One of the biggest problems I have with writing that happens in schools is that it is not authentic. Students write because they have to, they write to a specific assignment, and the teacher is the only person who reads the writing. No wonder kids don't enjoy writing. One of my goals as a high school English teacher was for my students to think of themselves as writers by the end of the year. And to do that, they have to actually write, make decisions about their own writing, and share their writing with real people. As I read Randy Bomer's chapters on "People Who Make Things," I kept wanting to high-five him because he describes student writing that is real and purposeful.
Dr. Bomer addresses the need for a real audience; he mentions that students sometimes don't write well because they know that there is no real purpose behind the writing (p.200), and he stresses the need for publishing. I like the idea of having publishing "events" and the analogy of the teacher being like a director helping kids get ready for a play. During one personal writing unit each year, my classroom looked like what Dr. Bomer describes; students kept notebooks, met in writing groups, created and designed their own pieces, and created a class magazine at the end. The publishing day was one of my favorite of the year. But why did I not create that environment for all types of writing? Publishing really must be part of each piece of writing. Chapter 14, "Teaching Toward Participation in Digital Culture," made me think about publishing in ways I had not before. I tend to be a pen and paper kind of person, so I often forget all that we can do with our new literacies. (I am so inspired that I even tried creating links in this blog post!)
He also describes a shift in teacher thinking and purpose: "The key is to make students responsible for making decisions, but to teach actively what they need to know to make good decisions" (p.171). Rather than giving students assignments, we teach them to make their own decisions about writing. Last week in my Teaching Composition class, my writing group started talking about the difference between a prompt and an idea-generator. We thought that an idea-generator could be used anytime while a prompt could not; for example, thinking about a person (p.188) could help a writer get started writing anytime but eventually lead to their own topic while "write about the time you showed courage" could not.
When I taught more school-based forms of writing, I often gave students specific strategies, such as ways to generate ideas for a given assignment, ways to outline ideas, ways to organize different kinds of essays. One of my questions is if we teach students in a workshop model, what will be their experience when they go into a more teacher-directed classroom? Will they know how to sift through and respond to an assignment? I have been thinking quite a bit over my teaching life how to build curriculum around students, how to teach analysis in a meaningful way, and how to teach grammar in a way that doesn't make my students hate me. The kind of inquiry that I have read about in Katie Wood Ray's Study Driven and that Dr. Bomer describes in Ch. 13 has shown me a way to do each of those things.
One of the pieces of Dr. Bomer's book that I found most interesting was about language use. I wrote in an earlier post that we may need to call our subject Language Arts rather than English, and I thought that again while reading Building Adolescent Literacy. Students should use all of their languages while writing in their notebooks and for audiences. I think teachers and students do need to think about how they can use different languages to send different messages and serve different purposes. Then academic English becomes one of many possible languages, and our subject becomes less about English and more about language use.
Another favorite idea from Dr. Bomer: "Grading does not equal teaching. Furthermore, when a writer has finished a piece of writing, that's not the best moment to teach him what he needed to know to write it" (p.219). So logical but so often not the case.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms
I've been coming back to the the same question throughout this semester: what is the purpose of the study of English? I agree with Randy Bomer that is about more than preparing kids for college. We can't do school just to get students ready for more school. What about life after all that? What is the purpose of teaching reading and writing in school if students will not do those kinds of reading and writing in their real lives? If our purpose is to help students build independent literate lives, then the way we "do English" absolutely has to look different.
Starting with the whole-class novel. I have to admit that there are novels that I believe are so amazing and life-changing that I think all kids need to read them. But really? This question about what your reading life will be like once you are out of college struck me (p.71). I stopped reading outside of school once I got to high school and college. I stopped thinking of myself as a reader, and I didn't really have a reading life. My school reading certainly didn't support my own reading life outside of school or even ask me to think about such a life. But isn't that what we want--for kids to see themselves as readers and writers? We need "a curriculum that actually aims directly for these goals rather than hoping for them as a magical outcome of doing something completely different" (p.71). That makes so much sense, so why don't we teach that way?
