Blog Number Uno!

Hey, Hello, and Hola! I am Robin Alfaro and I pretty sure that if you're an English Subject Matter major, you've had me for a class or two. I'm an English Subject Matter major of course and a Central American Studies Major. I have a great passion for both subjects. English because ever since I was a little girl l'd rather spend time reading a book than infront of a T.V. screen, and Central American Studies because I am Central American (Salvadoran) and I love learning about my own history. I have the most horrible grammar if you can't already tell. I guess that's one of my fears when it comes to being a teacher. I'm sure one day a student will ask me why something is wrong and I'll stand there with a blank face and shrug. However, I will work towards fixing that. Another thing I guess is that I am going to get punked around by the high school kids. I was such a jerk to some of my teachers that I'm sure that karma will have to run it's course. However, I hope to be able, not to just teach kids about literature and writing but help them build a passion for it. I want my class to be an open forum where we learn about ideas and world issues. Then I want to trick them into writing and responding to readings using those same ideas. I'm probably not making much sense but I had a teacher that got us into literature and writing that way.
The reason that I want to become a teacher is because growing up in LAUSD I had way way way too many crappy teachers. Teachers didn't care about us and they were always mean and bitter. So after years of being horrible at math (because no math teacher wanted to deal with me) and being horrible at writing (because every teacher claimed that we should know how to do this already), I decided that no kid deserved such bad teachers and therefore I would try my hardest to be a great one.
How will technology play a role? Hmmm... besides having kids talk bad about me on MySpace? Well, I guess things like YouTube have opened up a lot of doors. Videos of poets reading their work can be streamed, that way you get a sense of the way the poem is really suppose to sound. Homework can now be posted online so that you can't say "I forgot to write it down". Power Point makes lecturing and presentations much more interesting. I'm not sure but the possibilities today are endless.
It's sad to hear about the buget cuts and pink slips that are harming LAUSD. I'm just hoping that by the time I am ready to get in there all this is cleared up. The good thing about being a teacher is that I guess you can move around and most likley you'll find a job. But I really want to stay in L.A because this is where I was born and raised and I really wouldn't be who I am with out it.