Response to "Differential Instruction"

(See previous post for a response to Readicide)

 I am not sure if it is possible to serve all the students in the classroom to their own unique needs and requirements. Most classrooms--especially in high-school--have over twenty students and only one teacher. This teacher usually has three or more classes, each one composed of a different mass of students that are as different from each other in aggregate as they as individuals.  But that doesn’t mean the attempt should not be made. Idealism, generally speaking, usually implies an impossible goal—but that does not that the journey to reach that goal is pointless. The article I chose was actually a question and answer PDF about differential education. I chose this article because it proposed questions that I had about the process, and then answered them with brief, but efficient responses.

 For example, one of the major concerns I have with differential instruction is how to grade individuals who may be on different intellectual  skills, as well as a complex and varied array of needs. The article answers this question by suggesting that teachers may grade students not only to the degree in which they met the “standards,” but also to the degree in which each individual student grew from the beginning of the term to the end of the term.

 One of the great things about differential instruction is that it forces the teacher to look at the context of the classroom—at the individual students as opposed to a mass of bodies that can be judged in aggregate. The reality is that teachers need to find a way to meet the needs of their students. The manner in which classes are commonly taught do not take into account the students as individuals. Every student deserves to be taught in the classroom up to a standard and to their own needs—and it’s the teacher’s job to figure out how to achieve that.

Article Link

Response to "Readicide"

Readicide is a perfect noun. It is a word that so accurately mirrors the damage that schools can do towards the pleasures of reading. I would hazard to guess that most students do not realize that many people actually read for the pleasure of reading. I would also guess that the students who do read for pleasure--or entertainment--rarely commit themselves to the highest pleasures that can come with reading, such as insight, knowledge, novelty, aesthetic appreciation, the expansion of the consciousness--and so on. To put pleasure in one sphere and knowledge in the other does a horrible disservice. In fact, I would say that the only reason to read is for please, and that the greatest pleasure in reading (or in all art) is aesthetic appreciation and insight.

For example, here is film director Mike Leigh on art and entertainment:

People say, "Ah, yes, but audiences just want to escape." I think, that if people see a film like "Secrets and Lies," where the stuff that's going on relates to things that they really care about, then it's more of an escape. Because you become so engaged in it and enthralled by it that you forget those things. They answer "Well, yes, but then the audience worries about real life things," but it's fulfilling, it's enriching, it's not like just eating candy for an hour and three quarters. It's actually really communing with something and feeling like you've been through something that comes out making you feel better able to go back and worry about the specific things that are your problems. So I think people are very dumb about escapism and entertainment and all that. They say, "Ah yes, but we're in the entertainment business." Excuse me; I am in the entertainment business and I make no bones about it. If my movie ever was not entertaining, it's a turkey as far as I'm concerned. My aim is to entertain, meaning, literally, what the word means. People forget what that word means. It means to make you stay here, to keep you in your seat. One of the things that drives me mad about watching films in this country is that nobody can sit still for two minutes -- everyone's in and out like bloody monkeys in a cage and eating and talking. The attention span is dreadful because -- and I submit that this did not happen in the Golden Age of Hollywood when they made movies that made you sit there and really watch the whole time -- it's boring, basically.

When I was in grade school the teacher told the class that there were very specific reasons to read: pleasure and learning. By doing this, my grade school teacher created two separate spheres that many (if not all) of the students took as a fact: entertainment is what we do in our spare time; learning is what we do in school. This is unfortunate, of course, because it created a false dichotomy between learning and entertainment. 

I guess if I have an issue with Readicide it is that it may give too much power to the students. Reading mediocre books just because the students like them is bound for failure. Not all reading is equal. Reading The Game of Thrones or Hunger Hames is not equal to reading Of Mice and Men or The Great Gatsby. The latter books are better in every way. If students are really going to fall in love with reading--as well as get all they can out of reading--then they need to read literature and grow an appreciation for the best stories available. The hardest job as a teacher is encouraging students to develop this love and passion for the literature as well as an appreciation for the finest art. 

Or maybe not. Maybe that's pretentious and unrealistic--but I'm sticking to it anyway! 

