Learning Letter Assignment

I have said many times over the last couple of weeks that if I had jumped back into school to pursue this teaching thing without of having taken this class, I would have quit after a quarter, maybe two. I'm not a huge fan of school. I don't like having to sit in a classroom for years until I can get to where I want to be. A lot of it is straight-up pride. I feel like I could teach anything (I really can't, but I feel that way). Most of it, though, is I am just anxious to be out there, doing something real. This preparation stuff isn't always fun. It is necessary though.

This class has reinforced why I want to teach, who I want to teach, and, especially, what I want to teach. This class alone will be enough to push me through the next few years until I am able to be in a classroom. Why? Because I learned a lot about who I am as a person/educator.

With the book talk, I got to speak about a series I highly enjoy reading. It let me explain a little bit about myself while passing on information that hopefully my classmates can use in the future. In the mini-lesson, I learned more about who I was as an educator. I saw a few places that I excelled and, more importantly, I felt sincere joy in creating and teaching the lesson. The unit plan, although a huge drain on my energy stores, was the combination of the two. I was able to take a novel and genre I truly love and use that passion to create a series of lessons that I hope to one day teach. These things have instilled in me the desire to continue. These things alone would have pushed me on.

Luckily, the theories on education we discussed were present, too. They have helped me put words to my thoughts on education and let me know that I was not wrong in how I taught. The first few weeks of class only gave me more and more excitement about teaching and more and more anticipation. Discussion-based teaching is how I have always attempted to teach in my previous opportunities, but I never knew why. It was how I enjoyed learning, it made sense to have students give their own answers. How else would they make the knowledge their own? The reading concerning that theory, though, gave me the words and the confidence to continue that style of teaching.

American Born Chinese

I thought this was a really bold story and I loved the melding of Chinese mythology tradition with Christianity. It is a book that will have its struggles because of its openly Christian slant, but the discovery of self is the true heart of the story.

There are several ways this could be taught, beginning with the medium of graphic novel. Students could create their own or at least blocks of story. Another is in a "coming of age" unit that looks at how Jin grew into himself. Allegory is highly present and this could be a great book to teach that technique also.

I think every student could get something out of the message of being who you are and would highly consider using this in a classroom.

Night Response

I remember reading this novel in high school and really enjoying its story and themes. It is a book that needs to be read at least once by everyone.

That said, I think this book would serve best in a unit with other WWII stories. I would choose some that focus on the war, put Night in for the Holocaust study. I think that is the best way to handle it. It needs to be kept in context with history so that the student can better come to grips with its view of life.

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" Response

At first I didn't like the book. At all. I found it redundant and bitter. As it progressed, however, I began to understand my own latent prejudices that I don't like to voice and as the book confronted prejudices and racism, I confronted my own. I would teach this book for that reason alone if none other existed.

That, to me, is its redeeming quality. It forces teens to confront the images of what "white" and "red" and "black" and "brown" are and makes them come to a conclusion in their own mind.

There are so many great talking points in this book and I think Alexie does a great job of bringing these issues to the front in a nonthreatening way (at least to the student). I would spend a lot of time on the quote: "You have to love somebody that much to also hate them that much, too."

Apart from all of that, it is a useful book for anyone (every kid in high school) who is trying to find out who he/she is. Is it redundant? Perhaps. But it's a fresh redundancy that is needed.

"Things Fall Apart" Response

The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger is one the greatest endings to any book I have read. Wow. Achebe wrote a fantastic, heartfelt exposure of a culture while making me, a white man, feel outrage at the white man's destruction of a culture. At the same time, I feel for the missionaries that were sent into that culture to try and combat it in the ways open to them.

This book would be an incredible addition in a history class when discussing British Colonialism in Africa. This novel hits on so many emotional levels that every one should read it. This novel alone can serve as a discussion of social justice. In what ways are we still impeding and destroying cultures? How do we speak of respect then beat men's backs? Simply powerful.

I would definitely add this to a list of possible books to use in a classroom.

TPA Guidlines

My first thought when I hear TPA is: "Did you get the memo? We're putting cover sheets on all our TPA reports now. I'll make sure you get a copy."

After reading this (about 5 times), that's still as far as my understanding goes. I'm sure it makes sense, but I can't find the logic that makes it so. Or perhaps I am just missing the necessary exposure to understand it?

Help?

Differentiated Instruction

I read an article on Glencoe's website (found here) and it offered many in-room strategies to foster this idea of differentiated instruction. I'm sure it was Sean's point to get us to this point, but this just makes sense.

