A Little Venting Can't Hurt

"The personal nature of the learning process places a decided responsibility on the teacher" (p. 235)

Do you remember your worst class as a student? After reading Rosenblatt, I could not help but be reminded of mine. Even though I have a BA in English from A&M, hands down, the worst class in the history of my academic life (maybe in the history of all academia) was my British Literature Survey course. Just thinking about it makes my skin prickle a bit as I reluctantly recall the vision of Dr. Johnson standing behind his podium as he methodically trudged through the muck and mire of the Romantic Poets with the emotional intensity of a 2X4. In terms of personality, the man would make Al Gore look like RuPaul. Concrete image: Think Ben Stien in Ferris Buller 10X. Okay, so you get the picture. Bad. . .very, very bad. During his lectures, he would disseminate HIS understanding of the literature in perfect monotone into a microphone that he wore around his neck. Perhaps I'm being too harsh because the class had over eighty students. But good grief, 78 of them were snoozing within five minutes. Suffer from insomnia? We have found the cure. We were never engaged in any discussion, nor were we given the opportunity to express our opinions. We were there to be talked to and to cover the content. The assessments were matching-quizzes which tested our ability to recall factual information in order to prove that we had read the assigned readings. I never truly engaged with the readings like Rosenblatt so eloquently discusses in her book. I merely attempted to prove to the professor that I had read the material and was prepared to perform well on the quiz.

I don't know how Dr. Johnson would have been able to reconcile these issues, however. I'm sure he was a nice man, but perhaps I am indeed being to harsh. How does one hold a organic, authentic discussion of literature with 80+ students? On second thought, I'm not going to let him off the hook so easily. I admit that he was operating from a different pedagogical tradition, but he let us down. If I am able to provide a space for my middle school students to engage in authentic and meaningful transactional experiences with texts, Dr. Johnson should have been able to foster this type of environment in a college classroom. Our responsibility as educators is not to hide behind podiums and preconceived notions of truth but to be "real" with our students and engage them in relevant, meaningful experiences.

Okay, I've gotten off my soapbox, and I'm counting to ten while taking deep breathes.

A Bite of Applebee

"The paradox of knowledge-in-action is that in order to learn something new, one must do what one doesn't know how to do. The way out of this paradox is to realize that learning is a social process: We can learn to do new things by doing them with others" (p. 108).

It seems so obvious doesn't: working with others to learn new things? I think we understand this, but how often does collaboration and cooperation for thinking and learning actually occur in our classrooms? Why? First, it seems to me that much of the systems in place in school are to control thought and behavior. Learning to work in groups effectively requires time and energy. I feel many teachers fear that students will not work well together. Thought and behavior must also be controlled because teachers feel they must cover the cannon, the lists, the TEKS, and/or the TAKS objectives. Teachers have little time to get to everything and also engage in authentic conversations for the purpose of inquiry and discovery. The type of knowledge-in-action instruction Applebee purposes is messy. It doesn't necessarily fit into a nice neat package. Administers like order; the state likes to measure "things". Thus, we find ourselves teaching in the front of the room; students passively "learning" while sitting in their rows.

This year my focus is to encourage my students to work together to discover and learn. I have repositioned myself as a facilitator rather then the expert, and I'm actively instructing my students on how to participate in groups effectively. I strive to have a classroom which is a true apprenticeship into the the academic discourse, but it takes time because my students are not familiar with this way to "do" school, but I teach middle school. . .I have the patience of Job.

Being Smart

This is my 12th start of a school year. I enjoy this time when the new school year awaits like the potential of a blank page (or blog space). Experience has taught me well. I know that if I jump into the "meat" of the curriculum too soon my students will not be as successful. No, these first three weeks have not been about TAKS tests or grades. These first weeks have been about establishing a framework for how we will "be" in this space. What we have learned is essential to the thinking and learning my students and I will do for the rest of the year. Yes, I am starting to feel that gentle tug of anxiety because I have yet to take a "real" grade, but you know, I've decided this year, I'm going to trust the process. I teach children not content. I believe my job is to apprentice my students into the academic discourse, and for many of my students my job is to help bridge the gap between two different worlds.

I have thought quite a bit recently about translation/critical literacy, and my practice is informed by this way of thinking. This year I want to guide my students to learn to think and work together to accomplish tasks. I have been fascinated with this notion of writing as a tool for thinking, learning and getting things done. To help my students understand this way of thinking, last week, I brought in a tool box. For warm-up I displayed the open box on my overhead cart. On the broad, I wrote, "What do you notice?". I then gave each table a different tool and asked them to think together while jotting down several "noticings." After the discussion of the tools: their uses, their surface features, we discussed how writing was also a tool.

The following day, on the board I wrote "Think about this in your writer's notebook: What does 'being smart' mean? How are you smart?". I let the students guide the discussion and only intervened when "talk rules" were being broken. I wish I had videotaped or audiotaped the discussions. I was very pleased with the discussions in both my Pre-AP class and my on-level class about this topic. My students had many definitions of smart. Some students believed that being smart was being quiet, listening to the teacher, and getting their work done while others took the stance that "smart" was making good choices. A few students said that smart came for experience while others challenged this definition thinking that people were born smart. I also got a few other responses that I found interesting. One student said, "I think being smart means a lot of things. It doesn't just mean school smart either; there's other types of smart." Another student said, "I don't think there is a smart or dumb; there's just different ways to look at things." We finally talked about how one way of thinking about being smart is knowing how to use tools in certain ways. We also talked about how we all know how to do things that others might not do. I am certain my students are beginning to think about writing differently after our discussion. I think helping my students look at the practice of writing as a way to get a task done will help to demystify writing and ground my students thinking.

This notion of tool use and intelligence will be the foundation for our inquiry together. I don't believe these revelations would have been possible in a classroom operating from a decoding/analytic literacy paradigm. Now, our district is pushing grade level curriculum alignment for all subject areas. I'm resistant. If we are pushed or pulled (more like yanked) by district policy to align language arts instruction to a specific plan-- that I have to teach a specific TEK on a specific day, I don't think I can continue to stay in this profession. Math is already organized in this way, and we have yet to see improvement. We need to stop being so concerned about covering everything and trust the process. Quality over Quantity, Please!

Myers

Okay. . .so I procrastinated. What else is new? Just finished Myers book while at the same time trying to keep up with today's football games and my fantasy football teams. I'm beginning to think this graduate school thing is really going to conflict with my football addiction. Priorities. Okay, so what does this have to do with Myers? Besides me attempting to communicate in the "expressive mode" by writing in "conversational prose"? Absolutely nothing!!!! (Notice four exclamation points for effect).

I think what most influenced me in Changing Our Minds was the tension between decoding/analytical literacy and translation/critical literacy. I teach, so I live in this tension daily. Although I am committed to creating a learning environment informed by the translational/critical literacy framework, I work with teachers who continue to operate under the decoding/analytical literacy paradigm. In addition, our district continues to insist that teachers teach math from the decoding/analytical literacy perspective. I have so much more to say, but. . . yawn. I promise to expound on my thinking soon.