Katherine Bomer often says that we must teach the writer, not the writing. I think that Randy Bomer is saying much the same thing about reading: teach the reader, not the reading. We have spent too much time in classroom teaching texts, teaching the reading of a certain text. But we have often neglected to teach the reader how to make his or her thinking explicit and how to take those mental actions from one text to the next. I like that these are not strategies that students "put on" their reading, but ways to recognize and refine what they already do when they interact with texts.
It makes so much sense that readers will not get better at reading by holding books in their hands that are too hard for them. It sounds like common sense, but schools subject students to this kind of reading instruction all the time. We absolutely have to cut out the experiences that are hurting kids. I'm not sure why some teachers feel like the more difficult the text, the better it is.
I like the idea of beginning the school year with listening to students talk about their literate lives and investigating their reading and writing lives. I also like the teaching of conversation (and think it's necessary, especially if talk is such a central part of the classroom).
My last post was about Appleman's Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading, and she has a similar argument that all readers struggle depending on the text and that readers need to have explicit instruction in reading in the context of literature instruction. I feel like Dr. Bomer fills in the pieces that seemed to be missing in Appleman's book, yet I think they had very different purposes and goals for their writing. One way that Dr. Bomer differs from Appleman is in his warning to teachers about including too many activities around reading, too many low-quality assignments. I think Dr. Bomer may feel that a text message conversation between Romeo and Juliet may be one such assignment.
I have also been guilty of being "activity-driven." It's hard to part with the "assignment mania" (p.123) when each lesson plan demands that students demonstrate the day's learning objective. My APs constantly asked us, "How do you know the kids got it?" We feel pressure to have students show what they learned, to produce tangible proof of their learning. But I agree that we need to reduce that clutter around reading. I am wondering, though, about assessment of reading aside from the notebook. I suppose the types of writing in chapter 9 could be assessed, but I would like a bit more on what to do with the unpleasant reality of grades and assessment.
Some favorite snippets:
"Banning literacy from the school day is a bad idea" (p.13). Ha, ha! yet, we do this all the time.
"I want students, through their literacy, to...be able to critique the world as it is, so that they can also imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities" (p.8).
Starting with the whole-class novel. I have to admit that there are novels that I believe are so amazing and life-changing that I think all kids need to read them. But really? This question about what your reading life will be like once you are out of college struck me (p.71). I stopped reading outside of school once I got to high school and college. I stopped thinking of myself as a reader, and I didn't really have a reading life. My school reading certainly didn't support my own reading life outside of school or even ask me to think about such a life. But isn't that what we want--for kids to see themselves as readers and writers? We need "a curriculum that actually aims directly for these goals rather than hoping for them as a magical outcome of doing something completely different" (p.71). That makes so much sense, so why don't we teach that way?
Katherine Bomer often says that we must teach the writer, not the writing. I think that Randy Bomer is saying much the same thing about reading: teach the reader, not the reading. We have spent too much time in classroom teaching texts, teaching the reading of a certain text. But we have often neglected to teach the reader how to make his or her thinking explicit and how to take those mental actions from one text to the next. I like that these are not strategies that students "put on" their reading, but ways to recognize and refine what they already do when they interact with texts.
It makes so much sense that readers will not get better at reading by holding books in their hands that are too hard for them. It sounds like common sense, but schools subject students to this kind of reading instruction all the time. We absolutely have to cut out the experiences that are hurting kids. I'm not sure why some teachers feel like the more difficult the text, the better it is.
I like the idea of beginning the school year with listening to students talk about their literate lives and investigating their reading and writing lives. I also like the teaching of conversation (and think it's necessary, especially if talk is such a central part of the classroom).
My last post was about Appleman's Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading, and she has a similar argument that all readers struggle depending on the text and that readers need to have explicit instruction in reading in the context of literature instruction. I feel like Dr. Bomer fills in the pieces that seemed to be missing in Appleman's book, yet I think they had very different purposes and goals for their writing. One way that Dr. Bomer differs from Appleman is in his warning to teachers about including too many activities around reading, too many low-quality assignments. I think Dr. Bomer may feel that a text message conversation between Romeo and Juliet may be one such assignment.
