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?
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 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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
"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.
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.
