Reflection- Pytash

I have really enjoyed this class this past semester. After having Dr.Pytash's class in the Fall semester I was excited to see what the Spring semester would bring. I was really excited to learn more valuable skills for my future classroom, and was even more excited to be back in the school setting at Firestone High School.  It was really rewarding to see the progress that my student had been making, and I loved being able to help him even more.  We had not previously worked on his essay writing skills that in-depth, and I believe he really benefited from the even further one on one tutoring. 
I also really enjoyed our analysis of The Great Gatsby.  I had a lot of concerns when it came to creating lesson plans, and after this class I feel a little more comfortable with them.  Working with just one text helped me conceptualize the ideas and organization styles of writing lesson plans.  I also learned a lot more different reading strategies to implement into classrooms and found the wiki project to be very enlightening. I was amazed at how many different lesson plans were accessible online.
Finally, I really learned some valuable ideas from Carol Jago's Classics in the Classroom.  When I first began reading this book, I was not sure if I agreed with Jago's views on some points.  As the book progressed, I was able to understand Jago's perspectives in her standards for her students.  She wanted to challenge them, not to make them struggle, because she wanted them to relate and interpret the text to the best of their ability.

Ch. 7 Literature, Knowledge, and the High School Graduate Pytash

I have always had mixed feelings about standardized testing.  Students should be assessed on the education that they have attained, but standardized testing is not the best solution.  It is not fair for the students who have difficulty taking tests during time constraints, and sometimes students are just poor test takers because of the stress it exerts on them.  While the ability for the students to take the test are important negative factors, it is also important to recognize the effects it has on the curriculum.  Teachers are forced to prepare students for various tests, and this can take away from the core material that needs to be covered.  Units can be lost and students are deprived of these lessons just because of test preparation. 
Even though I do not agree with standardized testing, students should still be able to display good test taking skills.  They should know how to answer various questions to display the knowledge that they have gained from the teacher.  It is vital for students to know how to write a nicely structured essay and support their ideas with quotes from different texts.  What I really liked in this chapter was the way Jago applied the classics to students lives, to add relevance.  I also thought it was a good idea to give students options for the questions they answered on their tests.  By giving students options they are able to choose the question that they are able to answer and best, and this give students the perfect opportunity to show off their writing abilities.  When students feel like they are able to answer a question completely and fully, the more confident they are in writing their response, and the better it becomes.

Graphic Novels Kist

Text and Dialogue
Both graphic novels had narration, captions, and balloons.  The majority of the narration was within rectangular boxes in the top of the panel.  The writing was both relatively small and in all capital letters.  There were different signs in each novel.  In Pinocchio Vampire Slayer most labeling was on different business signs.  Naruto used various Japanese symbols, enhancing the cultural tones of the novel.  Both novels used a lot of different sound effects.  These words were often larger and bold. 
Visual Features
Pinocchio Vampire Slayer was an interesting adaption of the original novel.  Pinocchio has a nose that grows when he lies, and he is faced with having to defeat Gepetto, his creator.  Pinocchio's nose also makes for a deathly weapon.  There is an interesting threat of vampires and wolves that Pinocchio has to face.  The characters have plain white eyes and the "bad guys" are often portrayed in cloaks.  The novel takes place in an older town, and it almost has a Western feel with the cobblestone town center.  Naruto is quite different when comparing the visual features.  Naruto's characters are Japanese ninjas and fight using magical forces and different weapons.  Naruto is also commonly associated with the head piece that the warriors wear.  There are a lot of scenes that incorporate forests and nature, but it primarily takes place in a Samurai village.
General Layout and Design
Pinocchio reads like a typical book from left to right, while Naruto reads right to left.  In Pinocchio there are clear borders in the beginning to give the reader some background knowledge, but as the story progresses the borders become less structured.  Sometimes the images are an entire page, and there are also many open panels.  The different ideas are expressed within other images, but it is still easy to understand.  It was really hard for me to read Naruto because I was not used to the style it was written in.  I would become confused with the plot, and read the ideas out of order.  I think it was my inexperience that was the problem, but I cannot say this for sure.  Naruto has some borders that are not defined but for the most part it is very structured.  Images do not go into others.  They are all separate panels, and the gutters are small.
Angles and Frames
Pinocchio and Naruto both have a wide variety of shots.  The novels incorporate all of the different shots, allowing the reader to see all different angles and perspectives.  The majority of the close-up shots are used to express facial features, either in defeat or jubilation.  The longer shots were used to depict the action scenes. 
Rhetorical techniques
There are a lot of different emotions involved in Pinocchio Vampire Slayer.  The reader sympathizes with Pinocchio because of his family and social struggles.  The tone is anxious and suspenseful, with the reader curious as to what will happen to Pinocchio.  There is also a lot of exaggeration within the plot.  Vampires are make believe creatures and it is not possible for a nose to grow when lying.  It is also not possible for that nose to slay these vampires.  There is no sense of realism in this story at all.  Naruto also has a similar tone.  The reader empathizes with Naruto because of the way society treats him. I also did not like the breaks in the story.  The author added tidbits of information about the story throughout the novel, and it took away from the story.  It would have served a better purpose at the very beginning or end of the book. 