I have also been guilty of being "activity-driven." It's hard to part with the "assignment mania" (p.123) when each lesson plan demands that students demonstrate the day's learning objective. My APs constantly asked us, "How do you know the kids got it?" We feel pressure to have students show what they learned, to produce tangible proof of their learning. But I agree that we need to reduce that clutter around reading. I am wondering, though, about assessment of reading aside from the notebook. I suppose the types of writing in chapter 9 could be assessed, but I would like a bit more on what to do with the unpleasant reality of grades and assessment.
Some favorite snippets:
"Banning literacy from the school day is a bad idea" (p.13). Ha, ha! yet, we do this all the time.
"I want students, through their literacy, to...be able to critique the world as it is, so that they can also imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities" (p.8).
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Adolescent Literacy & the Teaching of Reading
Reading = a constellation of critical reasoning skills targeted toward knowledge construction; a way of encountering the world and making sense of it (p.38)
Deborah Appleman's opening argument in Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading is that literature teachers don't think of themselves as reading teachers. I absolutely agree and have had many moments in the classroom when I felt at a loss to teach reading skills. I learned how to analyze literature and how to help kids learn to analyze literature, but I never learned how to teach reading. I think it's hard too for lifelong readers (the English teacher types) to think about what happens as we read because it has become a natural process.
English teachers do tend to teach books rather than how to read them; the first time I had this revelation was when I read Kelly Gallagher's (2004) book Deeper Reading. He says, "If we simply assign writing instead of teaching students how to write, we'll get poor writing. If we simply assign reading instead of teaching students how to read, we'll get poor reading" (p.7). I have felt strongly about teaching writing to students rather than just assigning essays, yet I did not do the same with reading. I eventually realized that I expected students to be able to come to class ready to discuss symbolism, characterization, etc., but how were they supposed to do that after one reading of a difficult text? It really wasn't fair--I had read the book about 5 or more times to their one (probably quick) reading. I started giving students small sheets of paper to use as bookmarks but that also gave them a heads up as to what would be the focus of our discussion the next day. Then they did not have to attend to everything in the reading all at once on a first read through.
I rethought that strategy, however, as I was reading Adolescent Literacy because she finds that students need to engage in the transaction that Rosenblatt described and then name what they do naturally as readers. If I give my students a guide to reading, am I inhibiting them from noticing how they naturally read and work their way through a text?
I absolutely agree that what students can do with a text is more important than what they know about it. This stance would change many high school exams that test knowledge of novels with questions on quotation identification, plot details, and so on. The transfer of skills would be so much more possible; everyone forgets details about books, but if we know how to work through a difficult text, then we can use those skills with other books later on.
I like Appleman's claim that every reader is at some point proficient and at some point struggling. I agree that struggle really is not the issue--we will all find texts that we struggle with at one point or another. It is knowing what to do in those spots of difficulty that matters. Last semester I was with a group of students who told me from the beginning that they were not readers. They hated reading. I wanted them to see that they do read, just maybe in contexts that they hadn't thought about. I brought in a text message, a football play, and a baseball score box. Most of my students could easily read all three. I could read only the text message and had no idea how to interpret the other two. If we can open up what "text" means in our classrooms, I think students will see that they are readers and that all readers struggle with different kinds of texts.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
How English Teachers Get Taught
I really enjoyed reading How English Teachers Get Taught: Methods of Teaching the Methods Class by Smagorinsky & Whiting (1995). It is interesting to think about how teachers learn to teach but at this point for me, even more interesting to think about how methods course professors learn to teach teachers.
I strongly agree with Smagorinsky & Whiting that the methods class needs to be theoretically informed. Coming out of college, I did not feel like I had this theoretical background; I knew of quite a few activities to use in the classroom, but it was not until grad school that I started reading about the theories behind those approaches. I have always liked to know the why behind things, so I wanted to know why certain classroom strategies were better than others--I wanted to see the big picture. I do think that too many teachers go into teaching with a "bag of tricks," while they need to have an "understanding of teaching and leaning that can inform their decisions" (p.18) and not know only how to use the "tricks" in their bags, but also why and when. I agree as well that students need to read the theorists themselves rather than other authors' summaries (p.109). Teachers need to have this professional knowledge to be informed practitioners who are engaged in inquiry and everyday learning and research.
