Subversive Teaching

Alan Watts once said, "Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness-an act of trust in the unknown." As noted in the chapter "Crap Detecting" of Teaching As a Subversive Activity, the application of this quote in relevance to knowledge leads a very profound conclusion. Neil Postman indicates this by suggesting the swap of the word "religion" in the quote for the phrase "set of facts" (6). Analyzing this quote from an education mindset reveals a lot about the nature of teaching. It points out the need for reform by stating how an inability to have an open-mind can detract one from his or her true intention.

Friday in class, I witnessed one of the most engaged debates I have ever experienced in a classroom. The group of students, who are constantly referred to as the "troublesome" class, strolled into the class and immediately began chatting. Ms. Howell quickly took on the role of classroom manager. She stopped all the conversation before it even began between students. Using phrases like "take a seat" or directing specific students to be quiet, she quickly took control of her classroom. Eye rolls and pouting faces were visible on almost all faces of the student. Ms. Howell already had her EdModo presentation on the board, and she explained the activity to the kids. The activity was a debate on two of the videos on fracking the children had watched in a previous class. Prior to class Ms. Howell and I divided the seating of the classroom into two different large groups. The students in each group were set up face to face in long rows. The groups were assigned a video and given 5 minutes to prepare an opening argument using their knowledge gained on fracking from the video. Each team was then directed to choose one person to present their argument in a 3 minute time frame. While a person was presenting, the students were instructed to remain quiet and take notes on the claims made. Following the opening arguments, the groups were given 2 minutes to ask clarifying questions to the representative of each team. Examples of clarifying questions were given on the board, and the students were told to model their questions after them. The students were then directed to appoint a new presenter and to tackle in their groups the problems they saw in the opposing team's argument for 3 minutes. The new presenters then made their case to the class. Due to time constraint, the students were not given a change to rebuttal. Instead, they were given 2 minutes to create a closing argument and 1 minute to present it. Similarly to the other two presentations, the groups had to elect a new leader to conclude their arguments. By the end of the debate, students were laughing and wildly gesturing with their hands. The girl who made the closing statement for the Gasland team was pointing intently at her prepared sheet in front of her. Her voice increased rapidly as she rushed to finish all her points in the set time frame.

Passion, guys; it's beautiful.

Why is subversive teaching important?

It evokes emotions that students would not normally portray in a traditional classroom setting. I believe in the genuine nature of all people, but I acknowledge that not everyone's is easily tapped into. At its heart subversive teaching is an understanding of human nature. When one can discover how to draw emotions and to make connections to real life, the students are more prone to open up, to let loose, and to give in. Give in to their "resistance" for knowledge because it's finally tangible. They're given an opportunity to distrust what they're learning and to challenge what they know; the creation of the never ending search and thirst for more.

Origin: Self
Understanding of one's self + acknowledgment of the need to evaluate = subversiveness

On Being a Subversive Teacher (in Lancaster County)

During my field placement my cooperating teacher said something that made sense but left me with arched eye brows and a face of puzzlement.

In discussing her unit for Harper Lee's masterpiece To Kill A Mockingbird, my co-op casually said, "I try not to get too involved in discussions of racial tensions--after all," she smiled, "we are in Lancaster County." While I understand her concerns, I wonder if this is, in fact, the best practice. Should the book just be read to discuss plot and characters or should it open the floodgates to a much larger and more meaningful conversation? To me, the answer is quite clear. We cannot allow our students to live sheltered Lancaster-County-lives. The world is much bigger than this county and discussing diversity and racial tensions, while potentially controversial, is a necessity. The world abroad is not homogenous. It is not one color. It is many shades of gray. We cannot allow our students to live in a black and white world. We most show them the polychromatic scheme of our world.

More importantly, we must open these floodgates and allow our students to question their preconceived notions. To paraphrase the reading we read by Postman and Weingartner, a subversive man is a dangerous one, because he is not easily enlisted into an ideology. I WANT MY STUDENTS TO BE DANGEROUS. I want them to question. I want them to be curious. I want them to ask WHY.

 We must ask our students to confront and challenge their status quo. This is particularly important if we want to challenge the status quo of the current school system. We must open our classrooms to these potentially controversial conversations. There will be bumps in the road, of course, but at the very least we must consider having the conversation. We cannot shy our students away from reality.

Some Thoughts on Subversive Teaching

On Friday Mrs. H (my cooperating teacher) and I had an interesting talk about what she likes to call “teachable moments”: moments when a lesson twists away from the plan, but towards some bigger understanding. For instance, on Friday Mrs. H led a discussion on what it means to be happy and the students didn’t really involve themselves or ask many questions. A few offered up anecdotes like “happiness is being happy with what you have,” but the discussion didn’t go any deeper than that. To get them to think more deeply about it, my coop spontaneously drew a line across the white board and told everyone to come up and make a “happiness scale” from -2 to 2. Once everyone had put a few things on the board, the discussion took off because the students wanted to know why everyone else had written what they did. The discussion never came to a conclusion, but ended when the bell rang. Mrs. H told me that the scale was not on her lesson plan at all, but had just come to her on the spot as a way to involve her students in the lesson and make it more relevant to their lives. To me, that was subversive teaching at its finest. Mrs. H saw a way to use student-student interaction to help students ask questions and dig deeper and was willing to deviate from her original plan in order to make it all work. She never told students her thoughts on the subject, but pushed the class to express their questions and opinions without ever coming to a conclusion.

When I ask myself how I can be subversive in this school, I keep thinking back to Mrs. H’s “teachable moments”. I want to be able to adapt lessons on the spot in a way that get students thinking, interacting and asking questions. If I can teach like that, it will be easier for students to make the connection between the material that they are learning and their lives outside of school. These elements are at the heart of subversive teaching.

