Discussion Post for AB, Caroline, Marty, Melody and Steeve

Education is becoming increasingly linked to entrepreneurial ventures and political shifts. This capitalism to classrooms phenomenon is referenced throughout this week's readings. It is extremely disconcerting reading how matter-of-fact the ties to education and profits are mentioned. Organizations seem to have a foothold in how we teach, what we teach, and even why we teach, and money is at the root of it all. The countless educational programs often have self serving agendas (profits) and at times have proven not to be effective.  The Kumashiro and Allington articles are littered with mention of this devious relationship. "The Neoliberal Movements: Education as a Capitalist Enterprise" section of Kumashiro's article was one of the more salient sections of the readings. Kumashiro mentions the pro-business ideology that exists in education and education reform, and the, "interconnected web of organizations and initiatives." (p. 59) This pro-business approach also holds the notion that, "individuals can reach their highest potential when put into competition with one another, like businesses in a so called "free market" economy." (p. 59)

 If this business like approach drives education policy, what are the implications for us as teachers? What are the implications for our students?

What are your thoughts on this aforementioned "devious relationship?" Are there ways to distance the power organizations hold over education?

We've discussed the language of power and privilege, and also how education is a major contributor to society being reproduced. What are some connections to this week's readings?

Yours in the Hustle,
Steeve

Discussion for Jen M., Lauren B., Adama K., Megan Z. and Analie H.

In reading the two pieces by Allington, two particular parts stuck out at me, one from each piece and they were tied together by the fact that both involved a reflection back upon the practice of adults and the modeling that they provide to the young people around them or lack thereof.

Allington introduces the contradiction of asking students to read at a 98% accuracy level but then contrasting it with the reading habits of adults in the piece titled: What Really Matters When Working With Struggling Readers. Although he does not use a reference to back up his assertion, it is something to think about. We as teachers ask our students to do a lot of things that we are ourselves are sometimes not willing to do in our own daily lives. This creates a kind of stratification or separation, between new learners (the students) and continuing learners (the teachers) in my mind.

In Allington's other piece, Proven Programs, Profits and Practice, he lists ten strategies that can be categorized by the fact that they make little to- no profit, one of these among them, is the idea of reading aloud. During this read aloud time, the teacher is instructed to ask questions out-loud that one might think about as they read along in the story. While I see value in this methodology, could the teacher not go one step further? Is that teacher truly engaged in the story at or following a prescriptive script in order to achieve a desired result from his/her students?

My question is this, we speak a lot about motivation or engagement in regard to our students. However do we truly model it for our students? And not in a "one-size-fits-all way" as Bartoleme talks about? Do we provide them with enough examples of adults engaging in literacy in a personal and dynamic way? What does your modelling of engagement look like and does it look the same to, or for, all your students?

Is our engagement in reading, for example, in the classroom a means-to-an-end or is it clear to our students how reading impacts us, as adults or teachers, beyond our classroom? Do we distinguish ourselves from the profit-based, test taking culture that dominates our curriculum and society at large or do we serve as an alternative model?

Discussion Post: Monika, Eug, Hak, Benjamin, Danny

Kumashiro writes “Indeed, the current move towards standards/standardization is de-professionalizing teaching, reducing that role to one of mere “technician” who can implement the already scripted and authorized curriculum. Within this logic, “traditional” teacher preparation is not only unnecessary, but also undesired, because teacher preparation is what can prepare teachers to teach against the script, to teach against “common sense” (p.63).

Do you feel that our teacher prep program is preparing us to “teach against the script”? If so, in what ways? Even in my practicum, I see my cooperating teacher focusing on standards and MCAS scores in a way that teaches to the test. Can we prepare students for standardized tests while teaching against the script? How can we “address diversity, equity, and civil rights” in this context? (p.64).  

Allington quotes Darling-Hammond when writing “Professional teachers should be allowed to focus on doing the right things rather than on doing things right” (p.227). As soon to be first-year teachers, do you think we will need to sacrifice “doing the right things” and rather “do things right” in order to maintain our jobs? How can we keep a realistic balance?

