyst for Dialogue, I think that is so important and I believe that even further theatre as a catalyst for success. Because as this dialogue develops, and there are those personal interactions with students and relationships built creating a home within the program there will be more success within our students.
Kristy #11
Today we went back for one last class with the students at Springville High School. The students had their quiz today. HA! you learn something new everyday! To the question: "Name one of Becket's most famous plays" one student answered:Pirates of the Caribbean. Another student wrote down a scripture...they sure do make you laugh sometimes! I don't think that the students did very well on the quiz. Which makes me wonder if that is our fault as teachers. But then again at the same time we let them make up their own questions and give eachother the answers. I really want to help my students succeed, but I cant just hand them all good grades without them doing any work for it. So sometimes maybe it is a good thing for them to not do as well so they can see that they really DO have to do work and put some time and effort into it! and that this really IS a class!
After the quiz we gave the students some time to group up and get ready for their scenes. Today, as our final assessment, the students did their 1st previews of the scenes they have been working on. Most were not memorized like we told them they needed to be, so they lost those points. But most of the points came from them just doing it, and participating. We gave each group feedback on their scenes, writing down the feedback as they were performing, including good things and things to work on. Linze will take over from here with the rest of their performances and finish off the unit.
Cultural Settings
When going to teach at a school it's really important to learn about the society of the area and the community that lives there. By this I mean learning what social and ethnic groups are prevalent, because those are the types of kids that will be in your class. If the teacher doesn't know the students, doesn't know anything about who they are, what they go through, their history, then the students will shut off because they feel like you don't care about them. Why would they care about you and what you're teaching them? If you take the time to learn about their heritage and where they're coming from, you can reach them in deeper ways and make the learning process more important to them. They will learn more and they will enjoy the experience more. Specifically learning about the student's culture is extremely important. Not only will you have a better idea in how to approach them on the subject so they have something in common with it, but you can also know how to adjust the type of performances being done so it is more beneficial to the students participating and to the people of the community coming to watch. For example if you have students that are mostly Hispanic, and perhaps you know there is a gang problem, shows like West Side Story could be beneficial because they can find something in common with the characters. An inner city class might have trouble relating to a play about a country boy and vice verse. These things should still be explored so the student's horizons are being opened, but perhaps that is an action for the future after you've created a connection with the students and the community.