I almost fell out of my chair to hear one of Kozol's stories echoed in my classroom, though with a different sort of spin. I'd never heard anyone say "fishy fishy" until I read it in Kozol, but then a few days after reading it, I heard one of my middle school boys saying it, in that tone reserved for something that has a hidden meaning. I was pretty sure it was Not nice, but without having the faintest clue of what it did mean, I just gave the student a little glare and left it at that. I later checked on Urban Dictionary, but that didn't help much, beyond confirming that, in most settings, it's probably not nice.
That was the most startling connection, but hardly the most profound or pedagogical. The classroom that I'm in has been mired in a grammar unit (yes- a whole unit) for all but the first day or so I was in the classroom. Since about day 3 I've been rather inclined to beat my head on the desk. The kids have a packet of worksheets, mostly straight from the book, and we have plodded steadily through them day after day. I know that there is research that shows this context-less instruction to be ineffective at best, and my coop even admitted one day that most of them probably won't remember much of this, but still the classes are subjected to this mind-numbing march of sentence complements. Why? "Because it will improve your writing". No, it won't, not taught like this anyway. One of the lies Kozol despises. one of the days I worked with a sub, a student asked why they need to know this. I let the sub answer, because my answer might have made trouble we didn't need. This is not my classroom. I wanted to say "You don't need to know this. You will never use it (unless you're going to be an English teacher or an editor). It might make you better at revising, but not done this way". I can see where knowing what the sentence complements are and how one can identify them might be useful, but it should be done with mini lessons, using sentences from student work or what they are reading and always with the goal of improving student's writing in mind first- not used as an excuse to teach something that some textbook or curriculum stuck in the 1800's thinks they should do. Most of these 8th graders can use these structures unconsciously to some degree, and these drill and kill worksheets don't make them any more likely to use them. Half-desperate I 'idly' mentioned that there might be Schoolhouse Rock clips to support these (anything's better than worksheets) and my coop agreed that there were, but that one gets tired of them pretty quickly. *headdesk* Even worse- I visited the high school for one day because I'd mentioned that I'd never seen bloc scheduling in action, so my coop arranged for me to visit a friend's class. Every level I saw (excluding the creative writing class) had similar grammar worksheets, the only difference being that they only spent part of each class on them instead of the whole thing.
Another thing I've noticed that bothers me is that the kids don't seem to do much writing. I saw some of their research papers before they were handed back, and there were several that I saw that I would have had the student revise and resubmit again, rather than accept what was given- it's not about the grade it's about getting better at writing, and at least one final draft held the exact mistakes of the earlier draft. Not cool dude, not cool. More troubling though, is that I'm not certain that they'd done any major writing before that, and I'm not sure they will after. Definitely have to include something in the small "Flowers for Algernon" unit I've been given to plan and teach.
The PSSA writing tests were painful to watch, especially as we proctored a group of students with IEPs and the only thing the special ed teacher or any of us could do was read the prompts for the essays. Not all the questions even, just the essay prompts. We weren't even supposed to remind kids to attempt every question if we saw one left blank. No child left behind indeed.
I like my coop, really I do, but there are so many things I politely disagree with- more in my head than out loud- I am a guest. There seems to be precious little support for wiggly and wobbly, though there is some room for it. They do regularly work with partners, which at least gets them moving, but what they do in those pairings is generally worksheets, which seems like a waste. The room is somewhat decorated, and there's a little warmth there, but the selection of free reading books is small and looks untouched, and there are no decorations that are also interactive. We've played a few games, but they seem to support the content only at a low level. Direct instruction followed by practice is pretty much the standard, and while we have co teachers for two of the classes, the norm is for them to occasionally switch off and that's about it. For heavens sake there are three adults in the room those periods while I'm here- I think we could afford to take a few small risks! My coop does give me plenty of opportunity to teach, and good feedback, for which I am grateful, but too often it seem to me that she has settled and gotten stuck in the midst of a curriculum that commits read- and write-icide daily, teaching in a manner that is comfortable rather than effective. It's almost ironic though that the days I feel I've taught best have been the days she's been out sick and I've taught with the subs. It is interesting to see the looks on the middle schooler's faces the first time you actually use a little authority, rather than just being a quiet helper. Or when they say something they shouldn't and only then realize that the person behind them is more teacher than student. I like the middle school kids. They seem to be a little more open and honest than the high schoolers, for all that the high schooler's greater cognitive development makes some discussions possible that might fly over the 8th grader's heads.
I'm beginning to think that the person for whom the classroom should be least comfortable is the teacher.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Hybrid, Visitors, and a Really Long Rant
This is not my classroom.
I have to keep telling myself that. I have to remember that I am only here for five weeks, that there have been about a dozen others visiting this classroom just this year, and that I have not been here since September and will not bere here during the antsy days of June. This is not my classroom, these are not my students, and it is therefore not my curriculum.
