Conclusion to Blog Series on Literacy Narratives

The great thing about having left the education profession at the ripe age of 21 without completing my certificate was that I now had life under me. Some people immediately know what and where they are meant to be, for me I had to find it organically through a list of ups and downs in the real world, dabbling in ‘Corporate America’ with one of the largest Pharmaceutical companies, riding out the recession, running a large retail store, selling homes, writing a simple blog and in short cultivating experiences that will make me a better, more patient, more real world educated teacher. As a prospective educator I have learned from these experiences to take time with students, validate them and their concerns, take those concerns seriously, walk beside them on a portion of their literary journey and hopefully they will write about me as a positive note on their literary timeline someday.

Excerpt from Blog About beginning Army Life

Showing an example of my literacy narrative as a blog, I will share with you an excerpt of my a separate blog that I used during a time I write about in my original literacy narrative.

We have discussed on our blog before the different types of literacy and literature, think about our discussion as you read this.

So I need to back track to Big Texas for a minute to tell you how we got to Kentucky. Barry and I started dating after I moved to Texas, he was stationed at Fort Hood back from his first deployment to Iraq but preparing for a 2nd quicker than either of us where ready for. Right after Christmas Barry left for Iraq on a day that I can only describe as one that I dreaded more than anything I have ever dreaded in my life and that day did not let me down in expectations.

Though this day was hard it would actually prove harder to send him back to Iraq after his 2 week R & R, because this time I would know what to expect. Realize you have found your soul-mate only to have him taken away from you will forever be one of the hardest things we have ever been through, but it made us so much closer and our relationship so much stronger.

R & R in San Antonio

As hard as the deployment was and as much as I missed him I knew he had a job to do, a job that I was proud to stay back and support him doing. I have never been more proud of anyone or anything in my entire life - patriotism and pride took on a whole new meaning. I can now no longer hear the National Anthem without tearing up, knowing the sacrifices our soldiers and their families have made and continue to make will never cease to move me.

Barry returned from Iraq barely short of a one year deployment on the 3rd of December, one day before his birthday and the very best day of my life (at that point anyway ). Homecomings are a tricky and actually stressful couple weeks leading up to the actual day, and that day changes a multitude of times just to keep things interesting.

During this last month before Barry came home I also adopted a new puppy for Barry as a welcome home present! Our little man George was rescued running the street in freezing rain in Joplin by a friend of our Ashley Hailey- a wonderful girl with a soft spot for rescuing puppies. After seeing her post about a tiny little mutt on FB needing a home I melted and knew he was going to be ours, and all it took to talk Barry into it was to show him that very first picture.

And who wouldn't melt with that little face!

Thus George Brett Green (named after Barry's favorite baseball player) was born into our little family, and after a good friend of Barry's, Miss Lauren Gilbreth (also in our wedding) brought him with her on a trip to Dallas. I made a late night trip to Dallas and finally picked up our little Georgie and he waited out that last excruciating week with me.

Then came the day of the Homecoming - finally! It was moved about 3 different times leading up to that actual day but I can say that the moment I saw the white buses pull up and saw the love of my life with his smiling eyes it was all worth it - I remembered nothing else but how it felt to hold him again for the very first time.

Waiting on the buses and trying to stay warm!

A Homecoming is truly an electric day, there is a crazy energy with such a build up to one day that we had all been waiting a year to make it to with our sanity intact. I was of course running late this day and got stuck in traffic at the gate, I am habitually late everywhere (it's called Williams time). And this was the only ceremony I had ever heard of that was actually on time, what are the odds!

I made it there just in time to wait for about 15mins before the announcement was made for families to line up on the white line on the parade field because the buses were on their way. That is the moment everyone waits for, they are actually there and on the way to you - just got chills again. Now the big white buses are a stomach-dropping, nauseating sight the day they deploy because the buses are what take them away; but on the day of the Homecoming ceremony it is the most wonderful sight to see coming down the street behind police escort from the airport because those same buses bring them back.

This turned out to be an absolutely amazing picture with the little girl next to me holding her flag to welcome her daddy home. I can't take credit for these though, I took none.

I was too busy bursting into tears about now.

Ok, with this particular ceremony for 1st Cavalry the buses pull up and our soldiers unload on the other side of it, then when the buses pull away all that is left is your soldier in a sea of ACU's. Chills and tears begin right after this moment....I'm actually tearing up thinking about it all over again.

