Foot: Me As A Teacher (Extra Credit)

There have been many times that I have asked myself, "What does this mean to you?" or "Why should I do that?" when I have been assigned a new project for class, the Multi-Genre Autobiography was no different. At first I honestly had no answer to these questions, but after some thought I think I see why we were assigned this project. Everyone is different. This means all our students, students’ parents and our colleagues, even though often very close in age, have very different needs and personalities. On the other hand, each group still has some things in common that can be used to help the entire group understand or become interested in a topic/activity. This could not have been more apparent then in the presentations of our class’s multi-genre autobiographies. We are all very different people from mostly different backgrounds. The fact that we are all in the same degree already gives us a common interest but after the viewing of the autobiographies we saw that most of us had even more in common. Most of the things in common were in the media. So if we were very similar in what we connected with in the media, my guess would be that our students are too. By using multi-modal methods in class you can connect to many of the students with something they are already connected with each other on. For example, Facebook and Twitter are very common tools for people to use in order to socialize nowadays, including, as we have seen through many of our classroom discussions, our students. If we can utilize these in the classroom we can connect to the students in ways earlier generations of teachers could not. By showing students that we can and do use the same technology they do, we show them that there are multiple ways we are connected.

            The multi-genre autobiography also taught me that what I liked and what I see as important directly affects what I will teach and how I teach it. For example, if I love the classics, I may teach more of them. If multi-media is something I was attached to I may focus on that. It is very important that these things don’t get us trapped in certain genres and methods. We have to be flexible and very up to date with new/current media so we can relate to our students. If we simply recognize media as old as Care Bears and Power Rangers as good media how can we relate to our students? This project also made me reflect on how many teachers I had were from the same generation, and how many had similar teaching methods/styles. They were so dull. Each class was very similar in activities no matter the subject and it became very boring and repetitive. We have to prevent this from happening in our generation.