The Typical.

I feel as though English majors are one of those majors grouped into the little stereotype of uselessness...like philosophy and Liberal Arts.
I'm also kind of not happy about my English major status equaling me to being a Shakespeare freak. For the record I don't even like Shakespeare. I think he is overrated and I don't care if Phebe Jensen knows it or not.
This is why I plan on using lots of different texts in my classroom. Including (gasp!) graphic novels. My multicultural American literature class showed me that just because I thought graphic novels were for weirdos that they could in fact be literature. I wish I would have had that experience prior to my freshman year of college, because believe me I think I would have been a lot more open to books if I had a teacher like that.
I plan on being that teacher, the one that shows their students that literature isn't just Shakespeare and Hemingway.
I think my most unpleasant reading experience in English had to be trying to muddle my way through Derek Walcott's Omeros. I didn't even read the whole thing. I gave up on it. I know he won a Nobel Prize and all, but that book was the bane of my existence. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of his other works, including his plays. The guy just shouldn't write an entire book of epic poetry that is unintelligible. I keep thinking that someday I might actually attempt to read it again, just to say I had done it, but then I remember we were supposed to read it twice in my World Writers class (yes it was assigned TWICE) and I didn't even get through it once, so I shoot down that idea.
I think that maybe it would help my students to know that even I, who love English, struggle with texts sometimes. It might make me seem a little more human to them.

Affective Dimensions of Reading

I tend to think of myself as a "good reader". I've always loved to read and I don't really remember a time where there wasn't a book I was currently reading. When I was younger I was somewhat closed minded when it came to reading, I wanted to read novels and never non-fiction. As I've gotten older and expanded my horizons a little bit, I have a better idea of the books I enjoy the most, but I rarely shoot books down because of their genre.
I really love to just sit down with a good book and read all day. There is something about reading for hours on end that still seems very productive, even if it is just for pleasure. Lately I've been doing a lot of reading at the gym. Technology is amazing and my Kindle makes it very easy to read while I'm biking without worrying about dragging a huge book around.
I think I enjoy reading so much because it is an escape. I find that I read more when my life is stressful or something is upsetting me. It helps calm me and it sometimes even makes me think about how small my problems really are comparatively.
I want there to be a large library in my classroom for students to explore. I know that everyone can enjoy reading in some capacity, but we need to make sure that students have a variety of genres available to them. My books may be different from what they may find in the school library and since my discipline is English, reading outside of the classroom will be strongly encouraged. I try to avoid forcing kids to read aloud in my classroom though. My dad is dyslexic and struggled through school because he was always nervous to read aloud in case he got words mixed up, etc. I want my classroom to be a safe zone where students feel comfortable reading aloud if they would like, but they are not forced to do so.

Affective Dimensions of Writing

One of the things that really drew me to majoring in English was the fact that I loved to write. I really wanted to be a writer, but there's not a lot of money there unless you're J.K. Rowling. So I decided to become a teacher, and share my love of writing and hopefully continue to do it on the side.
I've always written stories. I remember the first story I wrote and it had all of my friends in it and I was so sure that it was the best story and was going to be published someday. I was in second grade and the story was about an evil snowman, so needless to say it probably won't escape the notebook it was written in. Today I write a lot for my classes and so most of my creative writing has been pushed to the back burner between school and work.
 One of the classes I enjoyed the most was a creative fiction writing class. The entire class was based on the grades received from two short stories you wrote throughout the semester. For each story you had to print off copies for the entire class and they would go home and read and comment on them and then you would come to class the next time and have a discussion about your work. This was terrifying to me, but also wonderful because it helped me get out of my comfort zone. The feedback was validating and helpful. I appreciated that my classmates respected me as a writer and looked at my story seriously. Sometimes the criticism was hard to hear, but hearing the criticism as well as the compliments helped make my stories better. I hope that someday in my classroom I can foster the environment of respect that was in that classroom which allowed people to share their ideas freely and really help students become better writers.