Reflection-Kist

This past semester has been filled with interesting experiences and some stressful schoolwork.  One of my favorite parts of this past semester was going to Firestone High School.  Any time that I get to be involved in the school setting I become very excited.  I really enjoyed working with my student again and I believe the students really valued our time spent there, helping them with their OGT's.  I was able to see different methods of test preparation and I was able to attain more hours of individual tutoring.
I also really liked our Multi genre Autobiography project.  One of my favorite class days was when everyone presented their projects to the class.  It was interesting to see what books, movies, television shows, etc. we had in common.  It was also really interesting to see what modalities I had forgot about to put into my own power point.  I have always recognized and respected the impact that several books and music have had on my life, but I never really thought about the impact that they ALL have.  I really wish that I would have started this project earlier, so I could have a record of everything that I have read, watched, listened to throughout my life.  I would definitely implement this project into my class in the future. 
One of my favorite sections that we covered was the film unit.  It was a very cultural experience to go to the Cleveland Film Festival, and I wish that I would have been able to see more films there.  It was humbling to  hear what the people had to say about the various films, and it really set the tone for the audience before viewing each particular movie.  What I did not like about this unit was the shot-by-shot analysis.  I understand that directors, editors, and so forth devote a lot of time to shooting and editing movies, but analyzing each shot became very redundant for me.  I respected the scene just as much as I did before I completed this assignment. 
The project that I will probably most benefit from is the canonical wiki project.  It was time consuming to put together, but I really believe that we all use this site one day to help in our future classrooms.  There were a lot of really creative and fun ideas that I had never even thought about.  The wiki is so easily accessible it would be a waste not to use.

Movie-Book Kist

Some of my favorite movies are movies that have been based off of books.  The first time I saw "A Walk to Remember" I fell completely in love.  I watched it four times in a matter of two days, and then I instantly went out and bought the book.  I started to notice a pattern when I started seeing movies such as "Twilight", "The Notebook", "Requiem for a Dream", and "Lovely Bones".  They were all exceptional movies and when I read the books they were just as good.  Then movies started coming out for books that I have already read and I was very eager to watch them.  They were all really good but I noticed that I typically liked the book more than I liked the movie.  I pictured certain characters and settings in very specific ways, and when they did not look how I envisioned them it was a little bit upsetting.  My entire vision was altered and some aspects of the movie were not as enthralling as I expected them to be. 
This made me start thinking that it would be interesting to possibly take films and then turn them into books.  I do not know if it has ever been done before but I believe it could work.  There could be books that depicted the same movie with more details, or there could be a book that discussed what happened before or after the movie's plot.  I think it would be an interesting project for students to complete and it would really exercise their creative writing skills.  This would also incorporate different multi-modalities.  They would have to view different films and analyze what messages the directors were trying to convey.  One film that I think would be very interesting to see transferred from film to literature is "Sucker Punch".  There were a lot of different graphics that were very appealing, and the plot was thick with multiple plots going on at one time.  It would be great for a graphic novel, and it could be a fun project for the class to work on as a whole.