I have many discrepencies about how my co-op's curriculum is designed, taught, and assessed. It would be an unfair overstatement, however, to say that he is not a good teacher because of these things; in fact, it seems that he possesses some of the same insights into education as we have discussed and has a small arsenal of more creative, engaging teaching materials. This arsenal is just dusty, as it was pushed to the dark corner of the closet in the wake of new programs and curriculum requirements that have been imposed throughout the past few years. Most recently, the school has introduced the Hybrid program. Students enrolled have blocked subjects (English and Social Studies for sure, possibly Science) and are provided with iPads, which sounds like a dream to 21st century teachers looking to implement technology in the classroom. During class, students rotate through three stations including direct instruction, group work, and independent work, which also follows suit with modern educational pedigogy that endorses multiple learning styles, group work, and constant changes in activity to enhance interest and engagement.
But looks can be deceiving. It didn't take more than a few periods for me to recognize that this program was nothing more than a clever disguise, a flimsy plastic mask of strategically (and loosely) incorporated bits of modern, educator-supported teaching pedagogy hiding a face we are all too familiar with in the American classroom. Compass (one of the websites used) is simply a talking online textbook and is just as painful as the published dinosaurs sitting on the shelves of traditional classrooms, but - quite inconveniently - cannot be bookmarked or accessed from student iPads, making something that should be more accessible less so. Group work is nothing new, but is rather a technological take on worksheets; little authentic, engaging discussion is brought about in these groups, but is rather filled with either distracted chatter or the all-too-familiar plowing through of work: heads down and personal connections/applications disregarded. Online quizzes are nothing short of a joke and students are given three tries for each quiz because some of the questions are grossly misleading or incorrect, but my cooperating teacher says he doesn't know how else to make sure students are absorbing the information from Compass. I doubt that he lacks the ability to think of something better than these ridiculous surface-level objective quizzes to assess comprehension, but that he instead feels restricted either professionally or internally/creatively by the confines of the program.
I had been seething every day as I watch this revamped crap be promoted not only to students, but to teachers and administrators under the name of technologically innovative practice. No one seemed to be rallying against it, subversion seemed to be nowhere in sight. Everyone was falling for it, everyone was buying this transparent disguise. Last week, a teaching veteran who was going back to school and observing my co-op's classroom for an assignment voiced the same concerns I had been keeping silent the whole time. Her face scrunched when I told her the narrow selections of poetry the students were introduced to and the excrutiating nature of the drama lessons as she whispered, "You have to wonder if the people who created these things have any love or appreciation for literature." I wanted to hug her, to exclaim, "Thank you, thank you!" at her acknowledgement of what I knew had to be true. I spent as many spare moments with her as possible, whispering out of earshot of my cooperating teacher, swapping discouraged remarks and propositions for better instruction, glad to finally feel as if I had an ally in my inner rally against Hybrid, even if she was an extremely temporary fixture in the classroom.
Fortunately (and also unfortunately), assessment is hit or miss. Besides those horrible quizzes, final summative assessments - or at least the ones I've witnessed - have not been completely off base. During the poetry unit, students were paired up and told to create a lyric poem about anything they wish and put it into a Powerpoint presentation that reflected the meaning(s) of the poem. This was not a bad assessment, especially since it included more than one creative medium. However, students were not as well-equipped as they should have been for this project, as they were introduced to a paltry amount of poetry and were given no choice as to what kind of poetry they wanted to write, nor any avenues for inspiration. In terms of their final persuasive writing assignment, little guidance was provided in helping students choose topics to write about. It was great that my co-op wanted students to have complete control over their choice of topics, but I sensed that most would have difficulty and possibly a lack of focus in choosing without a selection of topics to get them thinking. I quickly put together a broad list of 50 topics, making sure to give thought to what 10th graders may find relevent, and was estatic to see some intense engagement come of it. However, the research process found most students unfamiliar with how to distinguish reliable sources, what ideas to research, or how to recognize spin and/or biased information and studies. I assumed (foolishly, it seems) that research techniques had been taught to these students already and that they had experienced sufficient practice in the department. I wish I would have been aware of this educational oversight, because I would have proposed the idea to my co-op of letting me present a short modeling lesson in research techniques and literacy. I was also frustrated that my co-op, an experienced teacher, hadn't thought to even provide students with a short set of notes on the subject for them to reference. Again, the visiting teacher agreed with my observation, saying, "You're right, it should be taught. It's a whole different kind of literacy." So why was this ignored? Was my cooperating teacher not teaching it because it wasn't part of the Hybrid curriculum? Had he become too dependent on the outline of this program? And what sort of penalties will these students face upon completion of their papers; will he deduct points or will they suffer most in the long term due to still not attaining research literacy? Either way, it is the students who will once again suffer at the hands of an insufficient system.