Diversity at LCHS

Sarah and I came up with a few Essential Questions concerning diversity. Here they are:

1. How do you make sure all diverse groups are represented and respected in your classroom?

2. How can you embrace and learn about another culture without disrespecting or misrepresenting it?

3. Can we expect our students of differing cultures to want to talk about their lives?

4. Is it okay to criticize/be critical of other cultures? Or does that inherently disrespect them?

5. What is disrespect in regards to diversity?


I feel like as we formed these questions, we continued to narrow our focus with each one. Question one cannot be answered without first answering question two. Questions two is dependent on question five.
I believe I must first start here: What IS disrespect?

Disrespect is sometimes easy to point out. Segregation, blatant racism, harmful remarks, or stereotypical epithets are all obvious forms of disrespect. These are all clearly unfair, uncool, and just wrong. However, it is the more subtle disrespect that we must draw our attention to. Maybe disrespect comes from what a teacher is NOT doing more often in the schoolroom than it does from what the teacher or students are doing.

I observed neglectful disrespect this week (what may also be considered a missed opportunity) when my co-op was explaining to a student that she should look up the Spanish translation of a sentence on her device. Anna, a struggling, disconnected student three rows over is from Spain and has spoken Spanish for her entire life. Anna is often neglected and under-represented. My co-op doesn't look for opportunities to use the skills that Anna does have; she frequently makes assignments easier for her and places her in groups with more than one other student when the class is asked to pair up. Anna's learning of ESL is seen as a handicap, while her special skills of her first language are ignored. Anna is consistently reminded that my Co-op's class is an English Only zone. This is disrespect.

I plan to look for more forms of what I will currently label "subtle" disrespect as my placement continues. Although this form of disrespect is not blatantly hateful or intentional,  I get the feeling that these "disrespectful subtleties" are much more damaging than they may seem.

-Tyler

Subversive Week 4

The one thing my co-op does that is subversive is he does encourage a lot of student-student interaction as opposed to teacher-student interaction. I think to be even more subversive the lessons need to pose more of a problem for students. Right now, there isn’t much inquiry-based learning going on in the classroom. The teacher is still acting as the main source of information and the teacher is still in charge of transferring that information to the students. Another part of being subversive is not always accepting that there is one single answer to a question. One of the team teachers asked my co-op while they were planning the lesson for hyperboles if a hyperbole can be personification. I think it can be. For example a sentence like “the bear’s smiles was as wide as a river” could be both a hyperbole, personification, and there is even a simile in there! However, instead of having to explain to students that there could be two or more answers, they just chose to make sure their worksheet sentences only had one clear answer. I also think more authenticity needs to be brought into the classroom. The poetry unit could have included a lot more examples of how it is found in their everyday lives. For example, they could have done a project where they look for poetic devices in songs like the Katy Perry song we did in class during Teaching Writing.  

 

I was looking up more about subversive teaching and came across and interesting guy named Peter Pappas (I am now following him on Twitter). He poses some great questions to teachers and schools so they can evaluate how subversive they are being.

 

http://www.peterpappas.com/2012/07/13-subversive-questions-for-the-classroom.html

Let's Pretend

Postman and Weingartner addressed the issue of educational irrelevance, the disliking of youth (which was both funny and sad), "crap detecting", the rapid progression of technology, and - my personal favorite - the "Let's Pretend" model of public schools. Even though this was written almost 50 years ago, it still has startling poignancy to the methods of our society and educational system, which only goes to show that serious reform is not actually taking place. Many of their points about how much control teachers have over what is taught, whether the students have an interest in or use for it or not, are exactly how I have felt many times being on the student side of the classroom. It is something that still bothers me to this day (in fact, probably more so now that I am preparing to enter real classrooms); how am I going to teach what they need and want to learn? How can I give them as much control as possible while still abiding by the standards created by the bureaucrats, even though I personally don't have much interest in pleasing them since they obviously have little interest in doing what is best for me or my students? What I've always hoped for is a classroom that, while teaching the necessary content for standardized success, allows students to expand on big ideas, to inject their own interests and talents, and by giving them some control to engage in learning that feels relevant to their lives.
Crap detection is something that has become increasingly relevant to me, as I have begun to realize that so many people will accept whatever they are told by authority figures (especially family members) as absolute fact. Many of Postman and Weingartner's examples of this spoke to me, and I found myself shaking my head in agreement while reading. I have become a firm believer in educating myself (and others becoming educated) in theories, beliefs, and customs and deriving their own opinions based on their own instincts, rather than accepting ones that are passed down from others. I hope to create instances in my classroom where students can look at controversial and/or multi-sided issues, research them, and create their own opinions about it. I hope that history and science teachers can do this too, and that my students can learn to really think for themselves, to form their own ideals, and to not be such flimsy followers of this or that. I hope that when faced with something in which they should choose a side or opinion, that they can say, "I don't know much about that, but I should look into it and see what I think," rather than saying to a friend or family member, "Well, what do you think?" This is the essence of insightful intellectuals, not those who can ramble off a collection of random trivia facts.

