Teaching in the Contact Zone

While reading this book, I couldn't help but wish I had been in Gaughan's class when I was in 9th grade. I mean, Mrs. Thomas was nice and everything, but for some reason I feel a bit cheated.

Gaughan's classroom promotes the kind of democratic ways of being I want to nurture in my classroom. Teachers who are committed to the well-being of all students must begin to reflect and rethink how and why they teach. Gaughan's book highlights the need for teachers to be aware of the multiple voices in the classroom. By envisioning the classroom as the intersection of multiple ideologies, we begin to become aware that teaching and learning are never neutral. This awareness allows us to engage in conversations that surface underlying assumptions. However, oftentimes, we are pushed by outside forces to focus on the content instead of the person, but Gaughan's book illustrates how powerful engaging students in the academic conversation can be. Gaughan doesn't shy away from the difficult topics and appears to enjoy teaching within "the contact zone." Gaughan's way of teaching is messy and unpredictable, and I fear that for many teachers it is by far easier to hide behind the curriculum then to connect with students in the ways Gaughan suggests.

More "Reconceptualizing. . ."

I just want to say first that I have a huge man-crush on Gee. TMI, perhaps, but I can't help it. My first read in grad school was Gee's Social Linguistics and Literacies, and I've been hooked ever since. Gee's work is relevant and important to schooling reform because he focuses on the "darker aspects" of our capitalist reality and how schooling tends to contribute to social and cultural reproduction. His notion of "Shape-Shifting Portfolio People" informs my practice as I attempt to apprentice my students into the academic discourse (Gee, would that be a "D" or a "d"?). If Gee is correct in his thinking that modern reality requires young people to engage in self-fashioning practices that recreate their identities, students should be provided ample opportunities to engage in such practices. Unfortunately, however, students of privilege tend to participate in self-fashioning acts to gain social capital that will be used for future successes; whereas, working-class students "display themselves as immersed in a world of action and feeling untied to vaunted futures of achievement, transformation, and status" (p. 182). In addition, what I found most surprising was that the upper-middle-class schools in the study did not engage students in social critique and the working-class schools did not engage students in conversations about living in a ever-changing, technological society.

Gee suggests that exposing students to digital literacies may bridge the "divide" between the haves and the have-nots, but alas, in the Wilder and Dressman chapter they show that often teachers and students fail to reap the transformative benefits of technology. The authors argue that students need more explicit instruction in using technology, and the students need to participate in authentic technological tasks.

Reflections on "Reconceptualizing. . ."

"In short, an education within this framework encompasses much more than learning academic subjects; education is the valuing of students' humanity despite any beliefs to the contrary that may exist in society" (p. 111).

"Valuing of students' humanity" seems to be a common thread throughout our readings this week. In particular, this notion of "as if" educational communities struck a chord with me. Having our students who have been marginalized by current schooling practices and ideologies revise and refashion their identity in ways that may empower and engage them truly returns the focus of education back to the students. We must make explicit the common instructional practices which ignore certain student voices and reject certain students by encouraging our students to imagine a different world.

Why haven't I read this book sooner?

Reading When Kids Can't Read has been both engaging and valuable. I found the book to be well-organized, theoretically grounded, and immediately applicable. I will be able to bring many of these strategies into my classroom as soon as tomorrow. I just wish I would have discovered this book sooner.

Beers' argues throughout the book that reading is a process and that teachers cannot simply assume that all students know how to do the complex work that critical reading requires. Much too often, we tend to think that if students have made it to middle school they should "know" how to read. For many of my students, however, reading is not a "lived-experience", and this is where the problem lies. I have a degree in English not in education. I was never taught how to help students improve their reading. My undergraduate coursework focused mainly on reading literature not on ways to help students use literacy as a tool for thinking, learning, and accomplishing tasks.

I don't know how much has changed since I was an undergrad preparing to teach secondary English. I hope there has been a shift in they way pre-service teachers are prepared to work with their students. Hopefully, these new, bright young educators realize that not all students know how to read critically, and they have been given the tools to help their struggling readers succeed. I hope that instead of focusing on the end product they will help their students recognize the complex processes which lead to successful reading. I hope they have already been exposed to the work of Beers, of Rosenblatt, of Vygotsky, of Mercer, of Meyers, of Applebee, of (I could go on). I've waited twelve years; I hope they don't have to wait as long.

Push

My reading has for the past year been grad school heavy. I'm thankful to get the opportunity to read a novel for a change. I entered this reading experience from several perspectives. I read as a lover of literature, a teacher, a grad student, a writer, a middle class white male. I found it interesting how each of my "identities" informed my reading experience, and while I read, I noted my different emotional responses as I experienced the text. This novel hit me in the viscera. At times I was absolutely repulsed by what I read. While other times, my eyes teared. How different this story would be if told from the third person.

How YOU do'in?

"The question arises: to what extent do environmental pressures-- home, school, societal-- lead the child to focus attention on the efferent handling of language and to push the richly fused cognitive-affective matrix to the fringes of consciousness?" (40).

I was drawn to this question while reading Rosenblatt. Current school culture dictates efferent thinking. Weekly (or daily) bundling (read: bungling) of curriculum, teaching to the test, rubrics, multiple choice tests, etc all contribute to developing a habit of mind which encourages students to detach personally from the learning experience. I can not help but be reminded of Applebee's notion of knowledge out of context and his discussion on the listing of curriculum. When we privilege quality over quality, students have a tendency to reject schooling. I understand why the schooling culture has developed this way, but I don't have to like it, and I will do my part to counter this myopic system by returning the "heart" to my classroom.

I spent the entire morning on Saturday bundling the 6th grade Language Arts TEKS into weekly plans. The district now wants us to make a specific TEKS our weekly focus. On Mondays, they want us to collaborate as a 6th grade Language Arts team. By Friday, we must turn in a plan which outlines how we will teach and assess the specific weekly TEKS. We have been told that they want to be able to walk into our rooms and see the same instruction occurring. Yeah right!

I'm not done thinking this out, but alas I must go and plan with my team; it's Monday. [Insert pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth here]

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.