On a different but no less frustrating note, my teacher is resistent to let me teach and appears to feel inconvenienced by my presence. Again, this is not his fault. Due to the restraints of Hybrid, there is limited wiggle room for outside instruction and activities, placing him in a compromising position at the prospect of allowing a student teacher to add in something new that would not only increase students' workload, but also potentially throw off the flow/schedule of his classes. The opportunities that he is willing to offer me in the realm of teaching are limited to simply taking over his own direct instruction Power Point already created for the unit, teaching the material exactly as he would. I have tried to give input whenever possible or contribute things (such as the list of persuasive essay topics and a character map for Julius Ceasar), but no original teaching has taken place and I am uncertain of whether or not it will during my placement. My co-op also explained to me that when the school informs him (not asks, mind you) that he is receiving a student teacher/observer, he doesn't even pay attention to who they are or when they are coming. He has had about a dozen or more student teachers "trapse through" his class just this year and he has given up on trying to keep track of them or care if and when they show up. I don't want to paint him as resentful of me; actually, he told me at the end of the two weeks that he would miss having me in the room. However, I think he feels as if the administration is not keeping in mind how having a student teacher or observer in the classroom affects him and his students. On top of this, observers from the Hybrid company occassionally stop in to see how the program is being utilized, teachers within the school periodically sit in on each other's classes to keep up on fellow teaching styles, and teacher assistants are present during classes with high concentrations of students with IEP's. It's no wonder that he feels like his classroom is constantly intruded upon with so much constant traffic going on with no regard to his (or his students') feelings on these visitations. I think I would be tired of seeing others ushered in and out of my room too.
Overall, I don't think my co-op is a poor teacher by any means. I think that he is merely a victim of the educational system that always feels the need to micro-manage teachers. We are educated and trained to teach - so why are we being squeezed out of practicing our craft by standards, textbooks, and scripted programs? My co-op used to design his own lessons, his own activities, and his own assessments, but was "asked" to replace all of this with a $20,000 program that makes him supplementary in his own classroom. There are some evident frustrations with the implementation of this program, but there is also a decrease in the pressure to design an entire curriculum, a decrease in the hours spent pouring over a word processor creating test questions, lesson plans, and meeting state standards since all of this is included. Teachers have said for years how much time they have to spend doing all of these things just so they can perform their jobs, so is it so surprising that despite qualms and a choking of creativity, teachers may embrace this break a bit? I can't deny that it certainly seems easier this way. But at this point I would welcome the challenge of a fresh, teacher-designed unit that fostered engagement and authentic learning.
I have to keep telling myself that. I have to remember that I am only here for five weeks, that there have been about a dozen others visiting this classroom just this year, and that I have not been here since September and will not bere here during the antsy days of June. This is not my classroom, these are not my students, and it is therefore not my curriculum.
I have many discrepencies about how my co-op's curriculum is designed, taught, and assessed. It would be an unfair overstatement, however, to say that he is not a good teacher because of these things; in fact, it seems that he possesses some of the same insights into education as we have discussed and has a small arsenal of more creative, engaging teaching materials. This arsenal is just dusty, as it was pushed to the dark corner of the closet in the wake of new programs and curriculum requirements that have been imposed throughout the past few years. Most recently, the school has introduced the Hybrid program. Students enrolled have blocked subjects (English and Social Studies for sure, possibly Science) and are provided with iPads, which sounds like a dream to 21st century teachers looking to implement technology in the classroom. During class, students rotate through three stations including direct instruction, group work, and independent work, which also follows suit with modern educational pedigogy that endorses multiple learning styles, group work, and constant changes in activity to enhance interest and engagement.
But looks can be deceiving. It didn't take more than a few periods for me to recognize that this program was nothing more than a clever disguise, a flimsy plastic mask of strategically (and loosely) incorporated bits of modern, educator-supported teaching pedagogy hiding a face we are all too familiar with in the American classroom. Compass (one of the websites used) is simply a talking online textbook and is just as painful as the published dinosaurs sitting on the shelves of traditional classrooms, but - quite inconveniently - cannot be bookmarked or accessed from student iPads, making something that should be more accessible less so. Group work is nothing new, but is rather a technological take on worksheets; little authentic, engaging discussion is brought about in these groups, but is rather filled with either distracted chatter or the all-too-familiar plowing through of work: heads down and personal connections/applications disregarded. Online quizzes are nothing short of a joke and students are given three tries for each quiz because some of the questions are grossly misleading or incorrect, but my cooperating teacher says he doesn't know how else to make sure students are absorbing the information from Compass. I doubt that he lacks the ability to think of something better than these ridiculous surface-level objective quizzes to assess comprehension, but that he instead feels restricted either professionally or internally/creatively by the confines of the program.
I had been seething every day as I watch this revamped crap be promoted not only to students, but to teachers and administrators under the name of technologically innovative practice. No one seemed to be rallying against it, subversion seemed to be nowhere in sight. Everyone was falling for it, everyone was buying this transparent disguise. Last week, a teaching veteran who was going back to school and observing my co-op's classroom for an assignment voiced the same concerns I had been keeping silent the whole time. Her face scrunched when I told her the narrow selections of poetry the students were introduced to and the excrutiating nature of the drama lessons as she whispered, "You have to wonder if the people who created these things have any love or appreciation for literature." I wanted to hug her, to exclaim, "Thank you, thank you!" at her acknowledgement of what I knew had to be true. I spent as many spare moments with her as possible, whispering out of earshot of my cooperating teacher, swapping discouraged remarks and propositions for better instruction, glad to finally feel as if I had an ally in my inner rally against Hybrid, even if she was an extremely temporary fixture in the classroom.
