Sunny Wilson

     Reading  The Round House , written by Louis Erdrich brought me to a very weird place in my mind, to say the least. It was remarkable to me that an author can produce a novel that is humorous and disturbing at the same time. Reading this novel through the eyes of a young boy really changes the perspective in your reading as well.      One thing that stood out to me was the foreshadowing that happens to connect the middle of the novel to the beginning. The initial scene of the book gives the reader some figurative implication, as Joe evacuates trees that have begun to grow into the groundwork of his home. As the plot of the novel starts to unfold, it starts to become clear to the reader that this scene foreshadows Joe’s murder of Linden Lark to revenge his mother’s rape. Like the murder, evacuating the trees shields Joe’s childhood home, but both also make Joe act in a violent behavior that hurts him and reduce...

Cris Tovani’s  I Read It, But I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers  is no doubt an essential read for present and future educators. "I Read It, but I Don't Get It is a practical, engaging account of how teachers can help adolescents develop new reading comprehension skills"(GoodReads). I’m still perplexed at the thought of having to teach middle school to high school students how to understand what they’ve read. Students can read a novel and now fully understand why I am having them read it or the underlying lesson behind it. I had this experience in school myself when we did our Catcher In The Rye lessons, I never comprehended why I needed to read this novel and my instructor did not really help me comprehend it. My perplexity really is partial, especially towards any future students that pass through my classroom that are not as proficient in reading/writing as in other subjects of school. Or my students who have specific reading diffic...

As I have learned through the process of making lesson plans and becoming an educator, time management is a very important aspect to obtain. The website states, “work steadily and regularly”. Which is something I will admit I struggle with sometimes due to the fact I like to break my work up into steps instead of just getting it all finished. The most helpful part of this website for me was the section that answered, “How do I represent my thinking and teaching into writing?” That is a question I am constantly asking myself. I have millions of thoughts and ideas running through my head and yet, I pick up the pen and freeze. I enjoyed the answer of responding in billeted form. I have noticed putting my ideas down in bullets helps me structure my assignments and thoughts into something that is easier for me to read and put together. As educators, we also do need to base our knowledge off the students. If we don’t,we set our students up for failure and them also not retaining any useful...

Social justice is known for being a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society. It is considered a process and a goal. According to SJTI,    "The goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society that is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure."   Visioning a society that is equal to all members can affect our classroom in a very positive way. It will make every student in our diverse classrooms feel more comfortable and equal to one another.  I think it is important as an educator to develop our skills in diverse dialogue and connectedness. Each student in your class will be their own individual person based on social class, race, and even gender. It is our job as educators to make every single one of these students feel equal to each other. I think this helps students fee...

Book Talk: Looking for Alaska by John Green Miles Halter is worn-out of his foreseeable and unpopular life, so he decides to attend Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama for his junior year of high school. He tells his parents that he's going to seek a Great Perhaps, that there's something  more   for him besides being a loner and living in such predictability. And there is more for him. The story is split in two parts: before and after. Before: Miles meets the Colonel, Takumi, and Alaska Young. These three are trouble makers and always play pranks on the school administrators. The Colonel grew up in a trailer park, Alaska and her dad don't get along, and Takumi is just kind of there for a while. The three take Miles under their wing and introduce him to the social order of campus, mischief-making, smoking cigarettes, and drinking. They have to avoid the Eagle, who is the dean of the school when they're creating pranks so they don't get brought before ...

     In the writing, " Popular Culture and Critical Media Pedagogy in Secondary Literacy Classrooms" by Ernest Morrell and Jeffrey Duncan, they expand on mass media in the classroom and how popular it is throughout society as a whole. As we teach in the classroom with young adults, we will be surrounded by social media like cell phones and tablets. Those cell phones and tablets containing social media platforms such as snapchat, facebook, Instagram, etc. The accessibility of social media is also way more convenient with electronic devices.       However, I really enjoyed the concept introduced in this writing of using media as a way to promote cultural studies and " promoting much-needed academic and critical literacies."  Using "The Hip Hop" project was a great way of introducing the impact of hip-hop music on culture and throughout inner city use. I think students should really look into the music they wouldn't listen to on a no...

     After reading chapter two of "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire, it gave me an eye-opening view to the narrative style of the teacher, student relationship. I never viewed the teacher as a narrator until I read this piece. What was most interesting to me was the fact that students just absorb the words we tell them without perceiving and understanding them. Freire states, "The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. "Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem." The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means". I never put teaching into this perspective, as educators we must dig deeper into the depth of our lectures and help the students absorb this information with higher depth perception.      We are then introduced to the "banking" concept of education, in this concept, educat...