I went through high school without being pushed. I could coast (and did) and still get decent grades. I didn't have a 4.0 (because, really, why?), but I did have about 3.6 living on no homework and writing papers the day before they were due.

And that approach failed me in college.

I had to relearn how to study and prepare because I didn't have to use it in high school. The teachers were focused on the ones struggling and I wasn't one of them. What this approach suggests is helping those who are struggling while still challenging the ones who are advanced.

The most widely talked of approach is plan for all types of learners, but it has to be coupled with a lesson that encourages learning for the struggling ones while still challenging the others.

How is this done? No idea. I hope to figure out ways in class.

"I Read It, But I Don't Get It" Excercise

I did one of the "Double-Entry Diary" exercises on "Romeo and Juliet."

Quote 1:
Capulet: Young Romeo is it?
Tybalt: 'Tis he, that villain Romeo.
Cap: Content thee, gentle coz...

From this quote, I wondered what if Capulet was more like Hatfield or McCoy and let Tybalt fight him then and there? Is it just because he knew Romeo wouldn't cause trouble or for his name that he suffered a Montague's presence?

Quote 2:
Tybalt: ...but this intrusion shall, now seeming sweet, convert to bitterest gall.

What if Capulet, who heard Tybalt's words, actually heeded them and done more than just lightly confront Romeo about who he was? What kind of person does Shakespeare paint Capulet to be?

Quote 3:
Romeo: Commend me to thy lady.
Nurse: Ay, a thousand times.

What if the nurse had run, instead to Lady Capulet and told her what Romeo sought? Does not the nurse have just as much responsibility to the house as to Juliet?

Quote 4:
Mercutio: O calm, dishonorable, vile submission.

Prior to this, Mercutio sets up the fight more than Romeo could by his presence. What if Romeo's peace calmed the situation and kept Mercutio from fighting? How is Romeo's peace a "dishonorable, vile submission?"

Quote 5:
Juliet: O happy dagger, this is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.

What if Juliet realized that she was only 13 and life would go on? That there would be other men besides Romeo? Is this act simply immaturity winning out over calm reason?

I Read It, But I Don't Get It: Ch 1-5

The most shocking thing for me was seeing, in writing, how many of these strategies I use unconsciously while reading. I never can point to one thing that helps me comprehend what I read, it's just something I have always done well. I still can't point to one thing to explain why I love to read or why I an able to understand what I have just read, but I now have an idea and that is a great beginning point.

I love that she overemphasizes that we are all teachers of reading. I think it's highly important that the skill of reading be further enhanced as a student grows, and, in fear of this turning into a summary I'll be brief, too many teachers do approach reading at the higher levels from the idea his or her student should be able to read and read quickly what he or she has assigned.

If I may hang onto one, crucial piece of advice Tovani offers, it is that we should teach what we enjoy reading. I won't ever attempt to teach "Old Man and the Sea" in a high school because I haven't enjoyed my exposure to it, but I would teach "Brave New World" because I highly enjoy it. My two favorite teachers in my education to this point were both English teachers who ignited a passion in me to read because I saw that they loved what we were reading. That doesn't mean I always enjoyed what we read, but I did read it if for no other reason than to argue (read as "discuss") its merits.

I agree with Tovani that it is one of the best ways to excite students to read because it worked on me.

A Response-Based Approach

I really appreciated the results of this research because it confirmed the approach I have always taken to teaching. Information means nothing if a student cannot internalize it and the only the way that will happen is if they can make it their own, so giving them space to talk about their thoughts and understandings of a text seems logical.

"The whole informs the parts as well as the parts building toward the whole." This quote summarizes, in my opinion, the whole of the research. The teaching options that are offered at the end of the article are offered in hopes that teachers are able to show their students that their "parts" matter in the understanding of the whole, which refines their parts.

I also like the use of horizon in terms of understanding literature. You never reach the horizon, you only find a new horizon.

Social Justice in Education

Social justice is that justice by which we seek to better those people trapped in lower classes or societal oppressions. In light of our previous readings, it is seeking the welfare of those who are lacking. The dispensing of this justice takes several different forms: giving food to the hungry, clothing or shelter to the freezing, parenting to the orphan, or money to the poor. The most effective dispensing of this justice, in my opinion, is through education.

G.S. Cannella posits in her book "Deconstructing Early Childhood Education" that early childhood education actually promotes and enhances the status quo of the oppressor and oppressed. This makes sense. I remember from my childhood nothing concerning Christopher Columbus' atrocities once he landed, only that he "discovered" America. We only learned of Native American history as it pertained to White America and Manifest Destiny. They even managed to make the Trail of Tears about White America instead of those it displaced.