Fortunately (and also unfortunately), assessment is hit or miss. Besides those horrible quizzes, final summative assessments - or at least the ones I've witnessed - have not been completely off base. During the poetry unit, students were paired up and told to create a lyric poem about anything they wish and put it into a Powerpoint presentation that reflected the meaning(s) of the poem. This was not a bad assessment, especially since it included more than one creative medium. However, students were not as well-equipped as they should have been for this project, as they were introduced to a paltry amount of poetry and were given no choice as to what kind of poetry they wanted to write, nor any avenues for inspiration. In terms of their final persuasive writing assignment, little guidance was provided in helping students choose topics to write about. It was great that my co-op wanted students to have complete control over their choice of topics, but I sensed that most would have difficulty and possibly a lack of focus in choosing without a selection of topics to get them thinking. I quickly put together a broad list of 50 topics, making sure to give thought to what 10th graders may find relevent, and was estatic to see some intense engagement come of it. However, the research process found most students unfamiliar with how to distinguish reliable sources, what ideas to research, or how to recognize spin and/or biased information and studies. I assumed (foolishly, it seems) that research techniques had been taught to these students already and that they had experienced sufficient practice in the department. I wish I would have been aware of this educational oversight, because I would have proposed the idea to my co-op of letting me present a short modeling lesson in research techniques and literacy. I was also frustrated that my co-op, an experienced teacher, hadn't thought to even provide students with a short set of notes on the subject for them to reference. Again, the visiting teacher agreed with my observation, saying, "You're right, it should be taught. It's a whole different kind of literacy." So why was this ignored? Was my cooperating teacher not teaching it because it wasn't part of the Hybrid curriculum? Had he become too dependent on the outline of this program? And what sort of penalties will these students face upon completion of their papers; will he deduct points or will they suffer most in the long term due to still not attaining research literacy? Either way, it is the students who will once again suffer at the hands of an insufficient system.
On a different but no less frustrating note, my teacher is resistent to let me teach and appears to feel inconvenienced by my presence. Again, this is not his fault. Due to the restraints of Hybrid, there is limited wiggle room for outside instruction and activities, placing him in a compromising position at the prospect of allowing a student teacher to add in something new that would not only increase students' workload, but also potentially throw off the flow/schedule of his classes. The opportunities that he is willing to offer me in the realm of teaching are limited to simply taking over his own direct instruction Power Point already created for the unit, teaching the material exactly as he would. I have tried to give input whenever possible or contribute things (such as the list of persuasive essay topics and a character map for Julius Ceasar), but no original teaching has taken place and I am uncertain of whether or not it will during my placement. My co-op also explained to me that when the school informs him (not asks, mind you) that he is receiving a student teacher/observer, he doesn't even pay attention to who they are or when they are coming. He has had about a dozen or more student teachers "trapse through" his class just this year and he has given up on trying to keep track of them or care if and when they show up. I don't want to paint him as resentful of me; actually, he told me at the end of the two weeks that he would miss having me in the room. However, I think he feels as if the administration is not keeping in mind how having a student teacher or observer in the classroom affects him and his students. On top of this, observers from the Hybrid company occassionally stop in to see how the program is being utilized, teachers within the school periodically sit in on each other's classes to keep up on fellow teaching styles, and teacher assistants are present during classes with high concentrations of students with IEP's. It's no wonder that he feels like his classroom is constantly intruded upon with so much constant traffic going on with no regard to his (or his students') feelings on these visitations. I think I would be tired of seeing others ushered in and out of my room too.
Overall, I don't think my co-op is a poor teacher by any means. I think that he is merely a victim of the educational system that always feels the need to micro-manage teachers. We are educated and trained to teach - so why are we being squeezed out of practicing our craft by standards, textbooks, and scripted programs? My co-op used to design his own lessons, his own activities, and his own assessments, but was "asked" to replace all of this with a $20,000 program that makes him supplementary in his own classroom. There are some evident frustrations with the implementation of this program, but there is also a decrease in the pressure to design an entire curriculum, a decrease in the hours spent pouring over a word processor creating test questions, lesson plans, and meeting state standards since all of this is included. Teachers have said for years how much time they have to spend doing all of these things just so they can perform their jobs, so is it so surprising that despite qualms and a choking of creativity, teachers may embrace this break a bit? I can't deny that it certainly seems easier this way. But at this point I would welcome the challenge of a fresh, teacher-designed unit that fostered engagement and authentic learning.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Some Thoughts on Kozol
On my very first day of field
placement, I noticed that student kept pausing by the board on their way into
or out of the classroom to fiddle with something. At first I thought that they
were just adding notes to the teacher, since my coop keeps a lot of random
things posted on her smart board, but after seeing students pause their between
every class, sometimes in pairs or groups, I decided it was time for a closer
look. What I found in that spot was little magnetic clothing. Baseball jerseys,
a chicken suit, floral skirts, and a men’s suit all surrounded a little magnetic
Einstein. As I stared, Mrs. H. glanced over. “Oh, that’s our class Einstein. He
gets dressed and undressed about fifty times a day,” she said in an off-hand
tone.
When I read chapter nine of “Letters
to a Young Teacher”, I kept thinking of the little magnetic Einstein. The high school students in my class may be a
little old for fuzzy caterpillars, imaginary instruments and wiggly, wobbly
teeth but that doesn’t mean that they are too old to have fun during class time.
