Portfolio+Will+Jenkins

 I entered this class excited to do some reading. I was and still am an avid reader (though I’ve found my reading time a little limited by this semester’s activities), and I saw this class as a potential highlight of my (second) college career. I assumed that it would be all about the reading, and I suppose in retrospect that I was about one-quarter correct. What I really learned in this class is that the reading is the foundation but it’s not the goal in and of i tself. What I really needed to focus on were those students that would one day be in my class. Would they have had enough of high-school literature by the time they got to me? Would they be excellent readers who just couldn’t find a way to get into //The Odyssey// or //To Kill a Mockingbird//? What is it that I can do to stand in that gap and make these students not only readers, but lifelong readers.  To tell the truth, it still overwhelms me. But I accept that I’m not the only one who feels that way. I understand that I’m not going to be the same teacher in my first year on the job as I will further down the line. Looking back at my career directing high school theatre, I can see that this is the case. Seeing where I began, I’m able to see that as I’ve kept learning more and more, not just in the realm of theatre, but also in English (adding a little literary theory here and there really excites the students!), history, etc. As a learner, I’ve come to the realization that we never learn enough, and we’re never the best at what we do, ever. We are adequate, and sometimes really good, but we can always improve. Coming into this class with one ideal of how teaching reading worked and leaving with a completely different one is one of those great moments where I can look back and see where I’ve come from.  Not only have I grown as a learner and potential teacher, but I’ve even grown as a reader. This is the one area I thought I had down pat. I could read, I could understand, I could even theorize a little. But I suppose I’ve never really concentrated on my own process of reading as I have in this course. Writing down things in my daybook and focusing on activities that made me really get inside of how I thought about literature (such as the “ME” portfolio) really opened me up to understanding that if I, as a 34 year old still don’t completely understand my own thought processes, how much harder is it for a high schooler to do the same? To be completely honest, I’ve never been one of those to highlight in books, or really write things down, but I realize that in order to really process those things that I find important, I need to do a better job of this sort of thing.  Because of this class, I think I’m also at a place where I can have a good understanding where student readers are coming from. While in my high school days, I found it particularly easy to just plod through any reading, I actually did have some troubles muscling through a couple of the books in this class (//Enrique// and //The Good Earth//). It wasn’t because I didn’t like them, it just seemed that they would hold my attention for awhile, and then would get “boring” for a chapter. I’ve never had as much trouble finishing books for a class as I have those, but despite it all, classroom activities or discussions were so great for helping me to not only see that overall these were excellent books, but to see that I need to remember these troubles in order to have empathy for my students, and to recall the ways in which my teacher and my class helped to renew my vigor for that particular literature.  One of the great things that I picked up from this course is to really begin to absorb myself into books that my future class will like. I had sort of strayed away from the teen lit, being all old and mature, but the B project really lit a fire under me to read much more. I had more fun reading the teen novels for my B project such as //13 Reasons Why// and //Before I Die// than I had in quite awhile. To be quite honest, I have a LOAD of books on my to read list before I get my own classroom. I’d like to be able to read everything I plan to shelve on my own classroom library, so that way I can have a good idea of that perfect fit of kid and book (something I can’t wait to do, thanks to Dr. Shea really talking the awesomeness of that moment up in class). Of course I’d be unwise not to mention that those graphic novels I’ve been reading all my life (mostly secretly at home) are literature too! While I’ve been reading them for so long that it really took me awhile to really parse the info on gutters and panels that I’ve really just taken as shorthand for soooo many years, I’m so glad to really have a kind of grounding in how to use these books. Graphic novels have always had a place on my home bookshelf, and they’ll be on my classroom one as well. Of course I have to remember that not all the kids will be into them as much as I am…  So I’m now armed with a rapidly filling bag of tricks, and I know now that my focus always has to be on the students, and not so much on the subject. To be sure, this is just the beginning of a really long road. I’m sure that it’s not going to be easy, and I’m going to become overwhelmed, but with luck and a look into my notes, my daybook and the daybooks to come, I’ll be ready to at least find the answers to helping my students become lifelong readers, even if the answers aren’t right at my fingertips.
 * Reflective Essay **

**Artifacts **
ARTIFACT 1 - The "ME" Portfolio This project really was what started me down the road of really thinking about how I read. Something that for me had been just second nature and not prone to any real in-depth discovery, I found that the different sections of the ME portfolio really helped me to focus in on why I do what I do when I read, and what I changes I might want to make going forward. ARTIFACT 2 - The DaybookLooking back through my Daybook, I'm really surprised to see how many of the quickwrites and other in-class activities really helped me to explore my own thoughts a little further. I'm am admittedly NOT a very introspective person. I like to engage with others and see how they tick, but as far as giving my own self a look, I've been a little shy of that. I think some of these quickwrites have really given me pause to take stock of not only how I process what I read but how I relate those readings to my own life, something that is inherently important when teaching literature to high schoolers who only want to know what any given piece of text has to do with them. If I can't answer the question for myself, I can't help them find the answers for themselves.