The point is this, everything we have read hangs on this idea of social justice. If we want to humanize our students and to show them true humanity, then we must teach them to be conscious of social justice. Friere says that revolution starts with education, and it does! One of his influencers, Karl Marx, writes in the Communist Manifesto that social education is "the weapon to be used against bourgeoisie itself." Their argument is that if we want to see change, we must teach that change. If we want to help, we must show the problems that exist within society. Our responsibility cannot be to the status quo but to the humanity of our students and the wider world.

Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary Classroom

The thing that most resonated with me from this reading was their approach to popular culture. It reminded me of the Marxist teaching of the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. Education in the high school does place an emphasis on the "classics" while largely ignoring current works. If movies are used, it is a movie that is an unimaginative retelling of the classic we are studying. When studying Othello in a multicultural, urban classroom, would you not look to the movie "O"? What about finding music that represents the same struggle Beowulf had against Grendel?

I enjoyed the phrasing of their argument, too. There is an "hierarchy that has been articulated between elite culture and popular culture...clearly, one of the core purposes of industrial schooling has been to expose children to the 'best' the culture has to offer to elevate them from their vulgar and 'un-American' backgrounds."

What this "elite culture" fails to realize is that this "vulgar" background is more American and more relevant to the students. As the authors argue, our job is to use the classics, highlighted by contemporary, popular culture references so that we instill in students the ability to better critique the "hegemonic texts like local, state, and national legislation..."

If we cannot reach this, then we have truly failed them. This is my idea of "leave no student behind." Give them the skills to question critically of the government so we have more and more people able to recognize when the government is being stupid and immature and when are they are being fed political rhetoric from the media.

Critical Pedagogy

As I read, several images popped into my head. Most vivid was of "Mr. Holland's Opus" and William H. Macy's character attempting to keep dress code standards over the course of 40-50 years. I know it sounds like a strange example, but it was my immediate thought. This man couldn't see how subculture was permeating his students' lives and fought to keep the status quo unchanged; he fought to throw his view of dominate culture on top of his students and squash their reality and the reality of the world.

I think, sometimes, this is one of the most severe forms of student "oppression." I'm not arguing against a dress code. We have no need to further the idea that showing your underwear or more is acceptable, but we do need to explain why we feel this way and take into account our students' realities. One of the things I think of is facial hair for guys. I have subbed at a school where male students cannot have any facial hair. They would be sent home to shave if it was out of control, yet the principal had a goatee. Why, then, the institution of this rule? I asked him one day. He said it was because that is the way it has always been there.

Why? Why is that the reality of the school when the reality of the students is that their heroes and role models have beards? This is a silly example, but one that points the issue at the heart of our reading. The dominant culture controls without care for the subordinate/subculture. How then do we bring legitimacy to the students' individual realities while still fostering a system of unimpeded education?

Pedagogy of the Oppressed Chapter 2

"Progress for the sake of progress must be eliminated." - Dolores Umbridge

As I read Friere's description of "banking education," that quote from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix kept running through my head. It is the quote that Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic used to hide the fact they wanted to control learning for their students. In some ways, I feel that's the way some people still look at education.

The approach to education that Friere offers to, what I am sure was (is) considerable backlash, is radical, but necessary. The purpose of school is to prepare students for what is beyond their senior year, not the next grade or test. They are more than receptacles for knowledge, they are young adults seeking to grow. A classroom should be a safe place for them to question what it means to be human, what it means to live, what it means to be an American, etc.

Our job, then, as future teachers, is to foster that safe place. We also shoulder the burden of stepping alongside the parents (or sometimes for the parents) to guide students in their seeking. When we begin to oppress through education is when we lose them. As Friere said, a student may retain information, but forget the principles that guide that information. This, again, goes back to the concept of mutuality in the classroom.

Students are not ignorant. They have knowledge and a voice and a fresh perspective of looking at things, most of the time quite innocently. That innocence will, unfortunately, disappear for many things as they grow, but what will make the impact is if, even for one year, those students are given the freedom and ability to explore that innocence.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed Chapter 1

I'm not going to lie, this first chapter reads like the "Companion's Guide of Ethics to the Communist Manifesto."

Obviously it isn't quite that explicit, but it raises valid points (a lot of them based on Marx and Engels) that give greater illumination to the ethical and humanistic reasons of why Marx and Engels proposed this philosophy initially. Don't misunderstand me, I love it. He makes extremely valid points about the oppressor-oppressed relationship and how to truly overthrow that mindset.