Bringing things like magnetic Einstein, a floating shark, and a monkey
slingshot (yes, these are all present in Mrs. H’s room) doesn’t distract
students from their lessons—it lightens the classroom atmosphere and puts
students at ease. For instance, whenever the class has to read a text allowed,
they use the “slingshot monkey” instead of just going in a circle. The student
in possession of the monkey has to speak and when they are done speaking, they
slingshot the monkey to whoever they want, and that person has to read next.
This keeps the students moving and on their toes even during the rather mundane
task of a class read-aloud. No matter how much I wish otherwise, I know that I’m
going to have many students who find English or certain aspects of English
boring. The trick will be for me to find ways to make it interesting, and
bringing fun things into the classroom is one way to do that. It shows students
that we, their teachers, recognize them not as robots but as real people with
real needs.
Changing the topic (and jumping
forward a bit), something that really jumped out at me was in chapter 12, when
Kozol says that teachers should be “transparent” in identifying their beliefs
as their beliefs (pages 158-159). Teachers need to own their beliefs so that students have the opportunity to (as
Kozol puts it) “judge or challenge what they say accordingly”. This make sense
to me, but I get the feeling that if I did this too much as a teacher I might
just get fired. I believe that it’s important to bring up “hot issues” in
class, but in today’s uptight society it may be better to keep our personal
opinions about these issues to ourselves. I keep wondering whether it would be
better to present both sides of an issue as best as I can without telling
students on which side I stand. It seems to me that as long as a teacher doesn’t
allow his bias to get in the way of presenting an opposing view, he will be
able to represent the view well and his own opinion may not be necessary. On
the other hand, I worry that if I don’t express an opinion enough in class my class
I will miss opportunities to model supporting opinions during class discussions. After all, the ability to argue and support their beliefs is a skill that I want my students to have for life. Perhaps it’s
best to try to find some kind of balance; I’m not sure. So far, I haven't seen any teachers really take a stand or express an opinion on a controversial issue. What do you think? Does
a teacher’s opinion belong in the classroom?
Kozol Response
I'm not really sure what chapters we're supposed to be blogging on for Kozol, so I'll just talk about a handful of things that caught my interest in the book.
In Chapter 10, Kozol discusses high-stakes testing--something that puts a great deal of pressure on my cooperating teacher on a day-to-day basis. She is constantly talking about the Keystones. In the faculty room, it's no different. Teachers are constantly talking about their former students and how well they did or did not perform on the test. It's depressing. When Penn Manor receives the results for the Keystones they entirely restructure the schedule and send students who failed into a remediation course. Pairing this up with Kozol's attack on high stakes testing made me uneasy about the whole process. It's pretty clear that the whole drilling sessions thing doesn't work. If test-drilling, or remediation as it is called at Penn Manor, was actually effective Kozol points out, then "it would [be] given to all children in the school throughout the course of the entire year" (113). The fact that test preparation has caused kindergarten children to lose their nap time is absolutely disgusting (114). It's also distressing to think that a teacher must manipulate a poem into curriculum by attaching it to some "officially ordained proficiency" (117). Why must exposure to something new and beautiful be justified? Why can't learning just be organic? Why must education be viewed as "industry" creating products (139)? The education system seems to mirror an assembly line at times. Students are not Ford automobiles. They are human beings; some times it's beneficial to deviate from preordained plans--at least that's my opinion.
In Chapter 12, Kozol advocated for teachers to stop teaching lies. I was particularly inspired by Kozol's suggestion for teachers to rebel against the textbooks that are riddled with lies by supplementing the text with clippings, articles, and other 'corrective' texts (154). Detecting truth from "crap"is an important skill for our students to develop in our information-saturated world. By bringing alternative texts in the classroom, a teacher can empower students by asking them to question the things they read, hear, and see. Additionally, this transparency on the teacher's behalf allows the students to challenge the teacher in a similar and healthy manner, thus leading to a never-dull class (159). This invitation to challenge and question engages students; it forces them to think. THAT is precisely what I want out of my students. I want to abolish passivity. There is no room for that in my classroom.
In Chapter 14, Kozol relays a great story about how he was fired for reading his students Langston Hughes' poetry. To me, this story was insane, but I can make sense of it since it happened in the climate of Boston in the 1960s. Overall though, the story (up until the getting fired part) showed me, yet again, the importance of Ethnic Literature. The way his "stoic" students interacted with the poems was really moving and it solidifies the importance of a wide array of literature in the classroom. We cannot force our students to read the works of dead white men solely. Occasionally (or frequently), we need vibrant, modern writers to seep into our stuffy curriculum, even at the risk of being charged with "curriculum deviation" (197).
All in all, Kozol's book was a great read. It forced me to view the world of education in a much different (and more enlightened) way.