Lastly, in light of the Allington’s article, “What Really Matters When Working with Struggling Readers,” instead of waiting on research findings to influence our daily classroom practices, how can we, as teachers, be researchers in our own classrooms? When reading this article, I found myself agreeing with many of Allington’s suggestions such as eliminating workbooks, test prep, and robin reading activities, mainly because these were all things that I despised as a student. What role do our own schooling experiences play in the classroom practices that we choose to implement?

Discussion Question: Ryan, Celestina, Carol, Erin, Kakas, Sam

“Our most recent study examining the self-teaching hypothesis involved providing 12 free self-selected books every summer to children from low income families.  What this study found was that we could eliminate the summer reading loss that produces most of the reading achievement differences found between the children of low- and middle-income families in U.S. schools.  The poor children to whom we provided free self-selected books gained reading achievement during the summer months, whereas the control group of children who did not receive the books lost ground, or experienced summer reading loss.”

This quote from Richard L. Allington’s What Really Matters When Working With Struggling Readers gives light on the generalizations about students who have trouble with “standard” academic English in the U.S. classroom.  I feel there are simplifications in terms of which students are struggling, how old they typically are, how research is used to help them (and how effective that is), and how much this research actually pertains to all struggling readers.  Many questions came from Allington’s two articles addressing these issues.

How does the evidence-based research being conducted show which students are prioritized in the U.S. schooling system.  Who is this research being done upon?  How is the research being used to help only particular types of students?

-       How are the ways the research is being used highlight the focus of the U.S. educational policy, and who has control over this policy?

-       How does Allington subliminally define “struggling readers” in his texts?  How are other students defined?  Does the interpretation of research only pertain to specific types of learners?

-       How do these questions connect with Kumashiro’s ideas about “discourses that shape public education”?  How will this impact our practice as teachers (especially when we are being pushed/pulled in certain pedagogical directions)?

Group Discussion: Bethanne, Emme, Ivette, Nate and Paola

During our group’s discussion last class, in our response to Bartolome’s text, we struggled with the question: What should we be learning in graduate school if it’s not “best practices” and teaching methods? As I was reading Kumashiro’s text, I kept thinking back to our conversation last week. This article illuminated radical viewpoints about the value of graduate school for teachers.

            Revisiting the conversation from last week about the value of graduate school and ideas about what we as futures teachers should learn, have your thoughts, feelings, and opinions changed? How do you react to the statement made in the article that: “the fast-track alternative certification programs provide ‘the blueprint for the new civil rights movement” (p. 57). Not only do some people hold the stance that alternative certification programs are valuable, some argue that graduate school is irrelevant and can even be detrimental: “Therefore, ending teacher education would be removing the very thing that has the potential to change ‘common sense’ in teaching and, in so doing, to better prepare teachers to teach our increasingly diverse student population” (p. 57) This argument counters the reason we are all currently in graduate school. Would you make a counter argument to this bold statement?

Kumashiro later looks at how the curriculum oppresses groups of students while privileging others. How do we change the curriculum so it does not teach a “particular racial consciousness that privileges Whiteness and White American culture and identity”? (p. 62). How do we create a curriculum that teaches a diverse population of students to understand and celebrate different cultures and identities? How do we do this on a countrywide level and how do we do this on a personal level in our individual classrooms? Connecting back to earlier questions, should these conversations be required for graduate school education programs?

Challenging the busy business of education

The new documentary, Race to Nowhere, challenges the busy achievement culture of the U.S. (and many other nation/states) that is based on competition and earning potential. It also offers some solutions, particularly on the companion website. It is airing on PBS for the next week. Check it out.

More on play and storytelling

Hello Wonderful Donovans

The deeply knowledgeable Liz reminded me of the fantastic work that Vivan Gussin Paley has done in discussing why story and storytelling is so central to, yes, children's, but also overall human development and connection. Thank you Liz.

Below is a quick easy-read interview with Paley that may support you in thinking about how to best structure and support storytelling in the classroom.

http://www.naeyc.org/content/conversation-vivian-gussin-paley

And to keep you swimming, swimming, swimming mid-week, here's a wayback wednesday tune to move those hips (b/c, remember, if your revolution doesn't include dancing, nobody will want to be part of it)

Discussion Post for Bethanne, Emme, Ivette, Nate, and Paola.