My question, though, is "What constitutes oppression?" Friere gives his definition: anything that dehumanizes or blocks man's ability to sense his own humanity. That isn't enough for me. Sorry, but I was raised in a middle-class white family. In a lot of ways to Friere (and probably Marx and Engels as well), I was an oppressor, or at least belonged to that class of people. Again, this begs the question: what constitutes oppression?

My mind (thanks history) always jumps to whips and slavery, but I would also say that Marx and Engels' own work was distorted to bring about one of the most harsh oppressions ever with the Soviet Union. I watched an interesting video the other day (watch it here) which spoke of the distribution of wealth and how skewed it is. Does the fact that the top 1% makes 380x what someone in the middle class makes constitute oppression?

This isn't a politics class, though, it's a teaching class. So, armed with this knowledge, how does this affect how we approach students? I agree with Friere that there is no way, as "oppressors" to liberate the oppressed. It must be started by the oppressed. In America, the closest thing we know to oppression is the socioeconomic barrier. To me, this begins by practicing "true generosity" in the classroom. We need to give of ourselves to better the students while we have them, to, in essence, give them hope of humanization and to fix the mindset they have of the "oppressors." If the connection the oppressed has to the oppressor is as strong as Friere claims (and I believe it is), then we have to work to change the way the "oppressors" are seen. We must display what it means to be human, to help when help is needed, to stand for justice in the situations when others are downtrodden, etc.

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen kids become bullies because they are the victims of bullying at home, and not until they are stood up to do they realize they can, in turn, stand up to their "oppressor." In continuation of the theme of my last two posts: this is what it means to teach. We are there to prepare the students for life after high school, to be productive, respectful citizens.

CCSS Reading

As this was my first exposure to CCSS, I want to communicate my initial feeling: happiness.

It made me exceedingly happy to see that, while there are standardizations, it isn't to where a particular state thinks the standard should be, but where the greater world says a student should be if he/she is to be ready for college. I remember feeling under prepared for college after high school, not because of workload, but because of the heaviness of the reading. I enjoy reading, but not court or law dispositions and I was never asked to in high school.

This also helps the teacher answer the "Why?" question. "Why do we have to read a Supreme Court decision?" "Why do we have to read 1984?" It will be nice to be able to communicate these things the first few days of school and say: "This is why. Your future depends on it."

It goes back to what I said in my last post. Five years after graduating, I don't care if they can tell me all about a story we read in class if they don't have the tools to be a better, well-informed, respective citizen. Preparation for life should be our main goal, and I am glad that the CCSS explains that so explicitly.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

I think the biggest idea I can take from this article is the idea of a "collaborative classroom." In my limited teaching experience, this is what I have strived to do without having the words to effectively describe what it was I was trying to accomplish. Discussion, I have found, is the best way to approach learning when critical thinking is needed.

I can spout facts and quotes and evidence and opinion for an hour, but a student would not feel connected to it. I know I never did. It isn't until we allow the student to reach his/her own conclusions that he/she will ever learn.

For me, personally, this hinges upon the humility aspect that the authors referred to. I would love to stand up and spout facts for an hour. I enjoy letting people see how smart I can be, but that isn't conducive to learning. In the end, I have to realize that teaching, true teaching, isn't about driving home facts or numbers, but allowing a student the space to see why those facts are true and viable in the situation.

I also think that a well structured discussion prepares a student for life. I don't care if my students forget the "facts" of a book or story after the test if they develop tools that will make them a better person. These tools are the ability to listen to another person all the way through their point, forming a well-based thought, appreciating another's response as viable, etc. I mean does it really matter if one can tell me what 1984 was about five years after high school if they are not a respectful person?

That to me is the much greater goal. Critical thinking and listening far outweigh the content of a novel. If they can also fall in love with literature at the same time, that's just icing on the cake.

Introduction

Thanks to wonderful technology, this is my third attempt at posting:

I was raised in a southern Christian home which, to this day, influences the way I approach all of life. Some of it is typically southern and some of it is in rebellion to that. It is present though, and effects my perceptions.

I graduated from college in 2009 with a degree in Youth Ministry from a Southern Baptist university in Texas. I have spent, therefore, a few years already in the practice of teaching secondary level students and I have been able to try different techniques. The joy I felt at seeing someone grasp a complex idea is what sparked my desire to teach in the schools.

I know that I am behind most of my classmates on theories and practices, but I hope to learn them and I am excited to have that opportunity so that I may grow in my ability. I also hope that, in some small way, I might be able to help one of my classmates because of my previous experience.

As a side note: the name of this blog comes from the authors of three of my favorite books. Les Miserables, Pride and Prejudice, and Ender's Game.