Day 8 at SI

What Did I Learn in School Today? This is a question based on testing assessment. There is a cyclical ignorance that comes along with teaching to the test, especially when it comes to language arts. The arts of language are not something that can be tested on a Scantron very well or coherently, and have been neglected by a legislative act that passed almost about ten years ago. Given the financial crisis that crippled funding for education and the demand that students be taught by the test, it has left the English community desperate and floored for change. What is strange is how rarely we talk about how to change this. Wouldn't it be nice to know what we could actually do to effect the way that we teach? Where does the future politics of teaching lie? These are the thoughts and questions the intro that Sally provides brings to my mind. Next, Tiffany’s Demo brings these thoughts out: The word Journal, or Daybook… The first thing that comes to mind is a long *sigh* - followed by a reluctant beginning. Then, after about 3 minutes of silence and delving into something, the mood changes, my mind is slowly opening into something that actually starts to be kind of fun...and then we are out of time and it is over. Words and thoughts that come directly to mind: Oh Jeese, well at least I can ignore the prompt and write about something I want to, journal seems like something I can do for myself and not for a class, boredom, surface, inability to think deep, why can't I choose my own prompt? This is the negative association that I am used to in my mind with those old terms for student notebooks. Can't we re-name "daybook, or journal?" the terms still make me want to vomit. What are better names for a daybook? Book of awesome? Writing book, genius scribbles? Then, tiffany tells us that we must think of prompts that are: Odd, astonishing, comical or intriguing, and she lets us choose the prompts and put them in a hat! That makes me excited, obviously. I get a good amount of writing out in her 3.5 minute writing segments, and feel quite a catharsis, here is my favorite of the prompts we pull from the hat: Write about a scar that you have: There is a mark on my arm, that was just a mark...it was an odd cut, one that had layered colors, but that would heal normally if I'd just left it alone. The woods at the age of 16 behind my cousin's house was our smoking area, our talking place. We talked about deep thoughts for the first time out there- thoughts that had experiences coupled with them that scarred. One day, I was having a bad week. I was chronically tired, frustrated at not being able to find myself, and in that perpetual flux of teenage angst- I took my lit cigarette and purposefully melted it into my scar; Impressively Scaring my cousin for the first time. This mark of teenage masochism lives with me today, to remind me how unhealthy we all are at that age, and all the stressors that we forget about. We are so inclined to think that our current age is the toughest and most important, when there is only one age that is this way, all ages. So now I can look back over at my arm, flex my muscle, and feel proud and aware that I too was a destructive teenager once, and that that piece of me is still there.