 ARTIFACT 3 - The B ProjectTo be quite honest, I would rather have been dead than to be caught reading a YA novel, particularly one that might carry with it the stigma of "girly" like Before I Die. For my B Project, I really wanted to open my horizons up, so I purposefully picked books that I otherwise would never have read for the most part. The best part of it was that I liked every book, and loved the ones tailored for Young Girls. Knowing that I have a bit of bias in my reading and that it was quite unfounded opened me up to sampling more books and really thinking about how they would serve the reading needs of students I'll have one day. ARTIFACT 4- The RPPThe RPP really helped to give me some perspective, and it also caused a bit of head scratching. While I had the opportunity to find a struggling reader, I wanted to see things from the point of view of an excellent reader who was only moderately disengaged from his classroom readings. Working with my reading partner, I saw that we as teachers not only have to find ways to engage the students who struggle or don't want to read, we also sometimes have to find ways to engage students who would rather be reading something else entirely. It opened my eyes to this whole continuum of readers, and each and every one is going to need to be catered to at some point in my class. Finding out the way to open that up to them is the challenge (exciting or not) that we all have to solve.

Daybook Questions Reading is so much more than opening a book and comprehending the words on the page. Reading can be how we interpret any sort of sensory input, be it pictures, film, or even sound. We need to be able to filter all of it through that marvelous contraption we call a brain and make sense of all of these “texts.” I realize now that reading is multi-dimensional and it is ubiquitous…we can’t go even hours without having to “read” something. How do people develop as readers? I think they develop best when someone models good reading for them, showing them how it’s done, helping them take those first tenuous steps and then cheering them into more challenging arenas in which to strengthen their skills. A love for reading has to be instilled and the true trick is to find that one book that will open up that door for a reader. Maybe the flame needs to be constantly rekindled by someone who can see what it is these readers are searching for, but ultimately a reader’s development depend on more than just the canonical texts thrown at them by their schools.
 * What is “reading” and how do people develop as readers?**

I think we have to understand young adults first and foremost. Without that basic understanding of why one student may balk at a book while another devours it, we really don’t have much to go with. We have to understand that these students may be like us, or they may not, and we have to have the proper ability to both empathize with their habits and analyze how to get them to where they need to be as readers. In the end, it comes down not to the curriculum or our ability as teachers, but our ability to connect and discover that perfect solution to solve the riddle each student brings with him or her.
 * What must we “understand” in order to create environments and enterprises that support readers/learners.**

I think of all that I learned this semester, being sensitive to the struggling readers is really the one thing that impacted me. Personally, I find myself to be a great reader, and I know that I have never had issues with reading. I realize that this is that one thing that I’m really going to have to concentrate on because I’ve never had that problem, and I find it harder to really get into their mindset because of it. I think, at least in my opinion, that supporting a student with a scaffolding style of system, building them up and letting them climb higher and higher while you take that support away, and challenging them to do something just a little tougher next time is one of those great ways of doing this. Giving them the opportunity to do something other than curriculum prescribed reading and helping them to find that one book that will open their world up are other ways of helping those students to get their footing before they lose it altogether in the mad crush of high school English classes.
 * How do we support and challenge the struggling readers in our classes?**

For me, a text is any sensory thing that you have to interpret. Be it film or pictures or graphic novels or books. You can use any number of texts in a classroom, and using a variety of different things will more than likely help to engage readers. Even better is when a text can be linked to a theme or a lesson plan such as watching video clips to bring the works of Shakespeare to life or using a wordless graphic novel to show how stories can be told through pictures only. To teach students how to read these texts, we likely have to handle them on a case by case basis. Reading the text of a graphic novel (balloons, gutters, etc) is different than reading the “text” of a film. All have their own brand of shorthand which in the end will make our students more savvy in how they view different “texts”
 * What is “text” and how can we include alternative texts in our English classroom? How can we teach our students to read these texts?**