And there they were - and no I had no idea which one he was lol

When the buses move they march onto the field in formation, but you can't run to them yet - which is a practice in self-restraint. Once they get onto the field the commander comes up, says a few words and a prayer (which gets everyone crying) and then they say' families go find your soldiers!'. If you envision mass pandemonium at this point it is, you are ready to run but have no idea where to go! Now in my infinite wisdom we had decided weeks before of a meeting point, but the day of I happened to be with one of Barry's good buddies girlfriend  (Khan and Tiara) and Tiara had brought a pink umbrella and that was how he was going to find her. I thought I wonder if he's gonna think I'm with her! So I basically stand between two points trying to second guess where he will think I am (he has no cell phone at this point), with George in my arms freezing our butts off and I am becoming more upset by the second that families are reuniting all around me and I can't find Barry! He re-tells the story and some lady offered him her cell phone to call me b/c he looked lost (he was of course at the meeting point I decided on lol).

Just at the moment I become the most panicky there is a break in the crowd, and there he was with his tanned face and smiling eyes and the biggest smile spread across my face and there was the moment I had been waiting a year for. It was finally over and Barry was home safe and sound right where he belongs, with me.

Its like the feeling you had a five on Christmas morning - only better.

Happy little family.

December 3rd 2009 marked the end of Barry's second deployment with 1st Cavalry, and one of the very best days of our life. It marked a beginning in more ways than one. While Barry was in Iraq he also re-enlisted for 4 more years with the Army to go to Fort Knox Kentucky to be a part of a training unit there. So the end of March the Army packed up all Barry's things (mostly my things lol) and we relocated to Kentucky. Though we don't know how long the Army will keep us here, we are making the most of every adventure by taking it one day at a time and doing it together. Our life with the Army is a forever changing saga and when we know more be certain on the changes to come there will be a full post on that as well!

Sorry for the long post early this Friday morning but it gives you a mini-story of Barry's deployment and Homecoming ceremony and how we ended up in Kentucky!

Look for the stories from us both in a soon to come post about how we met (again) and how we fell in love ;)

 

Now that you have seen an example of a blog post, think about the life experiences you wrote about last week. Would you be able to blog about those experiences, or something else you are passionate about in a blog?

Think of one idea, subject or set of experiences you could blog about. List these and bring them into class to place in your portfolio. We will discuss this in class tomorrow.  

(5 points)

Bringing Life Experience into the Classroom

The great thing about having left the education profession at the ripe age of 21 without completing my certificate was that I now had life under me. Some people immediately know what and where they are meant to be, for me I had to find it organically through a list of ups and downs in the real world.

 Dabbling in ‘Corporate America’ with one of the largest Pharmaceutical companies and riding out the recession.

 

Running a large retail store

 

 

 

 

 Selling homes

 

 

 

Fighting through the jungle that was ‘Corporate America’ I was able to see how valuable the writing skills I had attained could be. Writing business plans, business reports and year end goals and summaries where just a few of the things my team had me writing for our district. Working in home sales and writing between mortgage underwriters and seeing first-hand the poor level of grammar, and even rudimentary punctuation had me questioning where these individuals had gone to school; and it was not until I worked in management for a large a retail clothing store and managed mostly high school seniors, just graduated high school students and young ‘twenty-something’s’, of a different generation than my own, that I saw that maybe they had been failed somewhere along the line. It seemed to me that approximately 80% that I was working with were not where I would consider ‘college ready’. This was not based off of any standardized test, but my personal assessment as a manager trying to develop future management from within this generation and realizing I was stepping into a writing teaching position after all. It was in this moment in particular, and other moments outside the education field that brought me to two realizations. One, that there was something happening to a generation of children who were not prepared writing wise for the real world, and two, that I would always be an educator no matter what field I was working in. It was just in my nature.

In short, these experiences cultivated learning that will make me a better, more patient, and more 'real world' educated teacher. As a prospective educator I have learned from these experiences to take time with students, validate them and their concerns, take those concerns seriously, walk beside them on a portion of their literary journey and hopefully they will write about me as a positive note on their literary timeline someday.

