And these are the days of our lives…

I just finished reading the Tinney article and I was truly touched and inspired by the things that he wrote; there were so man powerful quotations throughout the article – as a lover of words and quotations, I must point out a few….
**With regards to teachers being passionate about their work because they believe that [...]

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I’m lovin’ it!

This book is awesome! These articles are interesting, relevant, applicable, inspiring…This is fun! Perhaps I am on a hope-high right now after reviewing my articles for tonight. Both, despite covering rather serious problems for English studies, end on such optimistic notes that I cannot help but think positively.
The racism Villanueva explains depresses [...]

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Can we bridge the gulf?

Like some of my fellow classmates, I too must admit to being pleasantly surprised by Gerald Graff’s essay entitled, “The Academic Language Gap.”  Fortunately this essay was completely different from his book which we read earlier in the semester.  In this essay I felt that perhaps Gerald Graff was letting more of his personality shine [...]

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The Business End of What We’re Into Here…

Ok, this isn’t going to be any huge discovery or eureka moment–I’m pretty much going to make a few comments on one of the articles I annotated:  Stephen North’s “On the Business of English Studies.” 
It was a somewhat interesting article, detailing pretty much the history of what has happened to English as a subject in [...]

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“English studies is about what it means to be human” (Yagelski 13).

What a refreshing read!  Yet, I’m at a loss for where to begin with the articles I read for this week’s class.  Both had so many points that I thought were significant.  
Yagelski’s article on the relevance or irrelevance of English asked questions that I have been asking myself all semester.  
What might the study [...]

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Graff is Relevant!

I truly enjoyed Graff’s article. I can see why Yagelski and Leonard begin the meat of their book with this article, since this “langauge gap” Graff discusses is truly at the root of the English education problem. I  never thought of how problem-focused English studies is. I mean, that is it’s way of being relevant; [...]

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English Relevant? Of course!

“In the end, however, the contributors to this volume share an abiding faith that what we do is important, that it has value – that it is, finally relevant” (yagelski xii). As soon as I read this line, I was wary about the rest of the book. I generally love NCTE books, and I haven’t [...]

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Oddly thought provoking

I think that so far, this might be the most useful book I’ve read in this class. I find this interesting, because it’s book full of articles regarding English in the classroom, and at this point in my education and career, I really want nothing more to do with classes in and on Education. I [...]

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TLC

On page 97, Finders, in relating how some juvenile offenders were underestimated by the instructors at the facility in which she worked,  zeroes in on what I believe to be a key issue in the restructuring of the English discipline:
“Rather than work to recategorize juvenile offenders, I suggest that we work explicitly to recategorize literacy. [...]

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Proud Member of Gerry’s Kids

Gerald Graff, we salute you.
How this man goes from a labyrinthine book to a clear, concise, and altogether poignant article is beyond me.  I wanted to comment on both of the articles but since Yagelski’s seems to be more of a synopsis of the upcoming readings, I chose to give Graff a lift from his [...]

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Expectations

I read this and got pretty excited: “Literacy, Gender, and Adolescence: School-Sponsored English as Identity Maintenance.” It has the makings of something I’d love to read about; I am involved with literacy, I have a thing for gender and all its makings and transformations, and I deal with adolescents on a daily basis. Also– I [...]

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Question

Hey–just a quick queston for everyone-Did we get instructions on the book review due this Wednesday? I was wondering if I missed them…

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Will the real Graff please stand up?

OK, maybe I’m missing something, but the Graff that I literally just finished reading in the essay “The Academic Language Gap”, is a completely different Graff that I muddled through a month ago. 
I am surprised to say that I really enjoyed this essay, and found that Graff had a lot of interesting things to say.  [...]

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Assembly Line Politics

Educational costs across all levels are skyrocketing, achievement is down, expectations are raised, and new, progressive lingo is created in an attempt to define our current predicament and, more importantly,to forward an emergency escape plan to rescue us from the brink of disaster that we find ourselves inching toward.  Immediately, the question arises “Well, who’s to blame?”  [...]

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Mini-Blog #2: Everyone Hates a Discount!

I suppose I was at a bigger disadvantage than many.  My parents were divorced and remarried, and of the four people in my life who had “dad” or “mom” someplace in their title, none of them had gone to college.  I knew that I was going to college, but I didn’t know what college was—and [...]

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Mini-Blog #1: The Other Half of Teaching

I am posting this week’s blogs in two truncated segments to align with the two articles that I am responsible for during the coming week; I figured this would be a good pedestal to begin my discussion of them.
 
Finders’ article has a relevance to it that goes well beyond the mere pedagogy he’s promoting.  In [...]

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Jim Berlin past and present

I’m late with this, but think I have finally found my voice with regard to Berlin. Let me go straight to what seems refreshingly different from earlier readings in this course: money, class, labor, and the role of English teachers and students. Here is one section that snared my attention, about curricular changes during the [...]

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Making the abstract concrete

I have to admit that for me Berlin’s book was at times a struggle to read.  He seemed rather boring and occasionally difficult to grasp- perhaps because I am not that interested in rhetoric which he mainly discusses as being central to English studies.  However, I did find the second half of the book somewhat more [...]

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Uncomfortable with Rhetoric

I’m struggling a lot with Berlin, so I’ll try to hit on the only cohesive thing I really latched onto.  On page 113, Berlin writes: 
The aim of the course remains the same in all situations: to enable students to become active, critical agents of their experience rather than passive victims of cultural codes.
He says again [...]

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untitled

Semiotics, semiotics, semiotics OK I get the point.  I think Scholes did also.  I found some correlations between Scholes’ tools and Berlin’s insistence on semiotics.  I believe that in a few instances Berlintook off where Scholes left off. 
I was a bit taken aback by Berlin’s last chapter.  It did not read like those prior.  [...]

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