I also like the idea of including conflicting theories in the methods class but making those contradictions clear and explicit.
Another piece of the methods class that I believe is essential is the synthesis of knowledge. Planning individual lessons is a helpful skill, but students must learn how to organize larger instructional units. I think that students even need to plan semesters or years so that they learn how to see an overarching plan, a big picture, a larger purpose for each unit and day of instruction. Teachers need to know where they are headed and know their own big goals for themselves and their students (these should also be informed by theory and teaching philosophy).
A piece of teaching that I think may sometimes be left out of methods classes is assessment. I know that my classes focused on setting up instruction and carrying out those plans but did not spend time on how to assess student learning. Assessment is such a tricky topic that I can see why it might be avoided; however, it is for that reason that pre-service teachers should read and talk about it.
One question I have is how much do we prepare students for the system that is and how much do we prepare them to change or subvert that system? If we take on a Piagetian approach that works from the assumption that the teacher is not a diagnostician and remedialist, what will happen when our students go into our standards-based schools in which they are expected to diagnose and remediate?
I strongly agree with Smagorinsky & Whiting that the methods class needs to be theoretically informed. Coming out of college, I did not feel like I had this theoretical background; I knew of quite a few activities to use in the classroom, but it was not until grad school that I started reading about the theories behind those approaches. I have always liked to know the why behind things, so I wanted to know why certain classroom strategies were better than others--I wanted to see the big picture. I do think that too many teachers go into teaching with a "bag of tricks," while they need to have an "understanding of teaching and leaning that can inform their decisions" (p.18) and not know only how to use the "tricks" in their bags, but also why and when. I agree as well that students need to read the theorists themselves rather than other authors' summaries (p.109). Teachers need to have this professional knowledge to be informed practitioners who are engaged in inquiry and everyday learning and research.
I also like the idea of including conflicting theories in the methods class but making those contradictions clear and explicit.
Another piece of the methods class that I believe is essential is the synthesis of knowledge. Planning individual lessons is a helpful skill, but students must learn how to organize larger instructional units. I think that students even need to plan semesters or years so that they learn how to see an overarching plan, a big picture, a larger purpose for each unit and day of instruction. Teachers need to know where they are headed and know their own big goals for themselves and their students (these should also be informed by theory and teaching philosophy).
A piece of teaching that I think may sometimes be left out of methods classes is assessment. I know that my classes focused on setting up instruction and carrying out those plans but did not spend time on how to assess student learning. Assessment is such a tricky topic that I can see why it might be avoided; however, it is for that reason that pre-service teachers should read and talk about it.
One question I have is how much do we prepare students for the system that is and how much do we prepare them to change or subvert that system? If we take on a Piagetian approach that works from the assumption that the teacher is not a diagnostician and remedialist, what will happen when our students go into our standards-based schools in which they are expected to diagnose and remediate?
More Thoughts on Culture, Literacy, and Learning
I have been thinking about Lee's book since last week's class discussion. I have recently read Winn & Johnson's (2011) Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom, and I have found what I was looking for in Lee's text. Winn and Johnson state, "Culturally relevant pedagogy is not merely an invitation for students to explore their lived experiences, ideas, and communities, but it can provide ways to map these individual experences onto a global platform" (p.27). They further explain that culturally relevant pedagogy "seeks to allow students to examine and question sociocultural and sociopolitical realities that affect their lives" (p.22). This is the piece that I feel is missing in Lee's cultural data sets. She brings student's prior knowledge and cultures into the classroom, but once the students move to the analysis of "academic" texts, the process stops. It seems like the process needs to move back into students' lives for the learning to be relevant. The students now know how to perform close readings of literature--so what? How will that enable students to look more critically at their lives, their world, and work to change their world? I feel like there needs to be a larger purpose than just analyzing literature.
I am also becoming more and more wary of using a New Critical framework for teaching literature. (And this is coming from someone who used that very framework for years.) I do think that close reading is a skill that will aid students in high school and college work, but I do not think that is the best overall approach.
