Another Little Tidbit: Inclusion Strategy

I received this in my mailbox earlier today.  It was sent to the 2005-2006 Teacher Candidate listserv by one of last year’s cohort members and was forwarded to this year’s cohort by our wonderful program supervisor/goddess. 

The note reads:

“Hey guys,

I went to a conference last week on strategies for teaching an inclusion class.  One of the ideas presented was on how to present printed information to students.  According to the presenter, you shouldn’t use a font with serifs because for struggling readers it clutters the visual field.  While any font without serifs is ideal, for students learning to read English comic sans is best because the “a” actually looks the way we write it.  The presenter also said that you shouldn’t use anything smaller than a 14pt font.

I went back to school and tried this out.  When I gave my students the first worksheet typed in 14pt comic sans, one of them said ‘I like these words. You should always use them.  They are easier to read’”

Hmm… maybe something to take into account?

Planning the Media Literacy Unit

After a week of wasting away my time on MySpace and watching worthless television, I’m becoming more optimistic about student teaching and how much of the time I would be spending doing absolutely nothing better will at least be spent trying to become the best teacher that I can be for my now and future students.

I’m in the process of planning the 9th grade personal narrative unit and, today, I started planning the 10th grade media literacy unit.  I’ve found a wealth of materials online and am now coming face to face with the problem of narrowing down the resources that I will be able to use for a mere three week unit.  I could teach a class on this subject.  Perhaps, someday?

One of the best resources that I’ve found, oddly enough, has been a blog published by a magazine called Stay Free!.  They describe themselves as “a Brooklyn-based magazine that explores the politics and perversions of mass media and American culture.”  The media literacy program that they provide for high school and college teachers is amazing. 

From their blog I found out about Merchants of Cool, a PBS documentary detailing how corporations try to market their products to teenagers.  I am considering showing this toward the beginning of the unit.  Another introductory activity I picked up was a Powerpoint “Alphabet” excercise found in the curriculum’s course introduction.  From this slideshow students are tested on how well they know the environment surrounding them compared to letters that they see on commercial products all the time.

On a slightly off-topic, but still related, note, I also found on their site an intriguing article by Edward Jay Epstein entitled “The Marketing of Diamonds: How a successful cartel turned a worthless rock into a priceless gem.”  Between this, the constant references to “blood diamonds” in rap songs and the new movie Blood Diamond, I am beginning to feel unforgivably and irreversably conditioned, myself.  Perhaps I can tie my impending marriage and my conflicted desires and beliefs into the unit?  Ha!

But, I am having fun designing this unit.  Just have to get back to basics.  Logic. Rhetoric. Persuasion.  Logic. Rhetoric. Persuasion.

Student Teacher Turned Stripper?

So, Monday was my last day at my placement school for the fall semester.  My MT’s fourth block class, the little angels (ha! no, I’m kidding, they are very sweet), took it upon themselves to throw me a mini-party.  There were cookies and lollipops and a big jug of some orange liquid.  There were also many cards and a little yellow smiley face bag with a little plastic snow globe inside.

It was my last day of class and I had a really difficult time convincing myself that it was worth the effort to try to get them to do work that they obviously didn’t want to do.  So, when the mini-party commenced I was grateful that my duties as teacher were finally over.  The kids gave me their cards and the yellow bag, and then one student came up and gave me a dollar. 

What do you think I did?  I took the dollar.  And when some student made some comment about how I wasn’t a stripper, the student who had given me the dollar proceeded to try to give me ANOTHER dollar.  I just waved him off.  But, I didn’t give him his first dollar back.  Why did I take his first dollar, anyway?  What was I thinking?  Just one more piece of evidence to show that in situations involving students, sometimes I FREEZE.  How embarassing….