Response to "Readicide"

First off, this book is so spot on that I had to read some sections twice because I thought that they might have been talking about my high school/school experience. I am comforted by the fact that this crap didn't just happen to me or in my high school, it has happened to many people and I am not alone, but it also scares me so much because I feel like the educational system is so off track right now and I don't see how it can possibly get back on the right track in time to save the next generation of kids who are in school now. 

I did an activity a few weeks ago where I gave my students various statements regarding education and asked them to either agree or disagree and then defend their position (this was to introduce argumentation). I expected students to participate and engage fully, which they did, but what I didn't expect was the insight that I gained from them about their feelings and thoughts on the current educational system. These students actually told me that their teachers are shutting down their creativity and making them produce answers that are in line with what/how the teachers think/feel. For instance, if a student is reading a passage or piece of text and thinks about it in a way that is not conventional (or something that cannot be found on spark notes) their teachers tell them they are wrong and then makes them do it again until they get to the "right" answer. They also said that they think this is the job of a teacher. They expect their teachers to do this so they don't even worry about thinking outside the box or entertaining other ideas that they might have. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!!! No wonder our students don't read for fun or even sometimes at all when it comes to curriculum reading. We are making them hate it! It is absolutely our fault. As teachers, we should be fostering student reading. We should make time for it, to the best of our abilities, in the classroom and assign reading at home that isn't just focused on analyzing and annotating the text but that is for fun. Sure, assigned reading can only be considered "fun" in so many ways, because it is, after all, assigned. If we can teach our students to actually like and enjoy reading, then the homework we assign will not be looked at like homework, but rather as a chance to escape the stress and pressures of their everyday life and have a little bit of leisure time. 

I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher. Literally from the time I went to kindergarten I would come home and play teacher with my stuffed animals and I always knew that's what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Sure I have thought about other options, but I always come back to teaching. For the most part, people have supported my decision and thought it was great since I was so good at spelling and speaking, and because I got really good grades in school. But as I went through HS, people started asking me tougher questions about why I wanted to be a teacher and what I loved about English. They asked me who my favorite authors were and if I loved to write, they asked me about poetry and the creativity that comes along with English. I always had stick answers to give to these questions but then I realized that I was lying. I didn't have a favorite author, I hated writing, I didn't enjoy poetry, and I didn't think that I was creative at all. I never read for fun, and barely crawled through the dense reading that was assigned in my Honors and AP classes. My friends would encourage me to read the Harry Potter series but I never did because I hated reading and didn't feel like it was a good investment of my time. Then, after my senior year of high school, I experienced my first real free summer. I didn't have a job, I didn't feel any need to prepare for the next grade, and I didn't have any summer reading assignments to worry me. Thats when I really started to enjoy reading. Sure, I started off with the Twilight series, but those were the first books that made me choose between reading and having a life. I only wanted to read. All summer long I kept looking for more books to devour and that summer I probably went through 15 books. That was one of the best summers I have ever had. It was the first time where I didn't have to read something and take notes, I didn't have to worry about a paper that I was going to have to write, I was reading purely for the fun of reading. To this day, I still look to a book to occupy my free time. I would much rather read than watch tv and sometimes I even fall into the trap of reading book after book and forgetting/neglecting other school work. But guess what, I still get good grades and I get to read for fun. Its the best of both worlds. 

Reading has given me so much and I am so sad that students today don't get the feel the way I feel about reading. I totally understand where they are coming from though and its my goal as a teacher to inspire their love of reading before they go off to college. I want them to have the necessary skills and discipline to read in their free time, but I also want them to be able to understand the texts they are reading in school, without feeling like they are being punished or tortured. I want to stop readicide because I almost fell down that hole myself, and it wasn't a good time. 

TPA Lesson Plan

I actually just did my first "real-life" TPA lesson plan for a lesson that I taught this morning. Some of the sections were so easy I thought that I was missing something and other sections were so dense that I didn't even know what to write down. I hate how redundant it seems. State the learning objective, revisit the learning objective, restate the learning objective, have students state the learning target in their own language... Why??? I get the point of having a clear learning objective that is specific and measurable, but honestly, it is a waste of time to be stating and restating it so many times. I also think it is a waste of time and hugely ineffective to have students in high school write "I can" statements. Maybe for elementary students that would be beneficial, but it is an ineffective filler for HS students. 

I think the different prompts in the TPA are useful because they really make you think about what you are doing and how students are going to benefit from the lesson, but I also think that the prompts are somewhat redundant and ask the same question in many different ways. Ask me about differentiated instruction once and I will make sure that I have it, but other than that, it is busy work. 

