Hi there! My name is Lexi Hartley and I am starting the MA program in English at Cortland part-time this fall. In my full-time life, I am a certified Secondary Social Studies teacher and I work as a Humanities Teacher at the Lehman Alternative Community School in Ithaca. I have lived upstate for four years; before that, I taught English internationally in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and studied History, ESOL and Social Studies Education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. I have the great privilege of teaching at a school where all our classes are thematic, so my classes vary, but my favorite classes and topics to teach are Black history and literature, Holocaust and genocide history / literature, and Middle Eastern politics and literature. This year, I’m doing more middle school classes than I usually teach, so I’m both quite excited to reconnect with my students and also very excited to be with adults discussing literature and theory at least once a week. It feels a little weird to be back in school as I think I’d count as a “mature student” at this point, but since I teach interdisciplinary English classes at my school, I’m hoping to get NYS Certified in teaching English as well as Social Studies and more importantly, build my content knowledge to be a better teacher for all my students! I was excited to take this class online both for the obvious pandemic reasons but also to explore new methods of online learning, as I enjoyed teaching online in the spring more than I thought I would.
I’m glad that Danica posted an image of her cat, so I can share pictures of Nog, our very fluffy and majestic diva / cat! You all will probably meet Nog soon as she likes trying to swat at my computer and camera when I’m in an online class (it’s basically the only time when she’s not hungry that she acknowledges my existence). When I’m not being ignored by Nog, I enjoy hiking with my spouse and watercolor painting, which a hobby that I started rather recently. I’ve shared an image of one of my paintings. Before this summer, the last time I did art was probably in an art class in middle school, but I’m finding it’s really liberating to be an absolute beginner and completely untalented at something–it makes any progress really gratifying and gives me a good sense of how my students might feel. I’ve also been trying to read a lot more fiction this summer than usual, so I’ve posted an image of Mornings in Jenin, my favorite book that I read this summer, which was written by Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa.
In terms of this class, two topics that I would like to learn a little more about:
- As a white, straight, cisgender female educator teaching in a primarily white institution, what resources can I use to meaningfully engage my middle and high-school aged students in topics of race, class, and gender?
- As a reader, I am naturally drawn to fiction more than nonfiction, which is something that I find that I share with my students. I’m curious about how to connect the topics that we will be discussing in class with fiction, especially fiction that I have taught or might be teaching. Finally, how do we connect our emotions and epxeriences whilst reading fiction about the “before times” while we are living in COVID times?
Now of course, what everyone has been waiting for– cat photos!
Hi Lexi, thank you for sharing all of this! Those flowers are stunning — I don’t have an artistic bone in my body and am completely in awe of people who can draw and paint. Also, Nog is always welcome in our class and it looks like she’ll be in great company.
We’ll talk more about your excellent questions when we meet for the first time on August 31. Looking forward to it!
Hi Lexi,
Most importantly Nog is beautiful! I’m glad my cats aren’t the only ones who wreak havoc during online classes. As soon as I open a notebook or my computer my cats see a seat 🙂 I love your daffodils they look really good. It must be a quarantine thing cause I got back into art recently too.
Looking forward to getting to know you 🙂
Hello Lexi,
Nog is a beautiful diva cat and I hope to see her in class. Your watercolor painting is lovely. I really admire watercolor painting as it’s something I’d like to get better at doing. I think that having thematic classes like the school you teach at has is uber interesting. I would have loved if such a variety of selections were available to me back then.
It’s nice to meet you! ^.^
Lexi,
I really connected with your writing when you talked about how liberating it can feel to be a beginner at something, and then to see your progress start to come to be. Over the summer and in these past few months, I have done the same sort of thing with golf! Yes, golf may jump off the page as the most exciting sport to some people, but I have become obsessed with it, and I really enjoy trying to make progress and better my score. I also connected with your writing when you talked about preferring fiction over nonfiction. I do like nonfiction, but I also really like stories and storytelling, and creating those or reading what stories others have created is something I enjoy. I also often think about how to connect certain topics, like the ones we are going to have in this class about race, gender, and sexuality, with the stories and readings I might teach my students — it’s not as easy as it seems, especially when considering just getting students to not talk to each other during class can be challenge enough.