Tuesday, January 24, 2012

To Graduate, Or Not To Graduate...

One day I will graduate...one day. When I graduate I will finally be able to do what I've wanted to do since I was a little girl. For most of my life I have wanted to be a teacher. I feel scared for those that don't know what they want to do. When a class roll is passed around for attendance I always scan the major section and shudder in fear for any "open major" people. My only decision of what to do for my life was picking what I wanted to teach. Math? Ha! Not a chance in this world or any other world. Science? Can I pass Chemistry? Nada. Music? 7 years of piano lessons and I can play exactly one song. History? Utah History is required for the major at BYU--never mind. By default and love I will teach English...one day.

Because I will one day be teaching Shakespeare, I want to steer my paper in that direction. My over-all question for my paper is "How is Shakespeare taught in schools?" I'm sure this will change over the next week, but for now I jumped off that question. I sent out 6 emails and a tweet to current English teachers asking 5 questions about their experiences teaching Shakespeare. I have had 3 teachers reply so far to my emails, and my tweeter has returned some great results.

I started following Web English Teacher. She really is great. She has led me to several website on teaching Shakespeare that I love. I can't wait to see what else I can learn from her.
A couple of the sites she has lead me to so far:

Cliff Notes Films: A great and creative way to get a quick overview of the plays. This site is really worth looking into.
Henry V Teaching Plan: Web English Teacher's personal and well done lesson plan.
Digital Classrooms: An interesting article on modern teaching techniques and equipment. Did you know there is a whole day devoted to digital teaching? It's in 7 days!

I've got some great feedback so far from several different geographical areas, grades and if my token male teacher replies hopefully some gender differences as well!

3 comments:

Mallory Paige said...

Thanks so much for linking everything and for posting your results about twitter...it always seems to intimidate me so its good to know that medium is working for you. I think it's great that your thinking is always so centered on teaching.

Alicia Tovar said...

So I found a high school teacher from Florida who tweets and I automatically thought about you and your project. Might be an interesting source to look into... http://twitter.com/#!/LifeLineForever

Just a thought :)

Carlie said...

Alica, that is great! I started following this teacher, so I'll be sure to post if I use her as a resource. Thanks for the tip!