Response to "I Read It, But I Don't Get It

Unlike some of the other texts for this class, Cris Tovani's "I Read It But I Don't Get It," narrows her pedagogical philosophy down to something considerably practical and fundamental, as opposed to abstract and esoteric. While Paulo Freire' "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," was certainly the more entertaining reading of the two--almost a piece of literature in and of itself--it is quite the relief to read Tovani's textbook-like assessment of of the educational system with ideas and facts to support her assertions.

My favorite chapter from the book is chapter seven, "What Do You Wonder?". Certainly one aspect of secondary English classes (or, probably, all grades) is that they fail to interact with the students in a manner that brings the study of literature into the real world. Literature, criticism, history, etc. are all abstracted away from life, away from the personal experiences of the students. If the text exists by itself, separated from the messiness of lived reality, than students will fail to see the reason for studying it. This chapter attempts to bring the "school" questions out of the classroom and into real life, in all it's messy confusions. To ask--and answer--these "real world" questions requires a developed sense of wonder and an acceptance that there may be not Truth--with a capitol T--to these inquires. In fact, these kinds of questions beg the students to answer and ask questions without a literal meaning standing behind them. They are exercises in abstract thinking. They empower the student to come up with radically new ideas.

But perhaps the most important aspect of the chapter is what comes after this virtual brainstorming session. After wondering about the real life issues, the teacher brings these this "wonderings" to the texts at hand. The students will then, in theory, realize that the text, if it's any good, is life itself.

Comments on "A Response Based Approach to Reading Literature"

While reading this paper, I am reminded of a time when I was in high school. The class was reading Stephen Crane’s short story, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky. After the reading, Mrs. Smith opened the classroom up for discussing the possible metaphors of the text. What followed was a static, dictatorial interpretation of metaphors: the color yellow is cowardice, the color white represent innocence, the color black represents evil, and so on. I loved the text while I was reading it: the irony of the nervous sheriff with his young, fish out of water bride; the touching glances they give each other; the near comic exuberance of the villain—the metaphors were there, of course, but what moved me about the story was the humor and emotional efficacy that Crane pulled out of these rather slim, archetypical characters. What didn’t interest me, or the rest of the class for that matter, was the stationary, boring, and rather irrelevant pinning down of abstract terms found in the text.

Judith A. Langer’s paper provides teachers with a model that creates the opportunity for their students to express their own personal proclivity towards interpretation. Langer proposes that this be done by giving them a voice. The way Mrs. Smith taught English robbed students of this opportunity and in turn robbed them of their idiosyncratic and unique interpretive abilities: their own voice. We became parrots to the cause of Mrs. Smith’s rather flaccid hermeneutics.

What I did not know at the time, unfortunately, was that my method of interpretation was not wrong—but I thought it was. I believed that the static metaphors were the point of the story and that the emotional affect on me was muted by other, more important factors. With Langer’s model this crisis of interpretation I experienced would have been avoided and my own personal experience of the text would have been rewarded.

Comments on "Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts"

Peter McLaren's "Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts" suggests that cultural and social constructs must be taken into account when dealing with students. This is an important concept to understand, but is most likely a difficult one for individuals to comprehend. In order to combat your personal prejudices against certain social cues and constructs you must be aware that these prejudices may exist in the first place--which is an amount of self-awareness and humbleness that is difficult to attain. The power structures that make up society are difficult to ascertain because they appear to be the natural state of the world. What critical pedagogy asks of teachers is to rewire the hierarchies of their mind—hierarchies that seem utterly natural and are therefore difficult to realize. But the difficulty of the task is equal to its importance. The classroom could provide a place to escape the politics of society; a politics that too often disenfranchises those who are without the social power and rewards those who know the “correct” cultural codes. The key to realizing the biases of your social conditioning is to be constantly aware of yourself and the history of your social class and how they can undermined an intention to be fair and understanding.

But what does all this mean practically? How do we combat the hierarchies of society in the classroom? How do we free the classroom from hegemony into Democracy (and be in accord with the Common Core Standards)? I am not quite sure the article adequately addresses this issue. There is also the problem that even if the teacher is able to make the classroom a more democratic state, the students themselves may still cling to the older hierarchies, inhibiting those with less power. I do not know how to address this issue—if it’s even an issue at all. 

