#knowingstudentsthroughblogs

Matrix 3: Students Blog Their Thoughts and Interests; Utilize Them

          I remember when I was in high school or in fact middle school that I would have various interests away from my school subjects, but I stuck with English as my favorite because I love to read novels, talk about them, and write about them. I also love writing poetry and prose which is a major part of English class. However, I still remember that my peers did not feel the same way about school.  Some liked different subjects than me and/or hated school all together. Also there are other things about school that I hated that others liked. For example, I hated that we were forced to change our class period format. We went from a traditional seven periods every day to a block schedule as well as waking up at the crack of dawn to get to school on time.

           Many of these issues are still on students’ minds, among many other things, today. I actually had difficulty in finding student blogs in general. Not many students blog about their feelings today, which I think is due to more avenues to express their feelings. Facebook, snapchat, twitter are several of the current avenues with which to express issues in their lives. Teenagers are full of opinions because they express themselves so freely. I did find three blogs that talked about school, interests, and other aspects of their lives. All of them are written by girls ranging from high school to middle school age and come from different backgrounds.

           Some of the issues that were previously discussed are also mentioned in a student blog called it’s grace. This blog is written by a girl named Grace, who is fourteen years old and in middle school. She writes about her interests in the future, school, and other activities, such as poetry. Of her three posts about school her most interesting post is about issues in school. She makes two points that are issues for her about school: school times and uniforms. She makes a clear point with evidence from livescience.com that the brain is not ready for learning at 7 in the morning. She creates a solution to the problem by saying that exercise should be in the morning to jump start the brain. I agree with her that high school students should not be subject to learning at such an early hour. High school students are more prone to learning at a later time, let’s say 10am instead, and staying in school until 4pm. So for a simpler explanation, elementary school children should go to school at 7am and the high school students should go to school at 9am. Another issue that Grace points out is uniforms in school. The fact that she was bringing up the issue in the first place means she has school uniforms at her school. She points out that the school uniforms she wears does not allow for students to express themselves and how the rules are more directed to females than males because school admin want a distraction free learning zone for male education. This blog was more about the education system and less about interests in subjects. http://gracekoury.edublogs.org/

           The next blog Wendy’s blog!!!!!!!, is written by a middle school aged girl named Wendy, who is actually from the same area as the previous blog. This blog was written for an English class as well as a digital storytelling assignment. She writes five posts about interests in her life as well as about school. However, her school experience is different from Grace. In one post she explains that she does not like school at all, but does not go into details about why. She mainly talks about her favorite television show; Once Upon A Time, and her upcoming Christmas holiday.

           Finally, the most comprehensive blog, Simply Aubree is about the life of a teenage girl in ninth grade. In three blog posts she talks about English assignments involving Romeo and Juliet, poetry with extend metaphor, country style music and recipes, as well as hunting. She posts her school work such as her English essay on Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet as well as her Civics poster about a Third Party in politics. She is artistic, loves to read, and creates beautiful poetry. She also started this blog as an assignment for a class, but she continuously updates it with her interests and thoughts. Her Friar Lawrence essay is well written and very mature for an eighth grader.

           Going through these blogs helps me to understand more about students that take English/ Language Arts courses in school. I will run into a diverse range of students with different interests as these girls have shown. Learning about what students are interested in is beneficial for teachers, especially for English teachers.  English teachers have the power to capture a student’s interest through a novel or an activity by incorporating their own interests into that novel or activity. Teachers need to be an advocate for their students to the best of their ability and to show them that we have to build or structure lessons that gear toward common interests, such as music, writing, educational issues, and creativity.

 References

Blogs

http://gracekoury.edublogs.org/

http://simplyaubree.edublogs.org/

http://wendyrm.edublogs.org/