Choice Blog-Kist

I work at Venture Data and every time I work I bring a book with me.  It keeps me entertained and helps my shift go by faster.  My best friend suggested I read Madness, the memoir of Marya Hornbacher, and I took her up on her offer.  After I read the first paragraph of the prologue I was hooked.  Her descriptions of her life and her surroundings are so vivid and clear, the reader feels like they are in the room with her.  She opens up stating, "I am numb.  I am in the bathroom of my apartment in Minneapolis, twenty years old, drunk, and out of my mind.  I am cutting patterns in my arm, a leaf and a snake." 
Marya is a bi-polar woman who suffers from extreme extreme manic-depression.  She lives in a whirlwind of a life and has experienced more in her lifetime than most people can even imagine.  She suffers from alcoholism, eating disorders, manic shopping sprees, unhealthy sexual relationships, and so much more. 
She has her highs and her lows, and she immediately reminded me of Ben's mother from Deadline.  I chose to read this book for the literature circles, and I believe having read Madness previously helped me relate to Ben.  Ben only describes his mother in two ways.  She is either hysterical and all over the place, or completely depressed and isolated in her room.  On one occasion he says, "Mom would wear out and I'd go to my room, believing I had saved her.  Within days the bedroom door would close and Cody and Doc Wagner would come over and get Mom on meds and she'd start to float back up."  This instantly reminded me of Marya's experiences and struggles with her depression.  When she introduces her years of hospitalization she states, "Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain...traveling from my bed at home to a bed on a locked ward, the weird world of the ward becoming more familiar to me than the one outside."  Both of these women are strong women, but their disease eats away at them, and secludes them into their own world.  It is quite sad to read about, and it really broke my heart thinking about the effect Ben's decision would have on his mom. 
I always knew that depression was a horrible disease, but I never knew how severe it was.  Some people jump to the conclusion of all mentally ill people being crazy, and that is not the case.  I believe that this is a subject matter that could be very relevant in classroom's today, and people should be more educated about it.   Treatment Advocacy Center is a group dedicated in the correct treatment for those with mental illnesses.  This site has some great facts, and really encourages people to expand their state of mind, when thinking about those with different mental illnesses.

Ch. 6 Lesson Design for Classical Literature

I firmly believe that you can learn anything from anyone.  Just because one is a teacher in a concentrated subject, it does not mean that he/she knows everything about that particular subject.    Many times, when I think about my future classroom, I think about my senior English class with Mr. Geschke and how knowledgeable he was.  I think about how I could possibly one day teach like him and effect my students the way he effected me.  This goes back to Jago's theory that, "the truth is that most of what new teachers know about teaching has come from their own experience of schooling"(96).  This then brings up the question; How can one improve classrooms if they are teaching in a style that was implemented years ago?  I think this can be solved by compiling all of the other teachers knowledge into one style that can be used effectively and creatively; it can be adapted to each individuals style. Lessons must appeal to the teachers style and the students needs. 
I also really like the idea of Lesson Study.  I think it could be really beneficial to future lessons that could be taught.  The only thing that can come from lesson study is improvement.  In some ways this concept reminded me of the wikis that we have to create for the canonical literature.  The wikis provide us with a space to share lesson plans and a space to comment on each others posts.  This gets teachers to collaboratively work together, which is very helpful to each other. 
One of the lessons shared was the use of character webs.  I definitely think that I would use this activity in my classroom.  When stories have numerous characters or characters with complex names, the story can become very confusing.  I really like that the students have an easily accessible list of characters right in the book.  This provides great organization.