First Sight and Second Thoughts

Sometimes, I feel like college does a better job of honing the skill of crap detecting than it does imparting other kinds of skills and knowledge. Don't get me wrong, I am and have learned many things here, but at the end of the day when gather with my friends on the 7th floor or head to other friend's apartments, unless we learned something earth shatteringly cool, we're going to be complaining about the things we perceived as crap. That could be something a professor said that we thought or know was incorrect factually, or an attitude that rubbed wrong. One of my best friends still complains about a day last semester when his wellness professor (to his and others' perceptions- I wasn't there, I don't judge) insulted several majors including my friend's own (he was not happy at all...) . Another example comes from my sister, who failed one of her vet tech classes and barely passed some others last semester. When my sister says she studied a lot for all of them I believe her, and I also believe her when she complains about having the class with a brand new professor and a vet who's never taught. I've seen this at Millersville too- good people who know their stuff but haven't the faintest idea of how to teach people. Expecting these techs in training to know what fully qualified ones do is crap, telling them to look it up every time they have a question and then complaining that they are slow is double crap. That sort of thing gets my blood going of late- I may not know all there is about good teaching, but I know when those who are paid to teach aren't actually teaching, are engaging in practices that hamper and discourage learning and it frustrates me. I don't think that the Vet for Alexa's class has to know a great deal about pedagogy, he's a Vet and that's what he's there for, but I don't think it would be too much for him to listen to what his students are saying or recognize that if you send them to the book every time they have a question they are going to be slower. They're college kids and diligent, they can make up for mediocre teaching practice to a point, but they can't be as good as their graduated and experienced counterparts. What I think I'm getting at is that it's not very hard to find  crap in various parts of the educational system (and not just higher ed but those examples are pretty close to me just now) what seems harder though is what to do about it.

It's all well and good for me to see the crap, but doing something about it is harder. For the most part it seems like my ability to fight the crap is going to be limited to my own classroom, and the greatest challenge to that is if the school I'm in doesn't recognize crap itself. I'm not unwilling to make some waves, but for the first couple of years that has to be carefully balanced by the sad but inevitable fact that money is necessary to survival. I don't expect that to an issue, mainly cause I'm not sure that an overly conservative school would hire me in the first place- I don't fit in molds well, but then that's not always immediately evident. Sometimes I'm sneakier than I think I am. I'm concerned by the persistence of the same sort of crap at higher levels, (can politics please stay out of deciding what's good for kids? pretty please? I mean come on guys, I bet most of you have children, can't you make it about them and not money and testing companies?) but I'm not sure I can do much about that yet besides being aware and talking. And voting.

Did anyone else notice that Francesca and Kozol detected some significant crap in our reading with the Meta-Lady and Efficacy Man? (they sound like really really bad superheros) We do run into a great deal of meaning-less jargon. I mean it's one thing to talk about meta-cognition which is readily definable (thinking about one's own thinking) but what is a meta-moment? a moment about a moment? a moment beyond the moment? Neither of those make much sense. And if she's trying to say meta-cognitive moment (a moment in which one is thinking about their thinking) well I guess that might be something you could talk about, but taking the thinking out of the phase is just lazy word-smithing. Meta-concept is the other one, (presumably a concept about a concept) which seems to at least have a meaning, but it's kind of redundant anyway, especially when Francesca's phrase "a shrewd perception" says more (a clever or astute intuitive cognition). Yep, I'm a word nerd and could probably keep going, but considering meta-cognition, I'd like to share how one of my favorite authors portrays meta-cognition and crap detecting neatly, elegantly and humorously in language a third grader could read.

In The Wee Free Men and the other books in the Tiffany Aching series, Sir Terry Pratchett describes the most important abilities of a witch as the first sight and second thoughts. They see what's really there, and there's a part of them that watches the rest, watches how they think. One character describes it in this way(in a scottish accent no less- seriously you should read the book) "Ye've got that little bitty bit inside o' you that holds on, right? The bitty bit that watches the rest o' ye. 'Tis a wee gift an' a big curse to ye. You see and hear what others canna', the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye're always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the corner who cannae join in. There's a little bitty bit inside ye that willnae melt and flow." There's good stuff to think about there, and throughout the book. The first sight is the crap detecting- see things as they are, not as you want them to be or how people tell you they are, and second thoughts is being mindful of how you think and how you act, because teachers, like Pratchett's witches, are responsible for more than themselves. There's more in those books that I can tie to teaching, but I'll stop here for now.

The medium is the....what?

Wow, if everyone had a social self-consciousness (aka a crap detector) the world would be a better place, wouldn’t it? Maybe we can develop a machine to do it, kind of like a metal detector except for crap. Wave it around and it will beep at people who are unaware of the need to maintain the world around them.  Just kidding. Really, though, I always thought that the purpose of school was to help students develop their own “crap-detectors” (although I never used that word). This week’s reading made me think otherwise. The way Postman and Weingartner presented talked, it seemed to me that schools are working in the opposite direction of “crap detecting”. Instead of teaching students to take a step back and look at their society the way and outsider would, traditional classrooms emerge students in only their own world. A good example of this is the fact the many history classes focus only on history as it pertains to America. The worst part is that it seems like most student just sit back and take it without questioning the system. I know I did.  That’s why inquiry and medium need to be tied into the classroom; students need to learn how to learn and how to ask important questions. A quote that really stood out to me in the reading was “what students mostly do in the class is guess what the teacher wants them to say”. SO TRUE. If our students are going to sit and class and try to figure how what we want them to say, how can we show them that what we want them to do is learn how to ask questions that matter? To “matter” these questions need to be relevant somehow, and this brings me to the meaning of the word “relevant”. To me, “relevant” content or questions have to pertain to the students in some way. Relevant material doesn’t have to relate specifically to each student’s life, but it does need to at least have some sort of effect on the world in which they live. Relevant material should benefit students in some way. I keep thinking back to our first article about teaching in the 21^st century and the example the authors used about a student who had to learn the names of the rivers in South America. What a prime example or irrelevant material! I think that having so much data available at our fingertips makes even more material “irrelevant” then there was in 1968 wan Postman and Weingartner wrote their article. Anyway, the point of all this is that in order to help our student become “crap detectors”, we have to be able to decide what material is relevant and what isn’t. We have to know how to teach our students to ask questions instead of just receiving answers.

Is it just me, or is it really depressing being an education major?

      In the first five chapters of their book Teaching is a Subversive Activity, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner propose a number of interesting ideas. They begin by discussing how rapidly the world is changing and how slowly the education system is adapting and responding to these changes. This idea is not new to me as an education major; I have heard this sentiment echoed in every one of my classes repeatedly to no end, almost to the point where I am numb to it. What is astonishing, however, is the fact that Postman and Weingartner wrote about the need for this change in 1968 and it still hasn’t happened! The fact that this book’s message is still relevant 45 years later terrifies me.

