Final Synthesis Blog

                From the first day of class when we were presented different text samples, and display our understanding of those texts, to group presentations, many readings, and many assignments that all guided us to our goal as non-ELA content area teachers: Integrated Literacy. We found from day one that if we do not have past knowledge on our topic, that it is even hard for us to understand what we are reading. As college students, I would believe that we are all at least above average readers yet still have trouble. That’s why one of the things as future teachers that we need to be prepared for is a prior knowledge base for our students. Especially as my main content area is social studies, I will need to step back on a unit, and have these conversation with myself, “ What knowledge that I have, makes this an easier topic to understand.” Then I add that in. I have learned from this class the importance of communicating to my students and polling them on what they know and don’t know. Then, from our think aloud assignments, also the in-class tasks we had with reading strategies, I realized that I did those things without knowing I did. I also realized how important it is to have those strategies and to teach those strategies so that they can do well in my classes. This class has been a guide to what I already wished to do, being the best teacher for my students.

                Another thing this class has showed us, through our readings from our textbook and discussion in class, is the use of a textbook. From the point in time I decided to be a teacher, I knew that I would not use the textbook often, and this class showed me that we do not have to. I recalled from my time in high school and middle school, where a few teachers would just pull it straight from the textbook with no other pulled text. It made learning boring and almost agonizing. We have learned that textbooks should never be used in that way. Through our readings that confirmed that, and our discussions where we unanimously agreed that the textbook should be used as a supplemental reading, along with other readings pulled by the teacher. That’s more work, perhaps why some teachers sadly just use the textbook, but far more rewarding for your students and you as a teacher. It has been made easier for us thought through this course as we all had to find at least five resources that would help us supplement our classrooms in some way. If we do not use the ones we selected for our posts, we at least have had some practice in finding those resources, which I find more valuable. It is the difference in giving a person food or teaching the person how to grow it.

                The few of us who did journal clubs did the same thing. The journals however were not for supplementing the classroom but supplementing our own knowledge as teachers. I found that reading and finding a journal was an eye-opening task. I never realized until now the vastness there is on the library that is the internet, available to us as teachers. That vastness including research studies on different styles of education, like a study my group found on the use of journal clubs in a classroom, to other educators analyzing other educators, to even reviews of resources that would improve one’s classroom. This task and the one we did in class were extremely helpful. It showed the importance of them. As we read through many of them and it came to critique them, also reading some in other classes I had this semester, I recognized that we do not have to agree with them.  Even some of the research, where the authors present it as facts, you showed us how to analyze where there can be fault in their research. How small their sample groups were, how specific it was, for example one of the research we investigated was based on one single classroom, where the results of the research could be the opposite for another classroom. When it comes down to it, you showed us that this journals are again, merely a supplemental resource for us as teachers, a resource that we can pick apart and decide for ourselves what is useful for us as growing and always developing teachers.

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