Ch. 4 How Stories Work Pytash

Jago brought up a lot of good points about teaching literature in the classroom.  I completely agree with her idea that assumes when students say that they hate a book, it really means that they did not understand it.  When students struggle with different texts it is not uncommon for them to just give up reading and just look up what it means on SparkNotes.  As teachers we need to guide them through the novels so they can understand the meaning of the text with our help.  Gradually, as students read more and begin to understand how the author uses literary devices, the less guidance they will need.  One thing she stated that really resonated with me was, "As a teacher I try to dispel all illusion of magic and make my own process of thinking about a story transparent"(61).  Students should not be guessing at what they are expected to know and what thought process they could possibly be using to make the story more clear.  Students should know how language works and a teachers job is to do exactly that.  We are supposed to show our students how an authors words can convey numerous themes and messages. 
I also agree with her point that the more often you use a word the more recognizable it becomes.  If you teach literature using proper literary terminology students will see this language as natural and not something foreign. This would also mean that because this language is used regularly there is no  need for vocabulary tests, which often don't benefit students anyways.  By knowing literary devices and how they are used you can read a text much more efficiently and deeply.  In Jago's words, "Knowing these terms makes students more articulate"(68).

Ch. 2 All About Words- Pytash

I really liked Jago's chapter about vocabulary.  I found that she had a lot of useful insights on how to teach vocabulary effectively to students.  What I liked best about this chapter was her idea that, "The key learning that I try to achieve is that learning new words is a natural act"(27).  One of the biggest ways for students to learn new words is through reading new and various texts, and that is what they should be doing in and out of the English classroom.  So many people choose not to read and they are only hurting themselves.  If students knew all of the benefits from reading I believe students would read more, and therefore, increase their vocabulary.  It was stated in the text, "Children making good progress as readers add 3,000 to 5,000 new words to their vocabulary"(22), this is quite a staggering difference compared to the lesser 300-400 words that can be taught in a year.  I really want to encourage the students in my class to reading different texts whether they be novels, magazines, comics, etc.
When I did my tutoring at Firestone I found that one of my students biggest struggles was vocabulary.  He constantly was fumbling on words that I thought were simple for some at the sophomore level.  I first wanted to make flashcards off of the vocab list that his teacher supplied him with but then I decided that further action needed to be taken.  I started having him make a list of words that he didn't know from the chapter he read each night for homework.  Then together we would use context clues to create our own definitions for each word.  I believe that this benefitted him much more because these were the words that he needed to be focusing on.  They weren't just meaninglessly assigned by the teacher for him to memorize. 
Also, I really liked how she had lists of vocabulary displayed throughout her classroom.  I believe the more you see a word and its definition, the more likely you will be able to remember what it means and how to use it properly.  I could definitely see me using this strategy in my future classroom.  I think the class would benefit a lot from coming up with our own lists of unknown words and then defining them together.  The easier a definition is to understand, the more likely you will use it correctly, and by creating your own definition it makes it that much easier. 