In Chapter 10, Kozol discusses high-stakes testing--something that puts a great deal of pressure on my cooperating teacher on a day-to-day basis. She is constantly talking about the Keystones. In the faculty room, it's no different. Teachers are constantly talking about their former students and how well they did or did not perform on the test. It's depressing. When Penn Manor receives the results for the Keystones they entirely restructure the schedule and send students who failed into a remediation course. Pairing this up with Kozol's attack on high stakes testing made me uneasy about the whole process. It's pretty clear that the whole drilling sessions thing doesn't work. If test-drilling, or remediation as it is called at Penn Manor, was actually effective Kozol points out, then "it would [be] given to all children in the school throughout the course of the entire year" (113). The fact that test preparation has caused kindergarten children to lose their nap time is absolutely disgusting (114). It's also distressing to think that a teacher must manipulate a poem into curriculum by attaching it to some "officially ordained proficiency" (117). Why must exposure to something new and beautiful be justified? Why can't learning just be organic? Why must education be viewed as "industry" creating products (139)? The education system seems to mirror an assembly line at times. Students are not Ford automobiles. They are human beings; some times it's beneficial to deviate from preordained plans--at least that's my opinion.
In Chapter 12, Kozol advocated for teachers to stop teaching lies. I was particularly inspired by Kozol's suggestion for teachers to rebel against the textbooks that are riddled with lies by supplementing the text with clippings, articles, and other 'corrective' texts (154). Detecting truth from "crap"is an important skill for our students to develop in our information-saturated world. By bringing alternative texts in the classroom, a teacher can empower students by asking them to question the things they read, hear, and see. Additionally, this transparency on the teacher's behalf allows the students to challenge the teacher in a similar and healthy manner, thus leading to a never-dull class (159). This invitation to challenge and question engages students; it forces them to think. THAT is precisely what I want out of my students. I want to abolish passivity. There is no room for that in my classroom.
In Chapter 14, Kozol relays a great story about how he was fired for reading his students Langston Hughes' poetry. To me, this story was insane, but I can make sense of it since it happened in the climate of Boston in the 1960s. Overall though, the story (up until the getting fired part) showed me, yet again, the importance of Ethnic Literature. The way his "stoic" students interacted with the poems was really moving and it solidifies the importance of a wide array of literature in the classroom. We cannot force our students to read the works of dead white men solely. Occasionally (or frequently), we need vibrant, modern writers to seep into our stuffy curriculum, even at the risk of being charged with "curriculum deviation" (197).
All in all, Kozol's book was a great read. It forced me to view the world of education in a much different (and more enlightened) way.
Some Observations from the Field: Week 2
Week 2
This was an awesome week for me. I really learned a lot. One of the coolest things about teaching is that every moment you're teaching, you're learning. That's probably in the Top 3 reasons for my desire to be a teacher.
The week started with me teaching a mini-lesson on apostrophes--a simple brush up lesson for the students. (Every week, my cooperating teacher has one of these small brush up lessons on grammar, so when she asked me if I wanted to teach I jumped at the opportunity.) I worked really hard on creating a Prezi for the mini-lesson, so I could consolidate all these funny, real world misuses of the apostrophe.
When I taught the lesson to the third block class, it tanked. I felt like I was teaching at a morgue. The students might has well have been a room full of propped up corpses.
Lifeless stares. Silence. Hoods on heads. Heads on desks. Hell on earth for a teacher.
Block four comes. My stomach sinks as students walk into the room. "It can't get much worse than Block three, right?" I say to my co-op.
She shakes her head. "Make a slight change. Prompt them about what they already know about apostrophes before you start the lesson."
"You think that will work?"
"It's worth a try, right?"
"Without a doubt," I said with a gulp of fear as I glanced at the hazy eyed students entering the room.
Sure enough. It worked. Just prompting the students about their prior knowledge and activating their schema hooked them into the lesson more than a simple cold-opening.
The lesson went swimmingly from that point forward; the students laughed at all the silly misuses of apostrophes and they really seemed to be cognitively aware of the mistakes they had made in the past. I can't say for certain whether or not this knowledge will stay with the students, although they did do well on the mini-quiz that my cooperating teacher had prepared for the lesson.
Overall, this experience was just a great way to see the importance of self-reflection in teaching. I reflected on how my lesson was going poorly and my co-op suggested a slight adjustment to correct the problem. Who knows the change may not have even been the cause for the success of the second lesson, but it certainly didn't hurt. This self-reflection and the accompanying adjustment is the hallmark of a good teacher. Additionally, in order to be a good teacher, one must learn from one's mistakes. One must constantly learn--and that's why I am here--or at least one of the top 3 reasons why I'm here.
This was an awesome week for me. I really learned a lot. One of the coolest things about teaching is that every moment you're teaching, you're learning. That's probably in the Top 3 reasons for my desire to be a teacher.
The week started with me teaching a mini-lesson on apostrophes--a simple brush up lesson for the students. (Every week, my cooperating teacher has one of these small brush up lessons on grammar, so when she asked me if I wanted to teach I jumped at the opportunity.) I worked really hard on creating a Prezi for the mini-lesson, so I could consolidate all these funny, real world misuses of the apostrophe.
When I taught the lesson to the third block class, it tanked. I felt like I was teaching at a morgue. The students might has well have been a room full of propped up corpses.
Lifeless stares. Silence. Hoods on heads. Heads on desks. Hell on earth for a teacher.