Comments on "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" Chapter II

I have to say that Paul Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was the most exciting piece of educational literature I have ever read. According to my brief research, Freire was influenced by Karl Marx and Marxism in general, but he could have equally been inspired by William James’s essays Pragmatism, which I read this past year (for my own entertainment, believe it or not, though like Freier’s essay I wrote “wtf?” in the margins more often than I probably should have). In fact, I think this comparison may be helpful for those who may be resistant the Freier’s work because of its supposed relation to Marx—which, undoubtedly, would scare off many conservative educators still afraid of the Red Menace. This is especially true considering Pragmatism is known, chiefly, as an American philosophy (although I haven’t read Dewey, who was also a pragmatist, so maybe that comparison is more--though I believe he was also a socialist of some kind which may scare some people off as well).

Both James and Freire share a compassion for lived experience as opposed to abstract objectivity. Experience is fluid, it moves through different people at different speeds and different levels. To force one experience over the other is a kind of mental hegemony that robs them of their own unique experience. This is especially true in the field of English Language Arts, which begs—which requires—the confluence of discourse from a variety of sources. Experience, as James tells us, doesn’t come “ticketed and labeled” from the mind of the teacher. Freire, similarly, warns us of the dangers when “education thus becomes an act of depositing” these ticketed and labeled truths to students. Depositing information requires very little critical thinking. It robs the students of their experience. The way to combat this is communication and discourse between the teacher and student.

However, as revolutionary as all this philosophy sounds, I am not sure how to apply it to the actual experience of teaching or to classroom curriculum. This is especially true in the public school system, which requires a certain adherence to norms. As far as trying to relate Freire’s philosophy to the classroom, these are the only ideas I can come up with, none of which seem entirely revolutionary:

1.     Replace quizzes with one-on-one or small group discussion

2.     Provide students a time to reflect and ask them to share those reflections with the class/and or on a paper assignment

3.     Class journals

4.     Replace static problems with story problems

5.     Share my own intellectual limitations with the classroom

6.     Share my teaching process with the students

Also, I found this PDF online, entitled Transforming My Curriculum, Transforming My Classroom: Paulo Freire, James Banks, and Social Justice in a Middle School Classroom . I have not read this yet (just a quick skim), but it looks helpful.

   

English Language Arts Common Core Standards

I have two primary thoughts on the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts: The first one is that the Standards can provide a useful model that teachers can utilize in order to build a structured curriculum. I think this proves especially true for new teachers, who may feel aimless without a foundation to build upon. Personally, I would be grateful to have a sort of guiding template on what to teach my students. My second thought is that the Standards may restrict teachers in regards to idiosyncratic methods that may be helpful to the educational and personal growth of the students, but which do not necessarily conform to the Common Core template. The best teachers I had in high-school were of this idiosyncratic kind. The worst teachers I had were of the kind that too easily disconnected themselves from the classroom by rubric-ready teaching devoid of personality.

In my 10^th grade English class I had a teacher of the idiosyncratic type. On the first day of class he asked a student to stand on a chair and turn a poster upside down. The same poster was hung in every classroom and was emblazoned with a slogan that read something along the lines of: “As a teacher, I guarantee to connect the lessons we learn in class to your future in the workforce.” This teacher spent most of the semester lecturing, with the first 1/3^rd of the time spent on studying the Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave—and spent no effort connecting these “lessons” to the workforce. His personal, beyond-the-guidelines style of teaching was affecting and inspiring to many of his students. But this structure he built for himself was also extremely flawed. The students who were not impressed with his personal style or could not follow the lectures were left afloat and drifting. The lack of structure, goals, and standardization isolated most of the students.

In connecting the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts to my personal history of being an English student, I believe that the best teacher is one that can personalize their teaching style in a manner that is structured enough so that they are able to relay realistic educational goals to all their students. I believe that the Standards are structured enough to act as a guide, but are not too rigid that they disallow idiosyncratic teaching methods.