Contemporary Film Review-Kist

The film that I chose to go see at the Cleveland International Film Festival was "If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle".  I was really excited about going to the film festival because I had never been to one before.  I was kind of surprised that it was in the Tower City Cinema.  When I first arrived I didn't really know where to go, I was just wandering around the building hoping to find some signs.  Eventually I found some volunteers who were also just walking around and followed them to where I needed to be going.  The people were extremely nice and once I was in the cinema section of Tower City it was a lot easier to know where I needed to be going.  Before the film began the son of the former Romanian Counsel spoke on his deceased father's behalf.  It was very emotional and helped set the tone for the film that was about to be viewed. 
A.  Personal Issues
I wish that the audience was given more background information on Silviu.  There was no specific reason  addressed as to why he was in prison, and I believe that this is important information.  There are countless reasons as to why someone could be sentenced to serve time in jail, and the crime committed can really reflect one's character.  Someone would view someone who robbed a bank a lot differently than they would person who murdered a person.  This also could explain why he reacts the way he does in the last few scenes of the film.  The audience watches Silvui struggle with making the right decisions the entire movie but for the most part he does not stray too far from the right path; so why does he choose to do so at such a crucial time?    
B. Technique
One element of the movie that I found startling impacting was the use of no background music.  The only time that music was played during the film was when it was physically being played out of a stereo shown in the film.  It added a very lonely and depressing tone.  It really benefited the film by showing how alone these men were in these prisons.  The dialogue was also very simple for the most part, but the simple language was able to convey a lot. It was direct and to the point.  There wasn't much guessing of what was going on in the film.  It was presented right in front of you.  Some of the editing was a little choppy, but what goes smoothly when in jail? I do not know if this was done on purpose, but from the little knowledge I have on movies I believe that was.  The whole movie tried to represent the uncertainties of the lives of men in jail.  Also, I do not know this for sure but there was a shakiness to the picture that reminded me of it being shot with a camcorder or hand held video recorder.  It really added to the tone of it being almost a home movie.  It added a really intimate feeling to the story being told. 
C. Acting
The main roles consisted of Silvui, a boy serving time in prison after his mother abandoned him, the warden who is in charge of the penitentiary, and Ana, an intern who is helping tutoring the inmates.  When I was researching the film after I watched it, I was shocked to discover that the inmates who were cast were actual, real-life convicts.  They did a sensational job of portraying their role in the film.  It was very convincing and I would have never guessed that they were not trained actors. 
D. Plot
The film takes place in a Romanian jail in which young male adults are serving time for their crimes.  Silvui, the main character, has fifteen days left of his sentence when his brother comes to visit him with some upsetting news.  Their mother has come back, from wherever she has been, and wants to take his younger brother away from him.  She plans on taking his younger brother to Italy with her, and this causes for Silvui to fall into a downward spiral.  Silvui's mother has been quick and notorious for abandoning her sons and has relied on Silvui to raise his younger brother for eight long years.  He is infuriated by this proposition and quickly begins making foolish mistakes.  In a last attempt to stop his mother from taking away his brother he assaults an officer and holds his woman of interest hostage.  While watching the movie I could not relate it to any other film that I had previously seen.  I really enjoyed its originality of trying to incorporate the struggles of trying to deal with outside world from behind bars. 
E. Themes
I would have to say that the theme of this film is best described as a complex theme.  The theme actually reminded me a lot of the themes that were found in my film study guide for "The Matrix".  It is based on the issues of perceptions and having everything not be as it seems.  Silvui is a boy who appears to be defying the legal systems but really he is only trying to help provide and protect for him and his brother.  The question then is, at what cost and extremes should we go to to fight for what we believe in?  The message is completely integrated into the whole film from beginning to end.  It reflects why he is in jail in the first place.  It reflects why he is picked on, and why he picks on others.  It reflects why he chooses to stand by the fence to see who dropped off his brother.  It reflects why he holds Ana hostage and why he wants to take her to coffee. 
F.  It is really hard for me to pinpoint a genre for this film to be placed in.  I went over several different genres in my head and none of them really did this movie justice.  I saw the film with both of my parents and brother so I presented the question to them too.  After talking about the film amongst ourselves, I asked them if they could place the film into one specific genre and they all looked at me like I was nuts.  We tried breaking it down and the best description we could pick for it is a fictional documentary.  It was not a true story but that does not mean that these stories could not have happened at some point in the past, or even future.  It goes through all of the notions that one would go through in a typical day in jail and there is an undertone of realness that is undeniable.  It is completely unique and I'm really happy that out of all the films at the festival I chose to see this one.
G. Representation
This film represents the men and women of Romania and the struggles that they must overcome in their lives.  We do not know much about their social status, level of education, religious beliefs, and so forth, but we do know that they have questionable character and that some of them are trying to better themselves.  I believe they are represented this way to convey to the audience that it doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, good or evil, it just matters that you use your resources to the best of your abilities to overcome your weaknesses.
H.Ideology
One major ideology that I noticed in this film was the desire for love.  This was mentioned several times amongst the inmates.  The scenes with dialogue were all very purposeful and intentive and the talk of girls is no exception.  Silvui's desire to take a girl out for a cup of coffee is very prominent.  I think this is so important to him because of the lack of love he got from his mother.  No matter what part of the world one is in, it is still important to feel loved and wanted.