https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234 en-us 2022-07-08 14:55:28 UTC 2022-08-07 19:03:26 UTC hello@padlet.com monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239816458 My parents were both the first in their families to immigrate to the United States from Vietnam in the late 1980s at the ages of 19 and 20. They learned to see the world as an opportunity after leaving Vietnam. They both grew up surrounded by hardships, poverty, and war. It was through this lens that I was brought into the world. ]]> 2022-07-08 15:00:55 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239816458 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239816715 Photographs from this age (unpictured) showed my ability to converse with adults in the Vietnamese language. I was raised with only the Vietnamese language in my early years and mimicked a lot of the verbiage and gestures that adults surrounding me used. ]]> 2022-07-08 15:01:40 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239816715 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239817296 My uncle always reminds me of how incredibly annoying I was at this age, always following him around and asking him hundreds of questions --- all the what's and why's and how's. I had a curious mind and saw the world as a text waiting to be comprehended and understood. ]]> 2022-07-08 15:03:00 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239817296 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239818004 Going to school was a difficult transition for me, mainly because I had to learn a completely new language --- one I barely had any exposure to. ]]> 2022-07-08 15:04:53 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239818004 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239838938 As any other child, I loved me some good competition. Luckily for my literacy, my classmates and I had a competition going for how many Decodable Books we could read. I gained a lot of confidence through these these books. It also helped that we often had collective reading time together, where the teacher, an audio recording, or one of the students would read aloud while everyone else followed along. Before decodables, my relationship with reading and language arts was not enjoyable. I didn't see myself as a reader. I didn't identify as someone who could read hundreds of books because English was my second language, and I hadn't been exposed to any English before Kindergarten. Reading stressed me out and disengaged me. These Decodables flipped that. It made reading fun and accessible through the scaffolding of increased difficulty. ]]> 2022-07-08 15:54:05 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239838938 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239839543 It was during this year that I also started going to Vietnamese School on Sundays in addition to regular school on the weekdays. Here, I learned that there was a difference between the type of Vietnamese spoken at home versus the Vietnamese that you read and wrote with. ]]> 2022-07-08 15:55:48 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239839543 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239840783 Magic Tree House was the first chapter book series I discovered on my own (through my teacher's class library). Back then, Chapter Books were such a cool thing. It was like the initiation for being a true readers. I went through these like nothing. When I ran out of Magic TreeHouse books to borrow from my teacher, I asked my mom to take me to Oakland's Main Library and OH MY GOODNESS. A whole new world opened up before my eyes. The amount of books in the library was like magic to me. ]]> 2022-07-08 15:59:14 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239840783 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239859235 I had a Facebook when Walls were still a thing. Did I lie about my age to create an account? Absolutely. My older cousin had just made one and I followed suit. I was introduced to online connecting, and it was such a concept. I made status updates about what I thought were important.]]> 2022-07-08 16:45:09 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239859235 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239860577 I got bored of the Magic Tree House series at some point, after reading maybe 50 of them, and I got really into Greek Mythology through the Goddess Girls Series. Greek Mythology allowed me to view literacy in a more symbolic way. I remember starting to be more descriptive in the way I spoke and wrote. I would look at the world with more awe, wondering what symbolism and stories were associated with things like.. trees, throughout time and places. ]]> 2022-07-08 16:49:09 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239860577 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239860849 I remember how cool I felt when I learned how to read music. It was the first time I really dove into literary skills that did not involve forming written or verbal words. I learned how to read musical sentences, how to construct musical sentences with notes and, symbols and numbers... I was stuned at how much went into the making/playing of music. It opened my world to music and its connection to the human experience. I remember constantly stopping on busy streets with musicians playing and just appreciating their conveyance of the music language. ]]> 2022-07-08 16:50:01 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239860849 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963635 I started to watch a lot of South Korean dramas during this year. I was exposed to cultural literacy through these dramas, as I watched characters celebrate holidays and participate in practices and customs that I hadn't seen before in the Vietnamese or American cultures. I started to appreciate the modality of subtitles for films, as I relied on closed captioning for my understanding of the Korean language. It was cool to me how I would pick up Korean phrases and gestures just from watching the dramas. It was through Korean dramas that I better grasped the context of a global community. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:31:09 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963635 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963873 Because of my obsession in Korean TV Shows and Entertainment, I took it upon myself to learn how to read and write the Korean Language in my free time. It is the first language I learned that was not in the form of a Romanized alphabet-- even Vietnamese (my native language) used letters. I associated lines and symbols with sounds and meanings. