Learning Letter

This has been a fascinating course. The pedagogical texts we read in class were interesting in their variety and subjects. I particularly enjoyed reading Readicide and I Read It, But I Don't Get It. Those kinds of texts will be very helpful to remind us of what it's like for students who we may not immediately understand. The complexity behind reading is something that I often take for granted, but I should remember that it's been a well-honed skill that I can pick up a text cold, speed-read through it, and get general ideas without really knowing many details.
The unit plan was an extremely difficult, but also a very rewarding project. The time we spent meticulously going over each section of the TPA lesson plan was crucial to aiding my knowledge about it, though there are still a few things I'm not quite sure of, and that even teachers don't seem to completely agree on. I still consider the TPA a terribly unnecessary workload, and its specifications can be very frustrating. But while I've done these lesson plans, the most significant thing I've learned form it is that the whole point is not necessarily to train us to fill out this form (though this is the main focus), but instead the purpose is really to force us to put in serious time thinking about each lesson we're going to present. It would be easy for any teacher to take only fifteen minutes preparing a lesson, consider the job done, and move on to the next thing, but we've all had this kind of teacher before, where lessons were not well thought-out or helpful. It takes careful consideration for a lesson to be refined to its most edifying form, even though after this there will almost always still be revisions to be made. Anything less than spending two hours to design a one-hour lesson would be laziness, especially for a new and inexperienced teacher.
Projects such as this have been so helpful, that I almost wish the entire class had consisted of it, or that other classes had provided this kind of assignment. So much of what we go over in many education-required classes does not really seem very applicable to teaching in real life.
The mini-lesson also was helpful, to be able to teach among peers and receive constructive criticism. I even enjoyed talking about the texts we read in class, and on the blog I thoroughly enjoyed being able to freely express how I felt about them, though sometimes I was maybe a little too free.
I'll seriously consider having my own class use blogs, because I think this is something many students will enjoy, because of the freedom it provides. To get them writing and then sharing their writing at home might even spur them on to writing more independently, away from the blog, which is really the ultimate goal, I think. No matter what happens in the classroom, I believe the ultimate success for any English teacher should be when a student starts willingly reading and writing away from the classroom.