The other aspect that threw me for a loop was behavior management strategies and parent/community involvement. I am teaching honor students who rarely forget to do their homework, are rarely off task, and who rarely skip class, so I really don't have to worry about behavior management, but it is still on the TPA (and I understand the importance of this for other classes, but do I have to answer it if it doesn't apply??). Parent and community involvement is also one of the categories and I can understand how that is important for larger units but for a single lesson plan it might be irrelevant, and in my case was. For both the behavior management and parent/community involvement sections, I pretty much just made up some answer and called it good. I felt like I did that with a lot of things on my TPA and I'm not sure if that was because I haven't been taught how to do one or if those questions were just pointless. Im still trying to figure that out. 

"I Read it, But I Don't Get it"

In Chapter 2 of the book, Cris talks about how teachers sometimes struggle with teaching kids to read. Teachers will say that students should know how to read already, and if they don't, they are too far gone. Its not my job to teach them how to read because that was supposed to be done in elementary school. I think that a lot of teachers really do think this way. But the problem lies in the fact that reading and literacy is a lifelong goal. It never ends! She gives us 2 ways to help student comprehension and one of them really stuck with me. That is, "become a passionate reader of what you teach." In order words, make darn sure you read books before asking students to read them, and don't ask students to read books that you didn't enjoy or get anything useful from. We need to do our best at that because if we are not passionate, then our students won't be either. Its sad that curriculum demands us to teach certain books, but we can be creative and adapt to make those books for engaging.

In Chapter 4, Cris gives us 6 indicators that help us monitor our understand. The one that always gets me is reciting the text instead of interacting with it. I can read and hear myself saying the words, but at the end of the page, I have no idea what I read. It helps for students to have those indicators so they can realize what the real problem is, instead of just saying that they are bad readers.

Chapter 5 mentions the 3 text connections that my cooperating teacher uses; Text to text, text to self, and text to world. After hearing how she uses these strategies in her class, I have found myself using them purposely in my reading as well. I think to an extent I already used them, but never had a name for them or knew what I was doing. Something that is mentioned later is that the connection had to help the reader, it cannot just be a connection to say that there is a connection. This is so important!! I see my students doing this all the time, but just because a character is pregnant in a book and other people get pregnant in the world doesn't mean that that connection is helpful at all. We need to teach students about this and make sure they are making the right connections. Chapter 5 also lists a few "fix up" strategies. One that I would add is to talk about the text with another person who has read or is also reading the same text. I think this is different than just retelling what you have read about because it involves 2 voices and 2 minds that probably are alike and different in many ways. Having another person to talk with is something I have always tried to find when I don't understand a text.

Chapter 8 talks about inferences and something that really stuck out to me was that when students make inferences, they should be probable. We all have active imaginations and could think of a variety of different endings our outcomes for a story, but we need to make sure they are probable. If they aren't, then we are just using our imagination, but we need to be focused on using our brains. Sure imagination is great, but use your imagination to go write your own story or your own ending. We have to use our brains and make inferences that make sense if they are going to be of any use to us in comprehension.

The resources at the back of the book are super helpful and useful! I really liked the one that asks you to read for 30 minutes and then stop and answer certain questions. They aren't text based questions or questions that have correct or certain answers, but it just makes you think about what you read and maybe gives you an idea if you need to go back and reread or use the "fix up" strategies. I also like that it breaks it down into small chunks. That makes reading seem more manageable.

Teaching For Social Justice - Teaching blob by Vanessa D'Egidio

     I read a blog by a primary school teacher, Vanessa D'Egidio, on Teaching for Social Justice. Her main focus was on teaching social justice to younger children, but many of the ideas presented can be adapted for older students. In her blog, she focused a lot on gender stereotypes, which is appropriate for all students, but the focus of ideas talked about can be changed to be appropriate for the grade level you are working with. For instance, instead of talking about gender stereotyped toys, I would maybe present the idea of the "player" vs. "slut" discrepancy of males vs. females and would be able to garner the attention of high school students easier than if I were talking about toys. This goes for most topics that she presented in her blog.
     Community building is a critical and foundational component of anti-bias teaching and learning." Vanessa talked a lot about how she had to first and foremost create a sense of community in her classroom. She had to make sure students felt comfortable with each other, that they knew proper body postures and gestures such a eye contact and facial expressions, and that they knew how to speak to each other respectfully. I think that this should not be overlooked, even in a high school classroom. We may assume that students can refute each others points with respect, but a lot of students still don't have that skill by the time they are in high school. It is our job to then teach them those skills needed so that they can participate in the classroom as well as the world outside. 
     "Anti-bias work in the classroom is inherently complex, messy, and challenging. Keeping this reality in mind though, it can be done, and more importantly, it can be adapted successfully..." We have to keep in mind that this is not an easy task. We will have to work on it, adjust our practices, and be prepared for failure. We also have to get back up and keep trying if we do fail. Social justice in the classroom is not something that can be taught in a day, week, or unit. We have to work together to create an atmosphere that allows for social justice, and we have to expand social justice to the world outside of our classroom as well: "only by collectively recognizing and actively working against bias will social justice take root in our communities."

