My Thoughts on Things

After reading Night by Elie Wiesel, I found myself at a loss for words. This story is one of many who suffered inside of concentration camps and one of few who get to tell their stories. I was amazed at how intense this story was. I have grown up in the American Education system and have heard for many years about the Holocaust many times. I feel like in school we are desensitized to think that this horrific thing can be grouped as if all the people imprisoned had a similar story. However, this book made me realize that as people we need to realize the millions of different stories ans how they differ in so many ways. This story in particular is one that cannot be compared to, as all of the others should not be as well. Each story is a terrifying testimony and should be treated as such. This specific story had me feeling empathy for this man to a point where my heart broke to think that any one person would ever have to go through this, let alone millions. I think that teaching this su...

For this blog post I wanted to talk about my thoughts on Poe's work, along with my favorite poems of his. Poe's Work: I think that Edgar Allan Poe has some of the darkest and creepiest work that I have ever read. I personally do not like his work because of that. I realize that this is not a popular opinion. Most people who are studying to get an English degree love Poe and his twisted thoughts. Don't get me wrong, think his writing is poetic and fluid in a beautiful way, but the subject matter is where I get a little shiver down my spine. I have never been one to like the creepy or the dark parts of the mind. I have always been one to enjoy sweet and beautiful poetry written to a loved one or explaining nature. Though I do know that Poe writes poems that I would like, the underlying tone of death and or some sort of creepy thought is present still. My Favorite Poems: 1. To F--S S. O--D: This poem to me was a beautiful piece of work from Poe. To me this poem is a simple ...

This novel to me gave off the feeling of a murder mystery story. Although it was not a murder story, there was a mysterious death that is contemplated on throughout the story. I felt like the whole time I was constantly asking myself, "But how did he end up dead in the woods?" I had a hard time connecting the back stories on the main character who had died, to possible reasons for his death. The whole purpose of the back stories was to give the reader some sort of reference as to who the main character was and how they could have possibly ended up in the woods in Alaska and how they ended up dying. Since I personally did not enjoy this type of book prior to reading this specific novel, I did not find any connections to the text personally or any deep connections with the text. For those who like the murder mystery type of story where the reader cannot put all the pieces together until the end of the story. I would however recommend this book to someone who liked this kind of ...

Empathy. It seems to be a theme among good books. At least somewhere in a good novel we find empathy. This novel had me feeling empathetic the whole way through. I found myself often hoping for things to somehow get better and more clear for not only the main character but for the supporting characters as well. There is a constant feeling of sadness for the situation these characters are experiencing. To start the story the mother of the main character gets raped. This theme continues and the story line never looks up from this point. The second the incident occurs, the minds of every character became frantic and motivated with the right motives, but the wrong ideas for doing so. The main character in this novel Joe, is constantly going against what people are telling him and against what is morally right and wrong. Joe starts off with good intentions trying to give his mother justice and peace, but ends up fueling himself with a hate fire that leads to him being an accomplice in a mur...

After reading the first chapter of this book, I had found myself very interested in what the author Cris Tovani had to say about comprehension strategies. Tovani talks about having students come in on the first day of class with expectations of how the English class would go. Tovani explains to the students in a very honest way that she knows pointless assessments and how much students hate them. She understands all of their hate towards writing and empathizes with them. She tells the students that as much as they don't want to write a book report, he doesn't want to grade 30 of them. She talks about knowing how students fake reading and writing all of the time, and how she did so as a kid. Her approach was new to me. I have never heard of a teacher being so honest to their students before. She does this to get all of the things in student's heads out in the open. Her approach to creating readers and writers who critically think and analyze vs. students who fake read and wr...

After reading the TPA guidelines and the edTPA Making good choices, I found myself writing notes about some of the points I found useful in both documents that I need to include when it comes to taking my edTPA. Being a teacher candidate at Eastern who will be taking her edTPA in a couple of months, this information seemed very useful and like something I would want to remember when for the future. They both include very important points about how to make an edTPA in the best possible way. They both serve as great guidelines for what we as candidates should think about when creating our own edTPA's. It gives us an example of parts of the handbook that we need to include and focus on when creating our edTPA's, and it explains how to understand these sections as well. I found a specific area in the "edTPA making good choices" of understanding the handbook rubrics. This section was particularly interesting because it explains in detail how to even understand what the rub...