            Postman and Weingartner argue that our society is plagued with a number of life threatening problems that must be solved as soon as possible—needless to say, 45 years later is not as soon as possible! In fact, 45 years is a disconcerting response time. Even more sickening is the fact that there has been little to no response to address these society-threatening issues such as mental illness, suicide, child abuse, drugs, civil rights, etc. America is like a hamster, frantically running on its wheel, but never progressing, never moving forward. At first, I was put-off by the fact that this text was so old, but the more I reflect on it, the more relevant it becomes, the more its messages resound within me. If we want to put an end to the cycle, we have to recognize the cycle. We have to wake up. Our response time cannot go on hold any longer. We must take a step off the hamster wheel and not just marvel at those still on it, but pull them off of it, too. One of the best places to start this process is with our students. If our society has any hope of survival, we must make educate our students in a manner that teaches them to not only question the wheel, but in a manner that also encourages them to re-invent it. But how?

            If we want to fix our society (and our students), we must first fix ourselves by becoming subversive “crap detectors.” We must question everything. We must doubt. We must challenge the status quo, the norms, and all aspects of society, particularly those aspects of the classroom. We should learn (and then teach) values that aren’t stressed in other institutions in the culture. For instance, in our rapidly changing world, we must ensure that all of our students possess skills of media literacy, technological fluency, and flexibility. As teachers, we must also acquire and master these skills for ourselves. We cannot bluff these essential skills. Additionally, we must ensure that our message is catered to our medium. Thus, whatever we want our students to learn must be reflected in what they do in our classrooms. If we want to teach them to question, we must be open to them questioning our methods. Therefore, we must equip them with the “What is it good for?” perspective that Postman and Weingartner encourage. We cannot create a classroom of future shocked students. We must help them to predict what is around the curve. More importantly, perhaps, we help them create what is around the curve. We can no longer rely on the traditional frameworks of the school system. We must rebuild the environment in a manner that encourages questioning and active criticism and that discourages recall and rote memorization. We must also teach that not all questions have answers and the fact that that is okay.

            Overall, we have a lot of work to do as future educators. Postman and Weingartner bring up a number of ideas that we must consider if we hope to be highly effective educators. We have our work cut out for us, but I am confident that we are being equipped with the tools to handle the problems Postman and Weingartner discuss. Above all, we must strive to become subversive, crap-detecting educators.

Week 3 Reflections

I am first going to begin by summarizing what I got out of the article Teaching is a Subversive Activity. The article is calling for more than just a reformation of existing practices. It is calling for a whole new way of doing school. In this new way of doing school the teacher becomes someone who fosters inquiry-based learning. Inquiry-based learning promotes the continued search for knowledge and rejects the idea of accepting answers that are conclusive. Inquiry-based learning would be lead by the student’s needs and curiosity. Therefore, the learning becomes more student centered and more focused on the process of learning. The teacher would help guide students in the sense that the teacher would ask questions and push students into deeper knowledge. This type of learning would also teach the students the art of crap detecting. They would no longer just accept without question the messages from authority and media. They would learn to be able to recognize biases in these messages.

I think this is a great idea, but I would need someone to model what this type of classroom would look like. It all sounds good in theory but how is it in practice? I also do agree that this type of classroom could not exist without radical change in the education system. Standardized tests couldn’t really exist with this new type of learning because everyone is going to experience different learning. Teachers also would have different looking lesson plans because they are no longer leading the students down certain paths. Instead the students are leading teachers down paths of inquiry and the teacher just acts as a questioner to get the students thinking even more deeply on the subject. Classroom sizes would also need to decrease dramatically for this type of personalized education to take place. I could have read into this article wrong and maybe I haven’t quite mastered the concept of inquiry-based learning.  This is just my perception of the information presented to me.

 

I think the only way to become a subversive crap detector is to become an inquiry-based learner. I need to educate myself on issues in order to be able to question authority and know the biases the media is portraying. I constantly would need to be pursuing knowledge in order to keep up with the ever changing wealth of information that is thrown at us as new information is learned every day.

 

I am going to leave you with quotes from Kozol's book that really stuck with me as lessons to remember when teaching in my classroom.

-"Celebrate words like "skinny" and "bamboozle" and "persnickety"!" (page 56)

-"None of us should make the error of assuming that a child who is hostile to us at the start, or who retreats into a sullenness and silence or sarcastic disregard for everything that's going on around him in the room, does not have the will to learn, and plenty of intersting stuff to teach us too, if we are willing to invest the time and the inventiveness to penetrate his seemingly implacable belief that grown-ups do not mean him well and that, if he trusts us, we will probably betray or disappoint him." (page 67)

-"If we want to teach our children to take pride in their own voices, I think that teachers need to fight hard to take pride in their own voices too." (page 98)

I also really loved the last chapter we read about making learning fun by making it relevant to what is actually happening in their lives (the tooth scenario). I want to strive to make my lessons engaging to them by having it relate to their lives.

I also like Francesca's story about the boy looking at a squirrel outside the window. I agree that "I won't be responsible for hurrying my children out of that age when many things are interesting and so much is new" (page 105). I wouldn't stop the student from watching the squirrel. I might just ask him to write about it later ;)

 

 

Jon Stewart sure does like the word “metric”, yeah?

But for real…

    Michelle Rhee talks about balancing testing with more innovative and relevant forms of assessment. This makes sense, although a part of me wants her to just condemn testing altogether. She doesn’t say we should get rid of testing completely; she talks rather of bridging new forms of assessment with testing strategies. Testing certainly shouldn’t be the focus.

