Hi everyone! My name is Drew Lehman, and I am in my third year of undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee majoring in Secondary English Education. I have always been a fan of reading and writing and have always done well in school and enjoyed watching others succeed in school as well. I am particularly fond of helping people focus on their grammar and working out their sentences to create a better flow in their essays. Although this may be what I enjoy the most, I am fond of the other topics that make up English Education. During my spare time away from class and homework, I enjoy binge-watching Netflix, hanging out with my friends/boyfriend, and shopping!! The last series that I watched was The Vampire Diaries, then followed it up with the show The Originals, and now I am watching the spin-off from that, Legacies. Even though based on these last three series, I enjoy all kinds of shows, not just the ones with vampires. I also have the guilty pleasure of watching reality TV each week, so the current show for that is The Bachelor which is on once a week.
My experience with reading and writing has always been positive, I just do not always have the time for it because school keeps me busy. School is important to me so that always comes first before fun activities. Growing up, I liked the idea of writing for fun more than I do today and enjoyed reading fanfiction back in the day. The platform I liked had stories written by inspiring authors, so you could read and/or write on the platform if you chose and a lot of my friends were also familiar with the app and enjoyed reading for fun on it as well. The platform was digital, I had an app for it on my phone which helped me experience reading online as well as offline with actual books. Most of my experiences with things have been in school, specifically in high school. I was always one of the few students in my English classrooms who would read the assigned books so at times I would have to help fellow peers if they were confused about the book since they were not as engaged in it as I was. I also would help my friends edit their papers and sit in the tutoring center at times. I was also a part of the yearbook during my junior and senior years, so I would help create captions for the photos and stories and interview people which I really enjoyed.
Being in Secondary English Education, I have been in quite a few classes that had topics that were brand new to me such as zines and close reading which were both classes I took last semester. Both these concepts as well as others from past classes would be great things to incorporate in my own classroom one day, whether that be in the middle school setting or the high school setting! If students were to learn about new and fun concepts involved with their learning at a younger age, I think it would be very beneficial for them and would love to be a part of that. That is also why I am very excited to see what new material I will learn in this class to carry on the digital aspect into my teaching.
Overall, I am excited to see where the future brings me. I love the idea of being able to travel when I can and make the most out of life since you never know when something like a world pandemic will mess everything up. Living every day to the fullest, even if it is just playing a board game and having fun doing that, means a lot to me and I hope to continue doing that!
Hi Drew! I can definitely relate to being the friend who always helped revise papers in high school. I remember my friends would always ask me to look over their essays, but when I look back on the revising I used to do it was definitely not what I know to be "good tutoring" now. Luckily, through our zine class last semester I have learned a lot about how to collaborate and work on revisions in a more productive manner. Also, since we were both in the close reading class last semester I can relate to how weird it felt to be learning something completely new in my third year of undergrad where English Education is my major. But, both of those classes taught me a great deal of new things and so I am grateful for the struggle they put us through. Also, your selfie mashup looks great!
ReplyDeleteHi, Drew! I really like the layout of your MashUp - "The Outsiders" was one of my favorite books growing up, and I'm obsessed with New Girl! I'm interested in learning more about "zines", so hopefully you can help guide those of us who are unfamiliar with that and show us the ropes of making those. It sounds like you have a lot of great ideas for multimodal learning in your future classroom! -Elizabeth
ReplyDeleteIt's so great hearing how much you enjoyed school and English growing up. This passion definitely plays a role in how we interact with our students, and hopefully your love of reading will translate and inspire them to find what makes them want to read! I also think that, like Kim pointed out, some of the newer skills we have learned throughout our undergrad will be great to apply in our secondary classrooms since students will benefit from being introduced to these essential skills (like close reading) earlier than we were.
ReplyDeleteAlso, looooove big brother and Tangled. I haven't been keeping up with Big Brother as much since the most recent seasons have been pretty lack-luster, but I have so many great memories watching it with my family every summer growing up!