Final Blog Reflection

This semester has been quite an interesting experience; apart from my student teaching, which solidified my desire to become a high school English teacher, this course has signified the importance of including varying modalities in the teaching process. I enjoyed diving into the five projects that we did, including the two essays, the two presentations, and the poetry writing assignment. In the beginning of the semester, when I first looked at the syllabus, the creative writing project scared me the most; it was not a task I was looking forward to, but in retrospect, the two poetry pieces and the poetry analysis paper were the two projects that I appreciated the most. The creative writing component allowed me to break out of my comfort zone and create two poetry pieces of differing styles; I prefer literary analysis to the creative process, but reversing my usual writing task was refreshing, and a definite learning experience.

The collaborative group presentations, both the mythology and the media literacy, were fun, interactive projects with the extra twist of actually having to turn it into a lesson plan for students. I think the teaching aspect was probably the most challenging component of the presentations, for understanding and mastering content is only the beginning stage of being a successful teacher. I think we constantly blur the lines of being a good educator, with being an expert in our field; however, this is not the case-especially in secondary education where the content has to be made accessible to students of varying capabilities, prior knowledge, and learning styles. I enjoyed the mythology presentation a bit more than the media literacy project, purely because of the content, but it could have something to do with slightly misunderstanding the expectations of the project; I thought we had to create a lesson plan which included varying media literacies within and present it in that format, whereas we actually had to show students how to use a form of media communication. I’m glad that Dr. Wexler didn’t hold this against us J

I found the world text analysis paper to be the most challenging assignment of this semester; connecting the film Slumdog Millionaire to the provided sources was not a simple task, but one which required some serious analysis and critical applications. Correlating the larger dialogue of capitalism, utopia, globalization, and the American Dream with the social and monetary struggles of the young characters from the film was quite intriguing. I have watched the film several times before, and find it interesting that American/English directors always choose to portray the poverty and slums of India, which serves as a drastic contrast to the positive, vibrant, and didactic approach of Bollywood. As an avid viewer of Indian cinema, I can understand why young Jamal took the drastic action to get Amitabh Bachchan’s autograph, which escalates Salim’s cruelty in selling it off. Crafting a thesis statement for this essay took several hours of quality time with the texts and the film, but it was a process that allowed me to view and understand the film from several perspectives.

Apart from the student-centered class discussions, and creative projects, I found the blog component of this course a pleasantly original element, and one that contributed to the interactive/collaborative model of this class. It was great to have all our assignments in one place; the blog chronicled our work for the entire semester, but also created a collaborative unit among our class-members. It was fascinating to see the different approaches that everyone took with the same projects and topics. I would love to use this model in my future class, and understand why our Freshmen Composition professors choose to incorporate blogs in Project Web; it may seem irrelevant or untraditional at first, but it definitely broadens the outlook on composing and sharing work.

English 495 ESM was a fun and interactive course; I found Dr. Wexler’s chosen texts and projects relevant to us as students and future educators. I genuinely see myself utilizing the resources gained during this course in my upcoming semesters.

Happy Graduation to those of you who are graduating, and a very Happy Summer Break to everyone!

 -Arpine J