     What I take from this mainly is the chance here to infuse relevance into not only our lessons, activities, and practices, but in our assessment as well. Let’s use real-world forms of assessment. In a job, your boss is not going to assess your achievement or effectiveness by giving you a multiple choice test with one five paragraph essay at the end. I do not have many answers at this point about what more relevant forms of assessment would look like besides many that we have already covered in classes before: portfolio grading, peer assessment, self-assessment, publication or performance, seminar or discussion. There just seems to be such a push towards making school make sense—such an importance put on answering the question of “Why are we doing this?”—and these ideas should bleed into our assessment just as well. 

____

After my first few hours at Lancaster Catholic I haven't had time enough to settle in and meet students one on one so I am unable to talk about different profiles of students. I plan to focus on this in the coming Fridays. 

-Tyler Barton 

Three Students

A Loner

            This student was obviously different than many of his classmates, sporting an army fatigue jacket, long black hair, and a reserved, yet focused demeanor. Other students were more colorful in action and dress, interacting with each other whenever possible, squeezing in conversations between bullet points and vocab words. However, he seemed to interact with no one and only spoke to add to the history discussion. He seemed to be rather intelligent and was well-versed in the unit material, World War II and the Holocaust. Following this class, my co-op asked if I noticed this student and how knowledgeable he was about the lesson. She then told me that this student is a white supremacist who has made racist comments about the Hispanic students (who make up about half of the student population) and believes that they are not as educationally capable as himself due to their ethnicity. This would explain why he was not interacting with anyone, as many of those surrounding him are of a race that he would not want to associate.

A Struggling Student

            This student was rather endearing, constantly making conversation with the teacher and offering to help around the class room. He has a lot of trouble maintaining focus – which is probably horrific for him during standardized tests – but does not seem to be incapable of learning and applying the material. I was informed that he has a high-functioning form of autism that allows him to be mainstreamed, but still requires him to receive special attention for him to get the most out of his scholastic experience. My co-op reminded him several times to focus on his work and, upon completion of the work, then gave him several menial tasks to perform around the classroom while the other students finished. She informed me that it is necessary to keep him busy because it is nearly impossible for him to sit still and quiet so that other students are not disturbed. However, he was enthusiastic to help and to participate in class.

A High-Performing Student

            This student was not only high performing, but was also quite sociable both with peers and with the teacher. His work was finished quickly, correctly, and without much question or difficulty. Only about half of the class time had gone by the time he was finished with his work and my co-op did not force him to work on the computer-based learning program as many of the other students had to do upon finishing their work because she knew that he was capable and familiar with the material. Instead, she allowed him to “soothe his ‘ADHD’” (as she called it) by cutting paper into confetti while she gave him trivia questions about the material, with which he did rather well. He spent the rest of his time playing games on his iPad and talking with the teacher and other high-performing students who had also finished their assignment early. He and the other students in this group seemed to learn and apply material easily, especially since the worksheet contained simple regurgitation questions about the book.

            Although this is not an English class, the students were reading a novel to facilitate their history unit. Although most of them did not complain about having to read a book, none of them seemed to be very engaged with it either. They saw it as another task to complete for a grade, and I must say that the structure of its presentation didn’t do much to display the contrary. I think the students would have benefitted from some critical thinking questions and perhaps a more creative method of keeping pace with the story rather than just surface questions on a worksheet. The concepts of ethnic diversity, supremacy, friendship, and governmental corruption are relevant themes in their own lives and connections between the text and reality would facilitate a much deeper curriculum/unit for them. There are so many opportunities with this unit (WWII and the Holocaust) and I hope to explore them while shaping a summative assessment. Hopefully this will engage the students more and allow the big ideas to stick and become relevant.

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Invitation to Reflection 1-3

1 & 3. I can’t fairly determine if ‘What is English?’ could be answered like ‘What is Algebra?’ or ‘What is American History?’ because I don’t know these subjects as intimately as I know English. I know that English is not just grammar, syntax, spelling, the thematic symbolism of Big Brother, or the relentless five-paragraph essay. It is a study that encompasses the worlds of psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, critical thought, politics, advertising, business, music, and on and on. It is a subject that does not limit teachers of English or their students, but rather swings open the door to deep thought and consideration, to analyzing ourselves and the world around us. I don’t want to teach my students WHAT to think, but rather HOW to think, how to see, feel, hear, touch, and taste more vividly, and to understand the purpose that this serves. Of course, I want (and, in the case of job security, need) my students to also have a working knowledge of grammar, reading comprehension, and effective writing; these things are important to their success in the real world, especially one that is becoming more and more knowledge- and education-based. Literacy is deeply important. However, English also provides me with the means to impart the invaluable skills of critical thought and a widespread, multi-discipline literacy. I hope to give my students the opportunity to do “English-y” things alongside broad, interdisciplinary critical thinking activities that can connect to their lives outside of the English classroom.

2. Each and every one of these content areas are appropriate for the English classroom, as they all relate to literacy and communication. We are not just limited to books, poems, and grammar worksheets, but should also be embracing other forms of communication, especially when there are so many genres of such surrounding us and our students. Students should not just be familiar with classic written texts and mechanics, but also with film, television, advertising, news, blogs, social media, speech, music, etc. Learning how to effective use, decode, analyze, and interpret these means of communication will create a more comprehensive literacy and greater mobility in our fast-paced, communication-centric society.

4. The fact that English never leaves our students’ curriculum is symbolic of the fact that it also never leaves their lives and therefore should never leave their attention and concentration. Reading, writing, and other dimensions of communication and meaning-making will always surround (or, in the case of the resistant student, haunt) them, and it is essential that they are constantly becoming more and more equipped to utilize the skills that English instruction can facilitate.