After our class discussion last week, I started thinking about how culturally relevant pedagogy is used primarily with African American and/or Latino populations. But I think that white students need this type of pedagogy as well. Why are there no articles or books about how white students need exposure to diverse texts and "cultural data sets"? For another class last week I read "There is No 'Race' in the Schoolyard: Color-Blind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School" by Amanda E. Lewis (2001). She explains how the white teachers, students, and parents claim that race does not matter in their school, yet she sees interactions that prove those beliefs to be false. Lewis state that "it is often Whites’ lack of understanding of their own roles as racial actors that stands as a roadblock to further progress toward racial justice” (p.782) and goes on to argue that "education that is critical, multicultural, and focused on racial justice cannot be reserved only for students of color....In this way, it is crucial that Whites learn more not only about the reality of racial inequality, but also about their own role in its reproduction" (p.804). I absolutely agree and want to think more about this topic.
I am also becoming more and more wary of using a New Critical framework for teaching literature. (And this is coming from someone who used that very framework for years.) I do think that close reading is a skill that will aid students in high school and college work, but I do not think that is the best overall approach.
After our class discussion last week, I started thinking about how culturally relevant pedagogy is used primarily with African American and/or Latino populations. But I think that white students need this type of pedagogy as well. Why are there no articles or books about how white students need exposure to diverse texts and "cultural data sets"? For another class last week I read "There is No 'Race' in the Schoolyard: Color-Blind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School" by Amanda E. Lewis (2001). She explains how the white teachers, students, and parents claim that race does not matter in their school, yet she sees interactions that prove those beliefs to be false. Lewis state that "it is often Whites’ lack of understanding of their own roles as racial actors that stands as a roadblock to further progress toward racial justice” (p.782) and goes on to argue that "education that is critical, multicultural, and focused on racial justice cannot be reserved only for students of color....In this way, it is crucial that Whites learn more not only about the reality of racial inequality, but also about their own role in its reproduction" (p.804). I absolutely agree and want to think more about this topic.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Culture, Literacy, & Learning
I like the title of Carol Lee's book Culture, Literacy, and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind. Schools do often feel like whirlwinds with little time for one-on-one interactions or meaningful classroom practices in a culture of high-stakes testing. I appreciate Lee's honesty about the often overwhelming culture of schools, negative attitudes of teachers and policy-makers, and difficulties in students' lives. She offers, however, pictures of engaged students and caring teachers involved in what she calls "Cultural Modeling."
I do have a few concerns about using cultural data sets. Teachers must recognize diversity within cultural groups and must avoid essentializing those groups, as Lee asserts. She acknowledges that she mistakenly assumed that her students would respond to an R&B song. We cannot assume that because our students are African American that they will necessarily enjoy a rap or R&B song. I wonder about classrooms that involve multiple cultural groups--how can a teacher use cultural data sets with students with diverse backgrounds and interests? I'm also thinking about how Lee uses the data sets to lead to canonical texts. The students practice problem-solving with more familiar texts, but the purpose is to use those skills with more "academic texts." Does this set up the cultural texts as merely introductory, as having less inherent or "serious" value than "school texts"? In using cultural data sets, the teacher would have to be careful to not "use" students' home culture or position the data sets as gimmicks to get students interested and involved. Similarly, how do we move students from an "everyday explanation" (usually oral) to a more "formal explanation" (usually written) without devaluing the students' language. Again, we start with the students' practices but then move them to school-based practices. It seems like no matter how hard we try to value what students know and do, we always end up privileging academic practices/language/knowledge.
As I read about the use of cultural data sets, I kept thinking about the position of the teacher and the cultural knowledge that the teacher must have. I kept asking myself, "What about my position as a white teacher?" Would my use of cultural data sets seem authentic to students?
Lee focused much of her explanations on how to connect students' lives and knowledge to school-based problem solving, but what about the reverse? How does literary reasoning and close reading transfer to students' real lives outside of school? How do the students see the discussions of literature as valuable and meaningful?
I like Lee's idea of focusing on "flexible conceptual understandings" rather than merely giving students procedural knowledge (p.38) and explaining to students how the concepts are related to each other (p.115). The knowledge of how rather than what is important in helping students problem solve across different contexts. What I'm struggling with is that the teacher is the one who "revoice[s] contextualized claims as general propositions that can be applied across similar problems" (p.76). If the teacher translates the students' words and labels what students have accomplished, do the students understand what they are doing or have done? Do they fully recognize what the teacher is labeling?
