ENGL 493 was, by far, one of the most helpful classes I have taken here at Eastern. The majority of classes taken by my peers and myself are either English or Education, with very little crossover. This course was specifically designed to target those of us planning to teach secondary English Language Arts. We were required to read an article or book for every class and reflect on our relationship with it as future teachers. In all honesty, there came a point where the blog posts felt tedious. For one blog, I did the reading, but failed to complete a post for class. There were times when this felt like just another thing added into my busy schedule. Ultimately, however, doing these blog posts forced me to read material that again focused on English Education and helped me bring so much more into the classroom. Having the blog posts be posted as blogs rather than Canvas discussions was an interesting concept as well. This was slightly inconvenient in that I was unable to do any work when at my placement (such as when the kids were map testing and I had spare time) . At the same time, I will be able to refer back to this blog and with its many references to current education research, that will be abundantly helpful.
These articles and books we read were also so helpful with my unit plan. I used the “Discussion as a Way of Teaching” for several of my lesson plans. I did have to go out and do research on specifically teaching The Handmaid’s Tale, but having those methods which backed up ways I already want to teach was beyond helpful. The unit plan was the biggest assignment I have ever done and likely will be until I come to my edTPA. I had never constructed an entire unit from scratch. Initially, I was going to create a unit around whatever book my honors juniors chose to do as seniors in the fall and already have that completed. Ultimately, they chose a book I was unfamiliar with and which my mentor had just created a unit for. After discussing with my mentor, I went with a book that I love and really do view as being important. There were times where this project made me want to pull out my hair, but those moments came far less frequently than I anticipated. The first section, my calendar, was probably the most stressful because I was starting with nothing. After that, things came naturally. If I were to do this again, I would work more often and have less to do at the end, but even the I did everything, I never felt all that stressed. I know this unit is far from perfect and there are many things I will fix and add when I do teach this book. When it was all said and done, I created a large product which I was proud of. Building this unit, above all else, boosted my confidence as a future educator. This assignment reiterated to me that I am in the field I need to be in.
Lastly, I appreciated the way this class was structured. Each day, my peers and I came into the classroom with new knowledge and were able to work together to develop our ideas. We discussed research and brought in personal experiences from our time as students or as current practicum students. Classes operated around small and whole class discussions. This set of was in line with how I want to format my own classroom. I know that with secondary students I will need to incorporate more activities, but discussion based classes are really what I view as being the most beneficial for ELA. Over all, this entire course was helpful. I was glad each day to come in and be surrounded by people who have this passion for literature and love of children, it was all inspiring.