5. There are certain nuggets of English knowledge that are “transmitted” in the traditional sense of education. The parts of speech, where to put commas and semi-colons, and proper MLA format are objective and are, in essence, transmitted. However, many of the aspects that require critical thought and can be applied in a much broader sense to students’ lives are explored rather than transmitted. I can’t (or shouldn’t) transmit my interpretations of a text, its meaning, its significance, and its quality to students, but rather should provide them with the space to think, decipher, analyze, and interpret the text as it applies and speaks to them; this type of knowledge comes about subjectively. 

Reform

That was... disappointing. I just watched the Michelle Rhee interviews and I feel like nothing substantial was said. She completely dodged the question of standardized testing, shouldered aside the matter of HOW we can determine who effective teachers are, and never mentioned legislation at all. There was a great deal of talk about the system being broken, but they barely touched on the ways that it is hurting and made almost no useful mention of how it can be healed. She talked of closing ineffective schools and firing ineffective teachers, but not how you determine which schools and teachers those are or how we can be sure the others are any better. She didn't even seem to have a firm stance on whether charter schools are part of the answer. Or if sometimes less effective teachers might just be in need of training. I know other states don't ask as much as PA does for certification. I know for a fact that there's at least one district in MD that I could get a job in now being more than halfway through my program, as long as I continued working toward the degree. That's a little scary, though a part of me feels like that might be a good direction for student teaching to go, paying tuition to very nearly work full time for a semester is a little hard to swallow. That's the way it is though. As far as reform goes, I think it has to come from every direction to work. From the bottom with us the teachers doing everything in our power to reach every kid and teach meaningful lessons. From the center, with administrations who support their faculty, who understand best practice and know it when they see it, who help to craft the conditions under which good teaching flourishes and learning thrives. From above with legislators who listen to educators and take the time to understand what promotes learning, because everything can fall apart because of one well-intentioned but poorly crafted law or budget cut. From every side parents need to look out for their kid's interests and keep all the other players in line. Each element has the power to resist the needed changes, so real progress will happen when they work together... or at least go in similar directions. Herding cats. Oh and can we please let the testing companies go hang? I detest the thought that so much of our schooling is in the hands of FOR PROFIT entities (also my problem with some of the cyber schools). Let's instead work with some employers and build our own tests to suit the needs of our economy, not the ideals of an outdated academic standard. Maybe we'll let the companies print those for us, AFTER we as educators and community have built them.

Week 2

Before I tackle the prompt we were given, I want to clarify that I didn’t get too hands on in this first week of placement. I wanted to quietly observe the students, their behavior, the classroom dynamics, the teacher’s behavior, as well as other aspects of the classroom before jumping in myself. With that said, I want to emphasize that the following observations are simply cursory. They are likely to change as I get the chance to speak with the students, an opportunity I very much look forward to.

A loner-

 Intimidated isn’t the right word. When my cooperating teacher pointed to a class roster of her Block 3 students and showed me ‘Marvin,’ I was more than intimidated—I was shaking in my boots. Even the term ‘Block 3’ sounds daunting enough on its own. Block 3. It sounds like the name for the wing of a prison. Then, I processed Marvin’s picture. Not to be grim, but he looked like a young Charles Manson. His eyes had that glazed over look that you see in pictures of ax murders. Not a great first impression, especially when your co-op adds, “I won’t subject you to working with him one-on-one. His problems are too far reaching for your expertise,” while tapping her forefinger on the lost eyes in the picture. To add to the horror, my co-op reports that Marvin is known throughout the English wing for threatening teachers. Oh goody, I think to myself.

After seeing Marvin in flesh and blood, I must admit, I was slightly relieved. He didn’t look nearly as intimidating as his picture lead me to believe. I don’t know much about Marvin yet, but I hope to establish some contact with him. I want to get to know him—while keeping a safe distance at first. Maybe I could start by asking him about the book he’s reading. It’s manga. I’ve never given it a chance before, but maybe I could reach him by reading it. Hopefully I can help him feel a little more welcome in the classroom by doing so. If he were a student in my classroom, I might even look into including a manga text in the curriculum.

A student who struggles-

‘Kyle’ sits at his desk, playing with his bottle of iced tea, peeling the label, stabbing a hole in the top, and smirking as he calls out, interrupts, and pushes the buttons of surrounding students and my cooperating teacher. As soon as the bell rings, Kyle leaves the room and my co-op and I both let out a sigh of relief. “He’s probably on some spectrum of the ADD scale, just undiagnosed,” she says.

I don’t want to place negative labels on Kyle, but based on my brief observations, Kyle seems to be a student who is responsible for his own failure. His behavior is a choice. He is disruptive, rude, and disrespectful. I want to give Kyle the benefit of the doubt. I want to give him a chance. I want to feel sympathy for him, but as far as I can tell, he’s ruining the learning process for those around him and that’s inexcusable. It’s sad and I’m sorry to admit it, but I don’t feel much sympathy for Kyle. I counter that thought by assuring myself that I will encounter many Kyles in my career. It’s up to me to engage them. I convince myself that under the right set of circumstances, I could engage, enrapture, and involve a student like Kyle. He looks like a bright kid. English just doesn’t seem to be his thing. He needs real world connections and authenticity. I bet he’d love to read “Of Mice and Men.” He talks fondly of farm life, just like Lenny and George. Once I get to know him, maybe I’ll make the recommendation. Until then, I can only hope he stops ruining other students’ experiences. There’s always next week, right?

A popular kid-

‘Dylan’ is cocky. He knows he can get away with a lot in the classroom. He doesn’t face forward in his desk. He sits side ways and up front so everyone can see how he feels about the learning experience. He makes faces of approval when a student says something with which he can agree. He winces to express his disapproval of the teacher, too. He wants to be the center of attention. He flirts with the female students in the middle of classes, knowing he can charm his way out of any reprimand that the act may bring upon him. I haven’t had a chance to talk to ‘Dylan’ yet, but he’s certainly seems like he’ll be an interesting student. He didn’t volunteer to answer many questions, but I’m sure his confidence could be filtered into writing or some productive aspect of the English curriculum. I look forward to working with him. His confidence, while slightly abrasive, could prove worthwhile, educationally speaking. As the unofficial class spokesman, I’m sure I can get him to endorse me to the rest of the class if I make a good initial impression.