http://feministteacher.com/2012/08/28/guest-blogvanessa-degidio-on-teaching-for-social-justice-in-primary-school-classrooms/

Critical Pedagogy in Popular Culture

"An oppressive rendering of a culturally diverse text is still oppressive." (pg. 186)
-->> So true! We are told that we need to be culturally inclusive in the classroom, and a lot of teachers fall into the trap of then choosing literature that features a person of color as the main character and calling it good. That is not culturally inclusive though! We need to think outside the box. We can still use "classic" literature and see the struggles of the non-dominant and be culturally inclusive. Not to say that that will cover our bases, but classic literature is still a very important aspect of the English classroom and it still needs to be taught to our students. The fun part is that we can dive into it and talk about endless possibilities. We can encourage our students to think deeper and at the same time be critical and not make connections where they may not exist.

"...we are encouraging the creation of meaningful links between the worlds of the students and the worlds of canonical texts." (pg. 195)
-->> I think this one of our main jobs and goals of being a teacher. If we can incorporate both popular culture and canonical texts into our classrooms and curricula, our students will be engaged and will be willing to participate in classroom activities. We can help them make connections by providing the materials for them or we can encourage them to make their own connections by asking them to bring in popular culture ideas or texts and explore and defend the connections to canonical texts. Because the world is always changing and popular culture is almost never the same from one month to the next, we need to be sure to stay on top of things. We need to know how to use the current technologies, social media outlets, and who's dating who in the world of celebrity gossip. These things are important to our students and so they should be important to us as well. We will become disconnected from our students if we cannot talk with them about their interests.

Critical Pedagogy

The idea of having different objectives to answer the question “why am I learning this” or “why is this being taught” is awesome. I like that they separated macro from micro (macro being larger idea and connections, micro being the smaller details like names, dates, etc.). I think by doing this, it make it easier to write the objectives in the first place, but also gives an explanation to students as they why they are learning what they are learning, and why it is important. Have a reason is very important. 

I think that macro and micro objectives are both equally important in their own ways. We have to know dates, names, events, etc to have a base to work from. If we don’t know where something happened or when it happened, we won’t be able to explain why it happened. On the other side, we also have to be able to think deeper and use our cognitive skills to come to conclusions as to why something happened, how it happened, what were the implications, etc. You cannot have macro without micro, and vise versa. 

"The ability for individuals to express their culture..."
This is very true, and very sad at the same time. Anyone should be able to express their culture, regardless of how much power they have. We need not worry about who is ranked higher than who, but should allow all cultures to be recognized and celebrated. I don’t honestly think that will ever happen in my lifetime, but it is worth trying so that generations after me might be able to witness it. I think we are already making strides and leaps, but in the grand scheme of things, we have only started. We have so much more work to do. 

"Hegemony refers to the moral and intellectual leadership of a dominant class..." 

This may be true, but what about when the subordinate class wants more dominance? Is it not even a question? Does the dominant need not worry because they know that the subordinate cannot gain dominance because of what the hegemony has done already?

Pedagogy of the Oppressed Reading Response

“A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness.”

I haven’t read anything truer than this in a long time. Not only is education suffering from narration sickness, but so are students and teachers. I have fallen into the trap of acting as the narrating Subject and filling my fellow listeners with junk. We all need to remember this and learn from it. 

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”

This reminds me of one of the first articles we read about students being “co-creators of knowledge”. I LOVE this idea and think that it really works well. Students build off of each other, there is no issue of “non-engagement”, and everyone gets to give their input. Everyone is learning, even the teacher.

“Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize)….”

This happens all the time. I think its sad that teachers who maybe were once great, have fallen to this “sin” of education. This whole idea of having tenure really pisses me off because sure they may have been teaching for many years, but does that make them great teachers? Does that make them worthy of teaching students who are to become the future? I think that if a teacher works on improving themselves as teachers, and that there are requirements of every teacher, nobody will fall into this role and everything will continue to progress. The problem is that too many teachers think that as soon as they are a teacher, they are no longer a student, which is so far from the truth. Great teachers are the one who are continually expanding their minds and theories and practices. Great teachers attend and participate in conferences and classes, they continue their own education and in turn, produce greater students. 

“The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant majority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority can continue to prescribe. The theory and practice of banking education serve this end quite efficiently. Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, (3) the methods for evaluating "knowledge," the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything in this ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.”

