Response to Aaron and Ramina's student information handouts

I wanted to use the blog this week to respond to Aaron and Ramina's student questionnaires that they emailed to everyone, and which they had students at their field work schools complete. In addition to these being great resources for our ED 330/432 lesson plans and planning commentaries, I think they would also prove to be key in using schema when trying to build bridges between students and content.  Beach, Thein, and Webb, frequently stress the importance of teachers getting to know their students' backgrounds, cultures, interests, and concerns as much as possible, then choosing contents and planning units that are relative and meaningful to their situations. I will probably do the same for my students at Washington, and would definitely plan on this as a first week activity for my own classroom. Having these to refer back to throughout the year would be instrumental in making important personal and academic connections for students.

Having teachers make connections between their work and my own personal interests has always been very impacting for me. One such instance happened in Professor Whalen's American Lit. class two years ago, when we were reading Benito Cereno by Herman Melville. There is a part in the story in which a slave named Babo jumps from one ship to another to try and kill Captain Cereno, who he has been holding hostage. Captain Delano, who comes across Cereno's ship, anchors and comes aboard to assist the Captain on his journey but does not realize that he is actually being held captive until Babo actually tries to stab him. Melville indicates what the situation truly is throughout the story, while Babo is actually pretending to be Cereno's slave while keeping a close eye on him. Professor Whalen pointed out that Delano's obliviousness to what was really happening until he saw Babo trying to stab Cereno was like the part in Die Hard where Bruce Willis has to drop a corpse onto the police officer's car to let him know there were terrorists in the building. I really appreciated this connection because it showed a willingness from the teacher to relate the content to something familiar, and it gave me a new perspective on and better understanding of the text. I think it behooves us as teachers to remember connections that teachers have made to our own interests, and use these as examples for the positive impacts that relating the material to our students, however possible, may have.