When I looked at the syllabus for this class, I remember thinking, “This woman is crazy. Does she want me to read a whole library this semester?” Even if we would have read a whole library, I still would’ve been grateful. I learned so much this semester. I feel like it helped me grow up. It made me realize that I have to read a lot and do a lot in order to prepare myself to face my students. If I don’t have much experience with children’s books, how am I supposed to help my students when they come to me for guidance? This class was an eye-opener. I certainly wasn’t very excited for parts of this class, like poetry or graphic novels, but they helped me better myself as a future educator. Now I have resources to be able to pull from and refer to when I come across these topics. The biggest thing that I learned in this class is that I love reading. For the longest time I thought reading was a chore, and I didn’t feel like wasting my spare time with my nose in a book. This class helped me remember the 12-year-old girl I used to be who finished a Harry Potter book in two days. I’ve learned to put aside my own thoughts of how I may feel about a genre or book because a student I have may feel differently. I don’t want to discourage someone from enjoying something or choosing a certain book because they know that I don’t like it. It’s not about me. I’ve learned that I’m going to be poor. Books are not cheap! But that’s okay; who needs food anyway? It’s very hard for me to come up with something that I wish I had learned. If this class would’ve been less awesome and a little more miserable, I could probably think of something. But that’s not the case. This was one of my favorite classes. Not only because it was fun and laid back, but it was just completely different from any class I’ve ever had. It felt like a community. We could hold intelligent conversations and share useful ideas, and it’s sad to say that I haven’t really had that in my other courses. Everyone was working toward the same goal and we were helping each other along the way. We’re all in this together. (<– I know every single word to that song) All jokes and singing aside, this really was one of my favorite classes and I recommend it to everyone. The final resource website is something that I didn’t really take seriously at the beginning of the semester. It didn’t seem like something that I would use in the future and I was only going to do it to get the points. As I worked on it over the semester, I found so many different things on the Internet. So many teachers have blogs and lessons plans and anything else you can think of that are so useful. I was shocked by how much was out there. And what a surprise, they had resources for everything that we’ve been talking about in class. Must be a weird coincidence… It started to get me excited. A lot of classes give us the information that we need to know in order to teach to students, but they don’t exactly tell you how to do that. It was nice to see that there are resources out there that help with the “how to” part of teaching.

As we approach the last few days of the semester, I find myself feeling nostalgic. It takes me back to high school graduation. It feels like I’m leaving all of my friends again. That may be a bit of a drastic example, but I will genuinely miss this class and everyone in it. I’m sure I’ll see some in other classes. But it’s just not the same. It wont be in our 341 family. I also realized after our last meeting that I wouldn’t be coming back. It was our LAST meeting. And I didn’t get to do the whole corny good-bye that the teacher and students do on the day of the final. So to everyone in the class, it’s been great. I loved this class and everyone made it an awesome place to come to every Monday and Wednesday afternoon. And most importantly, thank you Kim. I know you couldn’t care less about what your students think of you, but I’m willing to bet that 99% of them feel as lucky as me to have had you as a teacher. Thank you for everything. You’re kind of a big deal.

-Sam

I would imagine that Williams is seeing the aftermath of a storm. It’s still dark and overcast out, but peaceful and calm. The red wheelbarrow and white chickens stand out against the dark gray sky. I have a hard time trying to think of what he was feeling and why I think so. Maybe he is being literal. Maybe there is a lot riding on this wheelbarrow. This could be a man’s farm that he’s looking at and the wheelbarrow is crucial to his farming. He might be feeling indifferent. The rain paints a dark image for me, but the red and white seem like they would be bright. Maybe he is trying to see a positive in the negative.

 

so much depends

upon

 

the amount of

garlic

 

that the cook

places

 

on my warm

fries

 

Link to Jake and Lily’s Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/jake.wambold.73?fref=ts

I chose to read the Weenie Series, and in doing so I had no idea what I was signing up for. I read the first few pages, and it seemed like a very short chapter. I then read what I thought was the next chapter, and it had nothing to do with the first one. It didn’t take long after that for me to realize that they were not actually chapters but short stories. I guess I should have read the title more carefully. As I got to reading, I really started to enjoy it. I actually found myself laughing out loud quite a few times – I got some weird looks from my sister. At first I disliked how quickly the stories ended, but then they kind of grew on me. I found myself thinking, “what kind of crazy story is going to come next?” And that’s another thing I liked, the craziness. These stories aren’t about walking a dog or going to the grocery store. They’re about kids turning into bleu cheese, or vampire catfish, or even talking vegetables. They keep the reader engaged. I think that a lot of young readers would enjoy these books. For a student who has a tough time staying focused or interested in a book, I think the short story style would be perfect. By the time they would start to get bored, the story is over. On the other hand, I think that readers that like long storylines and big books would not enjoy this series. I also think that this series would be good for creative writing. In the back of the book, David Lubar talks about how he came up with the ideas for these stories. He has endless reasons for creating these stories, some of which are just complete nonsense. I think that it would be great to read a few to students and have them get a feel for these stories, and then write their own creative story. It doesn’t have to make sense, just like the stories in the books. The lessons in a lot of the stories have to do with right and wrong, morals, learning life lessons… I also think it could be nice to have students write stories that teach a lesson. Overall I just really like this series, and I’m glad that I chose it. I think it’ll be a great series to start off my classroom library.