I see this happen everyday, not just in education. It reminds me of getting the flu shot or vaccines or antibiotics. We often just do what we’re told as opposed to thinking for ourselves. Not to say that other people who are telling us what to do are wrong, they are often right, but we need to take a step back and think before we act. We need to act like humans and not like machines. 

A Response-based Approach to the Literary Experience

“However, research indicates that literature is usually taught and tested in a nonliterary
manner, as if there is one right answer arrived at through point-of-reference reading or writing.
Arthur Applebee's Literature Center study of English classes across the United States (1993)
indicates that literature is often taught as if there is a point or predetermined interpretation the
reader must build toward, or as a literal reworking of the plot line from start to finish -- with no
room for the students' explorations to be sanctioned or to take form.” (pg. 4)
— — > This is the definition of my schooling experience. When reading literature of any kind there was always a “right answer” that had to be reached. I can remember peer editing papers in English class and essentially reading the same paper over and over again, because the ideas and “answers” were all the same. How is it that the same conclusion could be reached by 25 different people? We have all had different life experiences, so shouldn’t our conclusions be somewhat different? Maybe, but because of how the class was structured and taught, we all somehow came to the exact same conclusion, and if by chance someone came up with something different, there was always more proof and evidence to support the “mass” conclusion, thus silencing any other ideas or thoughts. This is so sad to me too! Our teachers should have been encouraging us to think outside the box instead of just allowing us to give them stock answers that could be found on SparkNotes or CliffNotes.  

“They felt lesson plans required them to become text-based, determining the scope and
sequence of activities and ideas within a particular lesson or unit in advance. Thus, when their
students responded in ways they didn't expect, the teachers felt torn -- as if departing from the
plan involved digressing rather than engaging in good instruction.” (pg 5)
— — > True, I don’t have a lot of experience with planning lessons and using lesson plans to teach a class, but this is honestly what freaks me out most about using a lesson plan. I hate the feeling that I have to stick to a plan when teaching and feel like I would be more comfortable just using an outline and being able to change and adapt as the class’ thinking moves. I get the point of a lesson plan, to have a map as a guideline for your teaching - what you teach, when you teach it, how you teach it, and I also appreciate taking the time to look at everything in detail and decide what will work best for your class and so on and so forth, but it seems a little futile if we are just going to make an “on the cuff” decision to change based on our students’ thinking. Why the importance of such a detailed lesson plan??

“7. Remember that questioning, probing, and leaving room for future possible
interpretations is at the heart of critical thinking in literature. Teachers as well as
students need to be open to possible meanings; in literary experiences there are
no preconceived ends or final inviolable interpretations.” (pg. 7)
— — > I think this, above all, is what we need to focus on and remember. Sure there are times when a “right answer” is okay and even necessary, but let us not forget the importance of thinking outside the box, being open the new ideas, and possibly changing our thinking completely. 

After reading this article, it makes the last article we read on using conversation in the classroom all that more important. We have to create an environment where students feel safe, comfortable, and at ease to explore new ideas and possibilities, to be able to share with one another what they think and to listen just the same to their peers. We as teachers need to facilitate this, but not get in the way as “information givers”. 

Common Core State Standards for ELA Instruction

First of all, let me just say how happy I am that we finally have a nationwide standard for what we teach in schools and what students need to know by the time they graduate. I think it is a huge step forward for us as a nation and will really be beneficial to students who move to other places for schooling, whether it be elementary, secondary, or post secondary education. The fact that we used to have only state requirements is completely absurd to me. How can we be strong as a country if we have 50 states each deciding what they want their students to know. That makes it so that we cannot be flexible or adaptive. Having a standard that reaches throughout the country is huge to me. Everyone is equally prepared to enter college and the working field, and we have a pretty good idea as to how prepared we are in relation to other nations. We can finally be competitive in the world market. Now the only thing is, how do we get there? This idea that the passing rate for the Common Core test is projected to be at less than 40% is really nuts. We all know that when it comes down to it, school administrators aren’t actually going to hold back 60% of their seniors from graduation. No, the standards will then be lowered or not count for graduation until we can catch up and we can get our students actually prepared for the test. This is not going to be an easy process, but the same thing happened with the WASL and the HSPE, we can and will get through it and move on. 

The CCSS, having looked at them a few times, seem very complex and require a lot of depth and intellectual work. But isn’t that what we need our students to be prepared for? College is not high school, you can’t just float on through until graduation time. You actually have to out in the time, thought, and effort and get the work done. You have to think for yourself and struggle a bit. The CCSS will hopefully prepare students to do those necessary things on their own. Sure we won’t get it right the first time around, or the second or third, but eventually we will be teaching to higher standards that are actually being met, and our students will be brighter than ever before.