Textual Appreciation

Another objective that is so important to our future classrooms is for our students to have appreciation for different mediums of texts in their education. Some students are given the opportunity to have been introduced to many different genres of texts while they are growing up and that is wonderful, however, there are some students who are not given the opportunity to have experience with many different types of texts. Therefore, this will be another issue that I will address in my classroom, giving students appreciation texts that they may not be familiar with or that they may not have thought could be used in the classroom atmosphere.

As it's discussed in the objectives of ENG 408, it is important for students to have access to different types of literature in the classroom, whether that be African American, Hispanic, White, etc literature. These literacies don't have to be all literature, literacy in the classroom needs to start coming to our students in multiple mediums. One example of bringing in multiple literacy would be for me to model to students that many types of literacy that they enjoy can be utilized in the classroom. For example, one way is to include rap with the poetry unit like we have discussed in our ENG classroom. That rap can be analyzed like poetry and that it can be used in the classroom to help students appreciate literacy more. However, as teachers, we have to be sure that students understand that we are not thinking of rap as "less than" poetry; it is not a bridge to comprehending Robert Frost. It needs to be realized by students that the things they find enjoyable can be used in the educational world.

Rap is not the only literacy that would be brought into the classroom, many different mediums can be utilized in the classroom. Another medium that I definitely want to bring into my education is speeches. I feel that speeches give students a different perspective to an idea, especially if they are hearing it in its original dialect. In addition, speeches are a great way for students to begin to understand different types of cultures. For students to have textual appreciation is vital to their education and speeches are one way for students to begin to appreciate what different cultures have to say/believe in.