What are some experiences you have thus far in life that you feel give you a unique perspective? It can be any experience, and does not need to relate back to the classroom or school in anyway. List one or more experiences, and how you feel they make you who you are.
Write 200-500 words and bring them in on Wednesday to place in your portfolios. I will answer any questions you may have in class tomorrow.
(45 points)  

 

Negative Experience at the Undergraduate Level

 

It saddens me to think that the one of the key experiences I keep coming back to is a negative one, however, I learned a lot that semester about what type of teacher I would want to be as well as the type of motivation it sometimes takes students to perform up to their true ability. I took my Capstone course at the University of Oklahoma from a professor I had taken from before without the best experience. However, it is one that taught me a lot.

 

 

 

 I struggled with taking the course from her, but I reluctantly signed up for her Capstone course as it was the only section that fit within my schedule requirements, as I was finishing my fourth year as a member of the track and field team. My main directive for the semester, though wrong, was just to finish. I was done with school, burnt out from track with its constant travel and hours of daily practice, and working a part-time job during it all had me ready to complete my required courses for my undergraduate and explore what would lie ahead for me after graduation.

 

 

Our final project in the course was a major Capstone paper based off of one of two authors, I didn’t feel stirred in my soul to write, but rather the assignment left me grasping with desperation at motivation and direction. Finding what I felt was no sense of help, direction or motivation I was told my professor to simply “complete the work”,with no real constructive criticism other than to massacre my rough draft into a sea of red marks and condescending tone.

 

Have you ever had a teacher leave you feeling like this too?

Maybe even deserves a facepalm?

 

 

So I simply ‘completed the work’,turned in project and received the worst grade on a paper to date. It left me deflated and with a lack of validation. I had once felt like a decent writer, never great but now, maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I had no business teaching when I couldn’t motivate myself, when I let another adult reduce me to tears over school work. Maybe I wasn’t a good enough writer to be inspiring and teaching a high school generation. These thoughts would haunt me for years and I left school the next semester, undergraduate degree in hand and never once applied for or interviewed for a profession in academics. I began to question a lot, which looking back was very normal for a student exiting with their undergrad at twenty-one years of age.

 

 

At the end of the semester I remember feeling cut off at the knees, exhausted, exasperated and ready to give up on school for a while. I am not certain that it was this one event that made me take my English degree and run after my final semester, without beginning and completing my teaching certificate program, but that is exactly what I did. I found a great sales job making good money, what I believed to be completely unrelated to my English degree, and so I ran. I would in later years realize that it would be experiences such as these that would teach me the most about people, life and most importantly give me the experiences to take into the classroom.

 

 

 

 

Now can you think of a time that that a teacher made you feel this way, or you were unmotivated totally by a project? Can you think of why? What could the teacher have done differently? How could you have been motivated? Think through and write a 5 sentence response as a comment to this blog post.

(10 points)

Introducing the Next Blog Series

As I set down to write this I am still struggling to pin point an exact moment and experience that were vital to the shaping of my development as a writer, thinker and prospective teacher.  In my academic career I have had many, many wonderful teachers as well as some not so wonderful teachers. There were countless teachers made me love literature, and reading, however, I never thought to myself, “I love to write”.  I have also never thought of myself as much of a writer, but whether that stems from a single event I can’t be sure. I think it will have as much to do with a collection of events and reflection back upon my literary life as a whole and life experiences to this point that will truly be what has shaped me as a writer and prospective educator.

This blog series will include a few of those moments, read and enjoy! I hope this gives you some ideas as you start thinking of your literacy narrative for our next portfolio project.
 

Literacy Narrative: Part B

As a part of our new Unit on personal Narratives I will post a series of blog posts based upon my personal literacy narrative as an example of how you can re-shape your own original literacy narratives you completed and handed in with your portfolios last week in class.

This is only one example and we will discuss other options in class tomorrow, the options are endless!

 

 

Literature in all Shapes and Sizes

As we think of literature, it is often of  classical text and huge bound books of classic literature.

As we have discussed classical literary references in modern culture, let's shift gears into thinking of different kinds of modern day literature. Many people take to online journals or blogs to record their thoughts or document their lives, much in the way people wrote in journals. Newspapers and books are now available online to read, as opposed to hard copy bound books and newsprint.

With constantly evolving technology in our world today we have to constantly re-think what our definition of literature is. Through out time literature has evolved from the earliest forms of writing from the bible to hieroglyphs on pyramid walls, to journals of great minds, to mass produced New York Times bestsellers and the newest form of receiving literature in forms of new technology such as the Nook and the ipad.

For Discussion:

Do you think personal blogs can be considered literature? Why or why not?

How do you think new technology such as the nook and online books has changed how we view literature? Do you think it can have a positive or negative change?