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In his interview with Michelle Rhee, the former Washington DC public schools chancellor, Jon Stewart managed to make more intelligent statements than his guest. While Rhee had some interesting insights, Stewart ultimately trumped the controversial and ‘radical’ reformer.

Rhee did bring up some interesting points. Some of her general statements rang true for me. For instance, Rhee insists that schools need to remove the bureaucracy that keeps effective education from happening. That is a statement and a goal that I can stand behind, but unfortunately Rhee’s methodology for achieving this goal, as well as others, seems poorly explained and ill developed. Throughout the interview Rhee continually repeats the goals she hopes to obtain, but she never properly explains the procedures for achieving said goals. For example, Rhee continually falls back upon the claim that we need “effective educators,” but she never fully develops her definition of an effective educator. From inference, I can assume that a good teacher, in her eyes, is teacher whose students receive good results on a standardized test, but I can’t condone that. As Stewart says, standardized tests cannot predict one’s ability to work in a collaborative environment on creative problem solving. A good teacher fosters the skills that result in collaborative and creative problem solving; he does not create good test takers. One of my biggest problems with Rhee is that she never explains much. Maybe the answers are in her book. I don’t know. Judging solely off the interview, I would venture to say her book probably isn’t any good.

Stewarts’ solutions and sympathies for teachers are more on par with my beliefs. Stewart is aware of the pressure that teachers encounter from students, parents, and state and federal legislators. He points out that “teachers are just one tool to fix schools, but they are the only tool that ever gets yelled at.” I really do enjoy his critique of the system and revel in the sympathy he gives to teachers. In fact, I love his analogy for the hell teachers face: “It’s like a football team that keeps getting a new offensive coordinator every year.”

Generally speaking, Stewarts’ critique of the school system seems more informed and more developed than his guest. Rhee, on the other hand, stands on a soapbox making vague statements about the state of education without ever defining the terms she uses in concrete words.

Week 2 Reflections

Reflections on the Michelle Rhee interview with Jon Stewart:

I have to start out by saying that I agreed with everything that Jon brought up in the interview. I agree that standardized test don't accurately show a student's learning or a teacher's teaching and I agree that we need to have more things like creative learning and collaboration in the classroom. I also agreed with Michelle when she said that there can't be no accountability for teachers, but that their should be an over emphasis on the test. She said teachers are overwhelmed by the amount of standards and tests that schools are throwing at them. She agreed that we need to free teachers up so that we can allow them to do what they do best. She even mentioned that other ways we need to be evaluating teachers is by looking at student achievement growth, student surveys, and observations of the classroom. So far, I am on board with Michelle is saying. Michelle even recognizes how hard teaching is and even said that they do not get paid enough. However, I disagreed with her on some points. Michelle is all about getting rid of failing schools and making sure that parents of students in failing schools have other options (like charter schools) for their kids. I think what we should do is fix up the failing schools! Why are we paying to create new schools when we have schools. All they need is some spit and polish! Jon also brought this up in the interview. He said if all we do is take the good students out of the failing schools, then they are stuck with only the students nobody wants. That just doesn't seem right! That has to hurt the students in those schools even more and they probably have just succumbed to the fact that they will never succeed. We need to be fixing these issues and reviving the life into those failing schools.

To reform the system I would continue to get rid of ineffective teachers and replace them with effective teachers like Michelle did in Washington, DC. However, I would be implementing plans to get the failing schools the help they needed to becoming a great schools again. I would also continue to fight the overwhelming amount of standards and standardized testing that they give to teachers and students. Teachers know what is best for students. Yes, they need to be held accountable in some way but does that really mean the students need to be tested every year sometimes several times in that year? Can teachers not create their own data such as portfolio and things of the like to show their students' growth in the classroom. There has to be a better way! Teaching for the test just isn't working. If we really want to make workers for the 21st Century students have a lot better things they need to be doing in the classroom then memorizing things for a test.

Student Profiles:

Meet Zeke

 Zeke is a student with an IEP because he is almost blind. He is a very happy kid, and no one in the class seemed to pick on him at all. They accepted him while they were doing group work and listened to him while he read his story out loud to the class. He was excited to share his story about a play station and a PSP (he called it a baby PSP) coming to life. I was told that Zeke does miss a lot of class due to doctor appointments. He also has to be very close to his paper to see it and the teacher is required to place him close to the board.

      Zeke obviously likes video games based on the story he read above to the class. His story however, was all over the place and didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. The baby PSP was going to the doctors and in the next sentence he was waking Zeke up in his bed wanting to play. So, what I would do is to first go over the plot elements of a story in a video game because a video game tells a story just like a book. Then, I would have Zeke do a creative project where he created his own video game. He would have to demonstrate that he understood plot elements to a story by creating his own video game story. Hopefully, he would learn from the model that I would show him and apply it to his own video game!

 

Meet Brittany

 

       Brittany is definitely one of the popular girls. She dresses very nicely and she is very confident in herself. My co-op described her as an attention seeker. She is very unscripted as I later found out when my co-op described a story where Brittany hinted to my co-op that perhaps he should date one of the teachers within their team. I am really taming down the story and it seems Brittany lacks some morals. It makes me wonder what her female role models are and it also concerns me that it could affect her as she continues through her schooling. Despite all of this, she is an “average student” and seems willing to learn in class.