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:14 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963873 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963893 I learned about code swiching in the 8th grade and it expanded my perspective language and interactions. I was also named Valedictorian for my middle school and wrote a speech for the first time. It was empowering to hear the echo of laughter and reactions to words that I strung together for an audience. I also sat and listened to speeches that my peers wrote --- and I teared up. In thinking about texts and emotions, the 8th grade was a period of time that I experienced the strong connection between the two.  ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:20 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963893 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963922 In the first year of high school, I quickly learned that everything had to do with college --- doing XYZ to get a good grade to have a good transcript to get into a good college; participating in XYZ clubs and extra curriculars to look well-rounded for good colleges. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:26 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963922 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963942 I joined Mock Trial during the 10th grade and learned how to craft words to be more convincing or to manipulate language to paint a picture. This "language" included the actual selection of words I spoke, the tones I used while speaking, and the body language I adopted as well. It was really fun, and I liked being the puppet master of language, to play with the understanding of language. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:32 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963942 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963960 AP English: Language and Composition... It was truly the class that taught me how to bullshit essays in less than an hour & to be rewarded and praised for such work. I did learn how to analyze texts in greater depth, practicing the identification and usage of the famous triage of Pathos, Logos, and Ethos. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:37 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963960 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963972 Although I had practiced writing my thoughts and about myself, I hadn't really encountered writing personal statements until I had to for College applications. I remember being so stressed, because I had to write about my life story and ambitions, not just for my own eyes like it usually is, but to strangers I'll never meet who will determine my chances of going to college. It was a struggle for me to convey my life story in a professional context as well, because it was still an application. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:42 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239963972 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964006 Going into university was a culture shock for me. I learned how to read the texts of social interactions, of people's culturally-informed habits, and I was able to pick up on a lot of knowledge surrounding my social interactions. I read the text of privilege, of ignorance, of comfort and discomfort in my social surroundings. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:52 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964006 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964030 Literacy took the form of many mediums during COVID-19 lockdown... I read body language in public spaces to infer how comfortable someone was or wasn't with social distancing, I read the action of reposting online to see how someone felt about the social justice movements of the time, I read the emptiness of the streets as a sign of the bleak times we were in... There were many texts that I read and interpreted that were not written or spoken, and rather felt. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:32:58 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964030 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964047 I took a class called "Culture, Language, and Education" and I discovered that multilingualism was something that was so profound in my educational experience yet something that I barely reflected on. I considered my identity as a bilingual student, and how it has shaped how I interact with other in school. I also learned about the importance of symbolism in labels that we refer to students -- i.e. at risk versus at promise students, achievement gap vs opportunity gap, English Language Learners vs Emergent Multilingual Learners... ]]> 2022-07-08 22:33:05 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964047 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964072 Gaining experience in teaching and lesson planning, I learned about the multi modalities in which text could be presented. I experimented a lot with the modalities of text within my classroom experiences. I was also a research assistant this year, observing students learning for my work. In this role, I learned how to read mundane everyday interactions, dialogue, and gestures and see them through multiple contexts and lenses. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:33:11 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964072 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964088 In grad school currently, I am finding myself learning how to read critically and more skeptically. I find myself asking a lot more questions as I am reading research articles and theoretical pieces, which is personally very exciting. I feel that my literary skills of being able to read the world are growing stronger. ]]> 2022-07-08 22:33:18 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2239964088 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2244315938 It was around this time that I started to really grasp the concept of the fact that I am bilingual, because I started to be "in charge" of filling out all the paperwork for school registrations for myself and my younger sister, as opposed to my mom. My mom's English is pretty good, I would say, in conversations and getting her places she needs. For paperwork, there are just non-everyday words that are complicated to work through. I think my mom started to sense that I was building literacy skills and could understand paperwork lingo, and once I completed them on behalf of her (besides the signatures), I have been relied on to do them all --- even for my younger sister, younger cousins, and even other adults in my mom's circle. I got used to speaking with customer service people over the phone, to accompanying my mom to any appointments, and just translating when I could. I saw the difference in attitudes directed towards my mom and I when speaking to people, based on how fluent-sounding we were in English, too. ]]> 2022-07-15 21:42:12 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2244315938 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2256040983 2022-08-07 04:54:26 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2256040983 monicapham3 https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2256206065 2022-08-07 18:56:46 UTC https://padlet.com/monicapham3/ed234/wish/2256206065