In the third chapter on page 54, Parmar and Krinsky talk about closing the “home-school literacy divide” and this really made me think of the Twitter activities that Gallagher talked about on page 26.  While this can be used to expand upon the concept of a six-word memoir, it can also be used to summarize, condense, or restate material from class in a way that relates to students’ lives.  You could have a class Twitter-esque page and assign tweets as class- or homework.  I see a lot of possibilities with bringing in real-world “literacies” into the classroom so that students can better relate to and engage with the content, but this is just one idea and connection that stuck out to me. 

On another note, page five has a segment from a student who has concerns and complaints about state testing. His point hit very close to what we have been talking about in my equity and diversity class. He mentions how all students are tested at the same level, but not everyone can do well on those tests because they are all not on the same level. This brings up the argument regarding equity versus equality. Giving everyone the same level of education is equality, however there are those students who need a little extra help. If they don’t receive that help they will just fall further behind than they already are. Equity on the other hand is understanding that everyone needs different opportunities/resources to reach the same goal, in this case the ability to pass state standardized tests and graduate. Future educators need to adjust their curriculum and teaching to incorporate various means of learning as students are all on different levels of their education. As much as it would be easy to move through your lessons at the pace you set, many students can fall behind if they never had a basis of knowledge before that lesson was introduced to them. Understanding this issue and reaching out to get the necessary help and resources makes all the difference to your students and education. Gallagher's writing activities could be used as an activity to gauge how all of your students are doing, and then work with each student giving the necessary feedback and critique for growth based on the level that they are at. Each student will progress in various increments, but this will allow you as an educator to break down the problems areas and taking the essential steps needed to get all students to the ultimate end goal.

In general, I think that doing real-world writing, particularly writing that helps students insert themselves into the topics being explored, will help them critically analyze difficult topics. For example, having students write and share their own personalized “Unwritten Rules” (Gallagher 75) while reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian might help them think critically about race. I know that I always thought more deeply about what we were reading when I could think about my own relationship to it (or even my own society’s relationship to it), and Gallagher gives examples of many personalized, real-world writing activities. 

On page 47 the book brings up other alternative texts such as Japanese comics also known as manga. While personally I enjoy various mangas and animes (cartoon adaptations of manga) I would point out that probably part of the reason they haven’t made it to the classroom is the plot structures they follow. Similar to American comics they are released in small pieces and the storytelling can be very drawn out making it difficult to fit into a classroom schedule. Add to that the difficulty of finding popular mangas with English translations that also have significant literary “merit” and I feel like our effort as teachers is better served elsewhere. I would suggest looking at Chinese or Korean light novels instead.  Though if you’re looking for a visual piece to watch FLCL (Also found as Furi Kuri, or Fooly Cooly) is a piece worth examining and has a total run time under 3 hours. I’ll post a link of where you can watch it below, but I also own a hard copy of it for anyone interested. 
http://kissanime.ru/Anime/FLCL

            I really liked Parmar and Krinsky’s mention of the student voice in the ELA classroom (15). All they really did was ask for feedback from a group of students about their least favorite activity in their classroom. This feedback could help you decide what activities are important to the students. This gives them the power over their own learning and many students respond well to that. I also enjoyed the portion that talked about cultural literacy because I think that’s something we have talked about in many of our classes to this point (37). Using activities such as “My Neighborhood Spot” (Gallagher 35), “What My Childhood Tasted Like” (Gallagher 44), or a “Top Ten List” (Gallagher 55) would help you learn more about your students’ backgrounds and what they hold important to them; it also helps teach expressive and reflective writing. Using this information, we can better find literature to use in the classroom that fits with the standards we are trying to reach and also connects to the students’ lives. This way they feel like what they are doing in school is useful and relevant to their life outside of school. It also helps teach a very important aspect of ELA, writing. I think we could launch students' learning by letting students write about things they know and are important to them. From there, we build upon their skills to more professional settings while still letting them choose topics they care about.  

It’s clear, with all of this in mind, why some schools are failing while others flourish, especially at a high school level. When we are just teaching to targets, our students don’t really care about the lesson. We are choosing high-stakes testing over our students’ education to keep our schools funded. We are not teaching for the underscoring African Americans or Hispanics because we don’t feel they will reach that proficiency, so why waste our time? Why teach to those who know how to write the five-paragraph paper—they already get it. We need to change the way we access students to change this system.  

            High stakes testing has forced a lot of educators to abandon creative and individualized instruction to focus more of test material. In light of this, it is still important to find ways to reach the children beyond test preparation. Priva & Krinsky note that creating your own assessments, collect, record and report your own data along with the state testing will be helpful in determine students’ ability (pg. 11). They also noted the transition of historical ELA practices and how culture is playing a role in how students learn. Taking the information from these chapters and applying it to my own pedagogy collectively will help me to be a better prepared educator. 

As for chapter three, I enjoyed the discussion of pop culture and teaching to a student’s world and surroundings and understanding that allowing them to draw from multiple and various cultures is extremely beneficial and important not only in their growth as scholars, but as people.  Throughout high-school I remember my teachers using relevant technology such as twitter feeds, facebook pages, podcasts, youtube, etc. to highlight pop culture and relate the “teenage world” we were familiar with to whatever it was we were learning about.  I think this would be a great way to engage students and even to highlight societal problems that could lead to their learning about diversity and inclusion, all the while incorporating standards.

I love how the text mentions video games and the benefits of it because I took a course last semester where all we did was play an online game, we selected an avatar, shopped for the avatar, and lived through the avatar. Because I am old fashion this course seemed like a waste of my time, however, reflecting back, similar to the text, I can see how this same online game implemented and “developed brain development, skills such as critical thinking, choice making, understanding of demographic and plot construction. “(pg 42) In addition, we only communicated via messenger which if held accountable, we could’ve enforced writing rules. None the less, even in Universities technology has a higher demand and is being put to use. Should that change in 10 years, even with our license and all of this teaching, educators absolutely have to adapt. It’s so necessary for students to feel like their classroom does equip them for the real world and feels like a place relatable to their everyday life. (Video game, blogs, vlogs, videos, YouTube and online streaming)