 

        If Brittany were in my class, I would be tempted to do a unit that would be filled with literature from strong women that we could study. Perhaps we could study literature like The Scarlett Letter, Jane Eyre or Their Eyes Were Watching God. The possibilities would be endless and we could compare classic literature to characters like Katniss in The Hunger Games. I really think that Brittany is looking up to a female role model that perhaps does not have the best morals, and maybe studying strong female characters in books would help her to develop as a young adult.

 

 

Meet "the loner" (sorry I didn't get his name)

 

This young man is a master at folding paper. He can do some serious origami. My co-op said if he isn't folding paper he is nibbling on some food like a mouse. He just needs to always have his hands busy, and my co-op allows this because he gets good grades. My co-op thinks that the folding and nibbling our nervous habits. These habits annoy Brittany in the classroom. He keeps to himself for the most part and is happy folding his paper.

 

I honestly haven't had the light bulb go off yet on how I would teach him in my English class. I think I would need to do something where I could keep his hands busy. Perhaps, we could study a graphic novel, and then he could have some fun making his own. The drawing would keep his hands busy. I am still thinking of answers as to how I would teach him, but I want to studying him more to find out why he has those nervous habits. If it is a confidence level thing, I would want to do something that would help him to build up his confidence.

       

 

 

 

On types of students, a hypothetical English curriculum and even Michelle Rhee

Before I discuss the types of students that I saw on Friday I’d like to give some background information on the classes that they are in. My coop teaches gifted students at Donegal High, and throughout the day on Friday she taught a gifted seminar (the unit is on happiness) and a preparation course for National History Day. In between these two classes, my coop met with several gifted students to discuss their class schedules. In addition to these, I also observed a humanities class taught by another teacher at the school. Since most of my day was spent working with gifted students, the group of students that stood out the most to me on Friday were those that can best be described as “highly able”. I’ve never before seen students that are so enthusiastic about school. Even in this group, there were types.

One type of student that I would like to note were certain “social” students in the humanities class that I observed. It was a group of very well-dressed girls who were much more interested in talking than in working on their worksheets. I would say that their interaction with the subject of English was minimal; they waited until there was almost no time left before wrapping up their conversation and jotting down a few quick answers. After reminding them once to twice to say on track, their teacher left them alone.

A large majority of the students in the gifted seminar class seemed to enjoy the course content and got along with each other very well. They joked with each other and conversed freely while remaining respectful of each other’s ideas and opinions during their discussion of what it means to be happy. They wore jeans and various t-shirts; several were athletes and wore shirts that read “Nike” or “Donegal field hockey”, and all were tidy and clean-looking. They all expressed enthusiasm during their seminar, and when they later returned to work on their history projects, I found creativity and skill in their writing. One student was finishing a website that he had made that detailed the events of the Lattimer Massacre—all of his information was organized by page, and he had even included a four-page paper on process of project. Another student had created a youtube video on nuclear energy, for which had had written a script. Towards the end of the class, the students provided constructive feedback about each other’s projects. There is no doubt that these students used an extraordinary amount of creativity in their writing.

One of the first students I met was “J” (I’ll stay clear of real names here) the eleven-year-old completing ninth-grade classes. J was a small boy who dressed very neatly and articulated himself extraordinarily well when he spoke; speaking with him was like speaking to my mother, who prefers to use formal language and correct grammar in all situations. According to my coop, J’s scholastic achievements have been very impressive—as demonstrated by the way he skipped so many grades—but he has really struggled to make friends.

If all of these students were together in an English class, I think that the two most important elements of their curriculum would be choice and a safe environment. The ability to choose their projects would allow for relevance to the student’s outside lives because they would be the people to design the direction and content of their activities. The students in NHD class thrived on their freedom of choice—why shouldn’t other students? The other factor that I mentioned, the safe environment, would be just as essential for relevance because I don’t think that students will want to share connections to their outside lives if they don’t feel safe enough to do so. Shy students like J should feel free and safe enough to contribute to class discussions and help point out the relevance of the topic at hand.

 

My favorite quote this week:

“If bringing common sense into a dysfunctional system makes me a radical—than I’m okay being a radical"

–Michelle Rhee

Michelle Rhee expressed the wish to develop a way to access teachers and “hold them accountable” for the academic growth of their students. I agree that teachers should be accessed on some kind of level, and not on the basis of whether or not their students are performing well on exams. While I believe that everybody can learn, I don’t believe that everyone wants to learn and a teacher shouldn’t be held accountable for a student who refuses to try. While it is our responsibility to do our best to motivate our students to be the best we can be, there might still be some students that “slip through the net”. For example, my mom teaches math for a cyber-charter school and is accessed, along with her colleges, on several factors that are supposed to exhibit student growth. One of these factors is student attendance. Classroom meetings are virtual, and students often don’t show up, regardless of phone calls, participation points, etc. I think that accessing teachers based on their student’s test scores is just as unfair as testing them based on student attendance. The overall academic growth of their students—growth expressed by not just testing alone, (for instance, by examining student portfolios) is a much better way to measure the effectiveness of a teacher.

We’ve been brainstorming ways to reform our classrooms a lot in the past few weeks. Some elements of reform that have really stuck with me are the need to move from teacher-directed classrooms to those that are more student-centered. Instead of deciding student knowledge based on the curriculum, we should be deciding what goes into the curriculum based on the needs of our students. I think that standardized testing is the biggest obstacle for this kind of teaching because it sets the same goals for all students regardless of their needs. And that goal, when it comes down to it, is not necessarily to have a strong writer’s voice, to understand the deeper meaning or relevance of a text, or really be proficient in lasting skills that are relevant to their outside lives. Like Jon Stewart said in part three of the interview, “Look, I took the SATs. I did fine. But that, to me, is not a predictor of how people were going to work in a collaborative environment, were going to be in terms of creative problem solving…”In order for constructive reform to take place, the emphasis on testing within school systems needs to change.