Lee says that she works from a New Criticism orientation (p.62) that focuses on close reading of texts. Is this the best place to start? Lee mentions Appleman once in her book, and I think that I would start with a critical framework and then work toward close reading.
Several of Lee's strategies reminded me of Rosenblatt: "rules of notice," metacognitive reflection, making sense while reading, rules of configuration, connecting details into patterns.
In a couple of post-conferences with interns, I have talked about how they feel about noise in the classroom. One intern spoke of her concern with students being quiet. Many pre-service and new teachers equate quiet with student attention and learning, when this may actually not be the case at all. Lee found that the students were most engaged when they were involved in mutiparty overlapping talk (p.101). Noise in the classroom can be productive and on-task. I have also seen the interns rely on the IRE pattern of talk; they feel the need to control the questioning so that they "cover" what they intend for students to know by the end of the lesson. Lee found also that student reasoning was highest when the teacher did not dominate discussion. How can we encourage new teachers and help them build confidence so that they feel comfortable stepping back and letting students take the lead?
I do have a few concerns about using cultural data sets. Teachers must recognize diversity within cultural groups and must avoid essentializing those groups, as Lee asserts. She acknowledges that she mistakenly assumed that her students would respond to an R&B song. We cannot assume that because our students are African American that they will necessarily enjoy a rap or R&B song. I wonder about classrooms that involve multiple cultural groups--how can a teacher use cultural data sets with students with diverse backgrounds and interests? I'm also thinking about how Lee uses the data sets to lead to canonical texts. The students practice problem-solving with more familiar texts, but the purpose is to use those skills with more "academic texts." Does this set up the cultural texts as merely introductory, as having less inherent or "serious" value than "school texts"? In using cultural data sets, the teacher would have to be careful to not "use" students' home culture or position the data sets as gimmicks to get students interested and involved. Similarly, how do we move students from an "everyday explanation" (usually oral) to a more "formal explanation" (usually written) without devaluing the students' language. Again, we start with the students' practices but then move them to school-based practices. It seems like no matter how hard we try to value what students know and do, we always end up privileging academic practices/language/knowledge.
As I read about the use of cultural data sets, I kept thinking about the position of the teacher and the cultural knowledge that the teacher must have. I kept asking myself, "What about my position as a white teacher?" Would my use of cultural data sets seem authentic to students?
Lee focused much of her explanations on how to connect students' lives and knowledge to school-based problem solving, but what about the reverse? How does literary reasoning and close reading transfer to students' real lives outside of school? How do the students see the discussions of literature as valuable and meaningful?
I like Lee's idea of focusing on "flexible conceptual understandings" rather than merely giving students procedural knowledge (p.38) and explaining to students how the concepts are related to each other (p.115). The knowledge of how rather than what is important in helping students problem solve across different contexts. What I'm struggling with is that the teacher is the one who "revoice[s] contextualized claims as general propositions that can be applied across similar problems" (p.76). If the teacher translates the students' words and labels what students have accomplished, do the students understand what they are doing or have done? Do they fully recognize what the teacher is labeling?
Lee says that she works from a New Criticism orientation (p.62) that focuses on close reading of texts. Is this the best place to start? Lee mentions Appleman once in her book, and I think that I would start with a critical framework and then work toward close reading.
Several of Lee's strategies reminded me of Rosenblatt: "rules of notice," metacognitive reflection, making sense while reading, rules of configuration, connecting details into patterns.
In a couple of post-conferences with interns, I have talked about how they feel about noise in the classroom. One intern spoke of her concern with students being quiet. Many pre-service and new teachers equate quiet with student attention and learning, when this may actually not be the case at all. Lee found that the students were most engaged when they were involved in mutiparty overlapping talk (p.101). Noise in the classroom can be productive and on-task. I have also seen the interns rely on the IRE pattern of talk; they feel the need to control the questioning so that they "cover" what they intend for students to know by the end of the lesson. Lee found also that student reasoning was highest when the teacher did not dominate discussion. How can we encourage new teachers and help them build confidence so that they feel comfortable stepping back and letting students take the lead?
Monday, March 5, 2012
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