Lilia Bartolome's Beyond the Methods Fetish could not be more crucial to our cohort's experiences this semester.  After reading each paragraph, it is impossible to stop and reflect on one's own beliefs to question just how deeply a "one size fits all" instructional mindset may have been assimilated into our own pedagogical practices.  Bartolome's analogy of clothing is incredibly apt here; just as "one size fits all" clothing ends up only fitting a very narrow range of people, methods that come from that same narrow place can only be effective, if at all, on a very narrow set of students in the classroom.  Time and again, we have seen the students that fall outside of the parameters set forth by these methods to fall victim to a downward spiral that the deficit orientation makes even worse. Connecting this reading to Sarah Michaels' Sharing Time, it is not surprising that this downward spiral is made worse when a teacher's expectations and literate style are mismatched with a student's discourse and narrative style.

One of many important areas of focus in Bartolome's piece is where she states that "by taking a sociohistorical view of present-day conditions and concerns that inform the lived experiences of socially perceived minority students, prospective teachers are better able to comprehend the quasi-colonial nature of minority education."  Additionally, she notes that "it is important that educators not blindly reject teaching methods across the board, but that they reject uncritical appropriation of methods, materials, curricula, etc."  As we Donovans move forward through our respective methods courses in our program, how easily will we be able to spot a "one size fits all" method when we see it?  How deeply is that mindset entrenched in the courses themselves and to what degree?  Are the methods that are currently being taught to us by various professors in Campion adequately taking into account this quasi-colonial nature?  Moving forward, it might seem challenging to discern which methods aim to calcify our pineal glands of political clarity.

I watch every week as my CT- pretty unintentionally, I think- talks in condescending tones to students, communicates low expectations for learning and behavior goals, and make excuses for poor quality work (student has an IEP, is depressed, etc.).  I feel confident in saying that he views the students through a deficit lens, and doesn't seem to truly believe that they are capable of high quality work.

When thinking about creating a humanizing curriculum and learning community, how can we identify a deficit lens in ourselves, to assure we are bringing in student knowledge, and holding high expectations for them?  In their behavior, how can we make sure that we aren't valuing mainstream standards for behavior norms while creating a respectful, supportive, safe community? How can we assess ourselves on our lenses, as well as assess students in a way that is humanizing?

(Group members: Adama, Analie, Lauren, Queen)

Discussion Post for AB, Caroline, Marty, Melody and Steeve

Reading the article regarding Mrs. Jones' class, I couldn't help but see myself in the shoes of the teacher and the student. Constantly in class I am trying to keep my students on task about their text to self connections when going over social studies material. I even have in my class expectations for my 6th graders to make sure we stick to 'intelligent' questions when asking them in class. I did this to try and curb any nonsense questions that might throw us off task. But what do I even mean by that? Did me listing that expectation make the students feel some type of way? When I asked them what they thought they did seem to be on the same wave length as me. But when I think of myself outside of my teacher persona, you might as well call me Deena from the reading! I don't think I could be more round about, the way I tell my stories (I enjoy it to be honest).

But enough about me, (see.). As teachers, how are we more aware, IN THE MOMENT, about the way our students communicate to us and with their peers and vise versa? Mrs. Jones struggled to understand and keep Deena on task, and if she hadn't she might have gotten what she expected out of her student. When is redirection and guidance too much when we ask students to participate in an activity that asks for them to share their perspective? Is that even a place for us to step in, and chime in, when we have provided this platform for them? How do we make sure that we are responding fairly (even toned) to each student regardless of their verbal communication style?

Discussion Post: Monika, Eug, Hak, Benjamin, Danny.

Discussion Post: Monika, Eug, Hak, Benjamin, Danny.