Block four comes. My stomach sinks as students walk into the room. "It can't get much worse than Block three, right?" I say to my co-op.
She shakes her head. "Make a slight change. Prompt them about what they already know about apostrophes before you start the lesson."
"You think that will work?"
"It's worth a try, right?"
"Without a doubt," I said with a gulp of fear as I glanced at the hazy eyed students entering the room.
Sure enough. It worked. Just prompting the students about their prior knowledge and activating their schema hooked them into the lesson more than a simple cold-opening.
The lesson went swimmingly from that point forward; the students laughed at all the silly misuses of apostrophes and they really seemed to be cognitively aware of the mistakes they had made in the past. I can't say for certain whether or not this knowledge will stay with the students, although they did do well on the mini-quiz that my cooperating teacher had prepared for the lesson.
Overall, this experience was just a great way to see the importance of self-reflection in teaching. I reflected on how my lesson was going poorly and my co-op suggested a slight adjustment to correct the problem. Who knows the change may not have even been the cause for the success of the second lesson, but it certainly didn't hurt. This self-reflection and the accompanying adjustment is the hallmark of a good teacher. Additionally, in order to be a good teacher, one must learn from one's mistakes. One must constantly learn--and that's why I am here--or at least one of the top 3 reasons why I'm here.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Some Observations from the Field: Week 1
Week 1
My mind was blown. I sat in the classroom with my jaw scraping the floor. My cooperating teacher had her students reading To Kill A Mockingbird aloud. Popcorn reading in a tenth grade class? To me, this was the equivalent of killing the classics, one painful syllable at a time. I came home after the first day of witnessing this and vented to anyone who would listen. How could this be happening? "Did this happen in your classes in high school?" I asked my friends, aghast.
I don't want to reflect upon my experience like it was a Cinderella story; I still hate popcorn readings, but I will say that I became more open towards the read alouds after seeing students actively engage in them.
That's just one of the valuable lessons I learned this week: be willing to try new things. Don't let your prior opinions cloud what you do or do not include in your classroom until you have evidence that it won't work. Be open to new ideas. Be flexible.
Rather than let the popcorn reading bother me, I sat and quietly observed how the students responded to it. Were they bored? Were they sleeping? Were they unfocused?
As near as I could tell, they were none of these things! In fact, quite the opposite. The students were actually engaged and focused. In fact, the read alouds made the book a shared, social experience among the students. They loved talking about it with one another. They legitimately looked forward to class so that they could read more of the book. Additionally, since everyone was going at the same pace, following along in their own copies of the book, everyone was quite literally on the same page. The book became a communal artifact that all the students had equal ownership over. The class investigated questions about the text in a safe, nurturing discussions. While I assumed they all hated having to read aloud, many of the students actually enjoyed the popcorn reading.
This experience was quite interesting, because it made me realize how I need to open my mind to alternative techniques as a teacher. I cannot just assume something will not work. I have to try it with my students. I have to suit my lessons to my classes, not my classes to my lessons.
My mind was blown. I sat in the classroom with my jaw scraping the floor. My cooperating teacher had her students reading To Kill A Mockingbird aloud. Popcorn reading in a tenth grade class? To me, this was the equivalent of killing the classics, one painful syllable at a time. I came home after the first day of witnessing this and vented to anyone who would listen. How could this be happening? "Did this happen in your classes in high school?" I asked my friends, aghast.
I don't want to reflect upon my experience like it was a Cinderella story; I still hate popcorn readings, but I will say that I became more open towards the read alouds after seeing students actively engage in them.
That's just one of the valuable lessons I learned this week: be willing to try new things. Don't let your prior opinions cloud what you do or do not include in your classroom until you have evidence that it won't work. Be open to new ideas. Be flexible.
Rather than let the popcorn reading bother me, I sat and quietly observed how the students responded to it. Were they bored? Were they sleeping? Were they unfocused?
As near as I could tell, they were none of these things! In fact, quite the opposite. The students were actually engaged and focused. In fact, the read alouds made the book a shared, social experience among the students. They loved talking about it with one another. They legitimately looked forward to class so that they could read more of the book. Additionally, since everyone was going at the same pace, following along in their own copies of the book, everyone was quite literally on the same page. The book became a communal artifact that all the students had equal ownership over. The class investigated questions about the text in a safe, nurturing discussions. While I assumed they all hated having to read aloud, many of the students actually enjoyed the popcorn reading.
This experience was quite interesting, because it made me realize how I need to open my mind to alternative techniques as a teacher. I cannot just assume something will not work. I have to try it with my students. I have to suit my lessons to my classes, not my classes to my lessons.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Kozol/Week 2 reflections.
Chapters 8 and 9 were my favorite chapters so far in Letters to a Young Teacher. The chapter on teacher jargon was hilariously relevant to the types of word-trends I feel that we are all coaxed into when immersed in education study. I have found that these latinized verbs-that-stand-for-shorter-verbs-that-mean-the-same-thing have almost fully taken over my professional writing style. I am not sure if it is necessarily a bad thing. It is just a different code to speak in. However, if we are using these terms with our students in an attempt to be transparent in our teaching practices, we should make sure they know what they mean. Utilize means use, for example.
