Sources

 My first source is The Hidden Curriculum of Performance-Based Teacher Education

by Peter Rennert-Ariev. The main purpose of the article is to explore the “hidden” curriculum in the education program. The piece is written by several college professors and also interviews students in the education program and students in general. It is very insightful. This piece will be extremely useful in my paper. Mostly because it gives insights of not one, but several different teachers and students. I plan to use this piece very often in my assignment. The next piece I chose was  The Contemporary Small-School Movement: Lessons from the History of Progressive Education

by Susan F. Semel & Alan R. Sadovnik. This work primarily goes over the small school movement in American. It goes specifically into two small schools started in the early 19 hundreds and their relation and influence to the small school movement today. This essay also goes into curriculum in the public and private school system. I will be able to relate these two essays very easily. The final essay I will use is Teacher and Administrator Responses to Standards-Based Reform

by Laura Desimone. This piece collects data from 60 teachers in 32 schools, in 10 districts in 5 states. Needless to say it will be extremely useful for quotes and citation.

Interview descriptions

I have done two interviews (via email because it was more convenient for both interviewees). One with an English teacher from my high school who has been in the English education program for over 30 years, teaching everything from basic grammar to British Lit. and creative writing. She is a large part of my decision to become an English teacher. She did not do a great job of elaborating on her answers but she did give me several good quotes to work with. She emphasized the importance of writing in her career and also how important it was for her students. She also gave good insight into her own work. I also interviewed a first you English teacher in the JCPS. He gave very elaborate answers to all of my questions, so I will probably be using his answers more often than not. Since he recently graduated he talked about how important writing was in his undergraduate program. He said he wrote countless papers and became a much better writer. He also talked about how he enjoyed most of the writing he did, with the exception of annotations and research papers. Both people gave good insight into writing in the teaching profession, specifically English, and gave me a good amount to go off of for my up coming assignment.  

Quotes Reflection

In a piece about Into the Wild  I quoted the part of the book where the author says "HAPPINESS IS NOTHING, IF NOT SHARED" which is actually a quote from the journal of the main character. I set the quote up by describing the scenario in which the author came about the actual quote in the book, and giving some background about why this quote was important. I then describes its relation to my thesis (The main point of the novel is that happiness cannot be truly attained in complete solitude). I think I did a pretty good job with this quote. Later in the piece i quoted a highlighted passage found with main character's remains saying " I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. I used this quote to further explore and attempt to explain the main character's reasons for leaving his life behind and living in the wilderness, only to die a slow death there.

Interview Questoins

1. Would you consider writing to be an essential skill in your career? Why or why not?

2. How often do you use any form of writing on a given day?

3. What is the main form of writing you use in your career?

4. Would you say one has to love reading and writing to become and english teacher? Explain.

5. Was writing an important part of your journey to becoming an english teacher? Why or why not?

6. How important do you consider writing (yours or others) to be to your profession? Explain. 

7. Describe the type of writing you do. 

8. Could your occupation exist without writing? Why or why not?

Possible Academic Source

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40172941?seq=7#page_scan_tab_contents

This source is an academic source. It is, Ironically, an Informational report. The article goes in to statistically detail based on research about college professors in the English Department, and how they are preparing students with education majors (especially in English) to be teachers themselves one day.

This will help me with my paper because an article about teaching is about as good as it gets when it comes to writing about teaching. Especially such a detailed article based on facts and experiments. This is especially good for an informational report, which is the genre of our assignment.

Rhetorical Situation for Assignment 1

My purpose for this assignment is to help high school students who may be thinking about a career in the education program (specifically the english department) get a better understanding of how writing is used in this field. Also I would like to get a better understanding myself. My audience, as mentioned above, is any incoming college students or someone with an undecided major. My media will be all written communication. The specific genre of my paper will be an informational report. My stance will be something along the lines of the fact that writing is a huge part of my major and my career path, but it also more broad than other forms of writing used in other majors or careers. There is more freedom to express oneself and less guidelines/restrictions.

Rhetorical Situation

Three major points
-Issues
-Purpose
-Audience


The definition I found on Google and the definition I found in the text are very similar. They both discuss some sort of audience, purpose, and stance.

Analysis of 101 Essay

         Today I will be analyzing an essay I wrote for English 101 titled “Mental Laziness” (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-SkMuzJ90cfTk56Y2hlaVRzRW8/view?usp=sharing). The assignment has an open prompt, meaning I could choose any topic so long as I had a thesis, and wrote in support of said thesis. My purpose in writing this piece was to persuade people into using technology and its advances for further advancements rather than complacency. My intended audience would generally be anyone who utilizes technology on a daily basis, which is almost everyone (especially you since you are reading an online blog post). My thesis statement was “The wrong usage of technology, ironically stemming from the human brain, is one of the main reasons the large majority of American’s have become mentally lazy”. Given my thesis, I’m sure you can derive my stance on the topic in question. I believe that certain technologies have made it easier for Americans to become both physically and mentally lazy. The medium I used was written communication, which is often a hard way to get a point across to certain individuals. But it is also a great way to form a concise and useful argument. Reading over the essay for a second time, one way I feel as if I could have improved would have been to broaden my argument by saying technology itself was not the only thing to blame. But rather, the human user of technology deserves some blame. Being provided with the technology to become lazy is a start, and an uncontrollable variable, but choosing to use the technology in the wrong ways and letting it make you lazy is a conscience decision.    

Syllabus Assignment

Brian Radcliff

Hem Paudel

English 102  

1/12/15

            The syllabus is pretty much cut and dry. I am wondering how and where we are expected to make our blog, but I am certain that will be explained in class. I am excited to learn more about writing both because I enjoy it and it is a large part of my major requirements (having a focus in English education). I am also wondering if each one of our papers will have a specifically designated prompt, or be more open.

            I guess another question I have is about the late work policy. Not because I turn in work late, because I have not been known to do so. But as an education major, I was curious why the policy is the way it is.  I very much enjoy the fact that students have the ability to revise any major assignments. I am sure that will come in handy throughout the semester and it is a good thing to know. I am excited to participate in this semester’s activities.

About Me

My name is Brian Radcliff. I attend the University of Louisville, and I am a secondary education major. I am from Northern Kentucky and I attended Covington Catholic High School.