Hi class,

It is so easy for me to blame children for their less-than-ideal performances. However, as Rick Cass hit it home during his lectures, when students are not meeting expectations, it can mean that teachers are not doing their job ideally. One the other hand, what if students do not learn, not because of the lack of support from teachers, but because of the inherent characteristic of those teachers? This made me think about how to understand not being able to help students as much as I want because of myself being myself.  In Sarah Michaels reading it is noted that when there is a mismatch between students and teachers’ way of speech, those students will not benefit as much as those students whose prosody matches with their teachers. As somebody who did not study linguistics and who have never closely observed and studied my own rhythm, stress, and intonations of speech, I was not sure how I can try to meet the needs of all students while being helpful to all students in the most equal manner. Perhaps, my idea of fair needs to be thought out more thoroughly since it is not practical for me to strive for complete and absolute equality in developing students’ oral literacy. 

Through this post, I would like to ask your opinions on how to understand the comments below.

“There is evidence to suggest that when a child’s oral discourse is at variance with the teacher’s own literate style and expectations, interaction between teacher and child is often asynchronous and marked by interruptions and misinterpretation of semantic intent. This child, over time, often does not gain access to the kind of instruction and practice required to develop a more literate discourse style” (Michaels,  424).

“The consistent problems that Mrs. Jones had with certain children during sharing time had to do, not with attitudes, but with autonomic, unconscious processes at the level of discourse, stemming from a mismatch between teacher’s and child’s prosodic signaling system narrative schemata. Such mismatches, over time, resulted in differential amounts of practice doing literate-style accounting for black children and white children in this class” (Michaels, 440).

Discussion Question: Ryan, Celestina, Carol, Erin, Kakas, Sam

In her piece, Bartolome points to the dangers of a myopic focus on "one size fits all" methodology that not only reinscribes deficit assumptions about minoritized students, but also obscures the inequitable structural and political contexts in which schooling occurs (For me, this spoke directly to my issues with Kunfuju's essentialized and moralizing arguments). She writes beautifully about a humanizing pedagogy, that instead, challenges the banking model of education and questions any sort of silver methodological bullet aimed at "fixing" students. This type of pedagogy requires a deep understanding of how schooling functions violently in our society to reproduce unequal power relations, as well as of student's realities, histories and prospectives. Yet for example, even with an obviously rigorous understanding of the justice issues around student's narrative strategies, Sarah Michaels admits that she herself struggled to implement appropriate questions and responses with students (p.440) (Not that any amount of academic/research based knowledge can ever make one immune to a misstep, but I do think this speaks to the difficulty of bridging theory into practice). At the end of her piece, I was left with the same "Ok, what do I do ??" feeling, that I'm sure we've all felt as a theory class came to a close. 

I 110% agree that our analysis of power dynamics and social contexts, or "political clarity", needs to be SHARP, so that we are able to make decisions centered on respect for our students and remain critical of potentially problematic methods or curricula that may be introduced at our school, but I wondered about the implications for teacher education programs like the one we are all in now.  Coming out of an education department at my  undergrad institution that taught me a lot about CRT and close to nothing about how to make a badass graphic organizer/strategies for struggling readers, I am always curious about the balance between theory and practice, pedagogy and content. (I do think that in general if your pedagogy game/ analysis is tight, you're probably going to make sure you know how to make the badass graphic organizer your students need though?) I would like to talk more about how folks feel a humanizing pedagogy can be effectively taught/integrated into teacher education programs and what that means for the structure and balance between methods and theory classes at these institutions.

Lending nuance in a time of amateur biology

Dear Scholars,

Your analysis of Kunjufu's points was excellent. I asked you to read an essentializing and stereotype-driven text because snap judgements and amateur biology still reigns in how people categorize and treat each other. Being able to lend nuance and interrupt these categories is part of your work as teachers and advocates for equity.

Here is a list of scholars and cultural workers whose work may be helpful as you consider how to respond when you such sweeping statements as "Black people are right-brained."

Imani Perry
Rinku Sen
Scott Nakagawa
Patricia Hill Collins
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Mica Pollock

This coming week, we'll take some time to have open discussion of issues, worries, victories from your prac experiences, similar to what Yvette shared with us on the 18th. Put some thought ahead of class into something you may wish to share, not required but on offer.

peace,
prof. patel.