We should also be sure that we are not using these terms simply for their abstractive qualities. In other words, we should not use these words to help us say something when we really don't have anything to say.
Remember what Camus says in The Plague:
But tell us, Tarrou, what is it that causes all the troubles of the world? "Language. We don’t have clear, plain language."
This is not always the easiest thing to do, but it is what I believe what Francesca and Kozol are really pushing back against.
Chapter 9 was beautiful. If teachers can find ways to let children feel comfortable with experiencing merriment in the school setting, they are doing their job. School cannot be all about content learning and objective-reaching. Kids need time to look out the window. I love that Francesca realizes this but also sees how the kids can help to enlighten her within these moments.
This type of thing seems to lend itself more to younger kids. How can we inspire aesthetic merriment in seventeen year-olds, kids who are often much more worried about being grown up than being young?
So this past week I decided I needed to try something new with my Freshman periods (especially period 8) so I came up with something I thought was pretty cool. We are studying Fahrenheit 451. My colleague Eliot White emailed me this article (http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html) written about censorship and book burning by Kurt Vonnegut. His book Slaughterhouse Five was actually burned in a school's furnace by the Drake school board in North Dakota. He wrote this letter to the president of the school board to explain that writers, including himself, were real people--people with pure and moral purposes. So I printed out this article for my kids to read. Afterward I was going to have them break into groups of four and each group would act as though they were their own school. These little school boards had to make decisions about how they would deal with censorship. What books would they allow? What would be the factors that would keep books from being allowed in their school? How would they deal with a teacher or student reading a book in school that wasn't "appropriate"? How would they deal with parents?
Since my Co-op doesn't like most of my ideas or give me much freedom, I decided to try the project without really giving her a full description of what it was I would be doing. So after we read the article, I broke the kids into groups and started explaining. When I began to walk around and facilitate the small group discussions, my co-op pulled me aside and said she didn't like the idea. "I wish you would have told me about this: I don't think it serves a purpose in their understanding of the novel," she said.
She's entitled to her opinion.
And yes, I probably should have told her what I was planning on doing first. But, I knew she wouldn't probably like it, and I really wanted to try it. I don't know if I made the right decision.
So she told me that instead of giving them the 20 minutes to work on this project, I should give them 5 and then have them get back to their seats so she could play a recording of Ray Bradbury reading an excerpt from the novel...
I was very annoyed but I did what she wanted. So for the final 15 minutes of the week, the students sat and payed no attention to a CD that my co-op played for them. I sat in the front and watched them not paying attention and watching the clock.
I thought: this is a missed opportunity.
We should also be sure that we are not using these terms simply for their abstractive qualities. In other words, we should not use these words to help us say something when we really don't have anything to say.
Remember what Camus says in The Plague:
But tell us, Tarrou, what is it that causes all the troubles of the world? "Language. We don’t have clear, plain language."
This is not always the easiest thing to do, but it is what I believe what Francesca and Kozol are really pushing back against.
Chapter 9 was beautiful. If teachers can find ways to let children feel comfortable with experiencing merriment in the school setting, they are doing their job. School cannot be all about content learning and objective-reaching. Kids need time to look out the window. I love that Francesca realizes this but also sees how the kids can help to enlighten her within these moments.
This type of thing seems to lend itself more to younger kids. How can we inspire aesthetic merriment in seventeen year-olds, kids who are often much more worried about being grown up than being young?
So this past week I decided I needed to try something new with my Freshman periods (especially period 8) so I came up with something I thought was pretty cool. We are studying Fahrenheit 451. My colleague Eliot White emailed me this article (http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html) written about censorship and book burning by Kurt Vonnegut. His book Slaughterhouse Five was actually burned in a school's furnace by the Drake school board in North Dakota. He wrote this letter to the president of the school board to explain that writers, including himself, were real people--people with pure and moral purposes. So I printed out this article for my kids to read. Afterward I was going to have them break into groups of four and each group would act as though they were their own school. These little school boards had to make decisions about how they would deal with censorship. What books would they allow? What would be the factors that would keep books from being allowed in their school? How would they deal with a teacher or student reading a book in school that wasn't "appropriate"? How would they deal with parents?
Since my Co-op doesn't like most of my ideas or give me much freedom, I decided to try the project without really giving her a full description of what it was I would be doing. So after we read the article, I broke the kids into groups and started explaining. When I began to walk around and facilitate the small group discussions, my co-op pulled me aside and said she didn't like the idea. "I wish you would have told me about this: I don't think it serves a purpose in their understanding of the novel," she said.
She's entitled to her opinion.
And yes, I probably should have told her what I was planning on doing first. But, I knew she wouldn't probably like it, and I really wanted to try it. I don't know if I made the right decision.
So she told me that instead of giving them the 20 minutes to work on this project, I should give them 5 and then have them get back to their seats so she could play a recording of Ray Bradbury reading an excerpt from the novel...
I was very annoyed but I did what she wanted. So for the final 15 minutes of the week, the students sat and payed no attention to a CD that my co-op played for them. I sat in the front and watched them not paying attention and watching the clock.
I thought: this is a missed opportunity.
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