Wk 13 Teaching the New Writing (Herrington)

I enjoyed this book (at least the high school section) because of the real stores of technology being applied. Through the lenses of these four classrooms, I saw a working picture of multimodal reading/writing classes. The four topics presented were online blogs, poetry fusion with videos, a yearlong research project culminating in a multimedia presentation, and podcasts.

More teachers are using blogs now, but I like how the author framed blog curriculum: “passion-based” and “critical.” The teacher uses this class to teach valuable skills like critically analyzing other blogs on the web, ethical/legal issues of using Internet images, and reliability of Wikipedia. And there’s a different side of authorship that you can get into with blogs which you can’t in a traditional classroom. This difference is the immediate connection and feedback from the audience. I’m not sure how I might incorporate this into a daily class, though but it’s definitely a challenge I might consider taking in the future at least for a unit.

Another interesting point mentioned that I struggle to understand is how to assess with these types of activities. One of the writer points out that writing with technology is a very process-oriented approach as opposed to traditional grading with a red pen in hand. I peeked in the Elementary section which offered some solution in the form of rubrics. And the teacher initiating the poetry video projects in high school also used a rubric; however, the teacher was uncomfortable with it and constantly revised the scoring criteria because it’s hard to quantify success in such projects. I’d be interested in learning more ways of assessment.

Podcasts are probably the type of media I’m lease familiar with. It seems like a very interesting tool to communicate and I imagine would be a great motivator for students. We did create one podcast in my English pronunciation class and I found it to be a very good experience creating audio materials for someone to interact with. I’d also like to learn more about these kinds of activities, how to handle them logistically, how to access, etc.

Wk 12 Allen et al (2007)

I’m really glad to be introduced to this succinct summary of the core weaknesses behind NCLB from different perspectives. This is a really good resource to keep and refer to, especially for educators, parents or the general public to get an idea of basic problems within NCLB. Although of course this is a collection of arguments from one side, all of them together present a multi-faceted argument that comes to the same conclusion. One commonality that runs through all the articles is the division between the purpose of education and policy. The interests/beliefs of the affected players (students, parents, teachers, etc) is pitted against those making authoritative decisions from above. All the articles paint the picture of the opposing team using terms like “policy makers,” “enforcers of NCLB policy” or “legislators.” They all refer to the same group of antagonists opposing the side of students, parents and teachers. The articles point to different flaws of these policy-makers including their ignorance, narrow-mindedness, distance from what happens in a classroom and lack of common sense. Additionally, all the articles have a running theme of how to measure true knowledge and learning. All the writers imply that NCLB takes in an ultra-narrow, one-size-fits all approach to education.

I don’t disagree with the authors but one thing I might include are some suggestions against any counter arguments. I think many people that are more pro-NCLB would ask how to create some kind of standard that schools should aim for and how to deal with the issue of accountability. I don’t think anyone would say that accountability is a negative thing to do away with. But how should legislators keep schools responsible, and how can they do this without applying an overgeneralized prescription for every school? I think Altwerge’s article “OVERHAULING NCLB: WHAT DO WE WANT AND HOW WILL WE GET THERE?” is the article that most closely addresses an offensive argument instead of just defensive. She gives simple, short descriptions of how reform can begin. I like especially how she articulates succinctly one point: “Make equity, not test performance, the basis of federal funding.” Some provisions within NCLB are not inherently bad such as providing funding, but the ways of distribution are very problematic. Standardized test scores become the most important and coveted result, not education and equity. I believe this is a very fundamental issue that needs to be addressed first, and I appreciate how Altwerge provides some beginning-albeit very general-steps toward that end. And I like her feisty, direct way of speaking, ending this point about funding with the statement, “The government should then be held accountable for providing that support. Until then, it has no right to hold teachers and students accountable for success.” Absolutely!

Wk 11: Hicks

The Hick’s article was a little off the beaten path for a research study. There were times I wondered about the researcher and how long she had taught and in what communities. She seemed surprised that the text one student connected with turns into a novel that is boring. I think here you see the assumption that just because you relate to a character, the student is immediately engaged. From experience, sometimes a book is thrusted at a student because he/she might relate with it, however perhaps it truly is a boring book or poorly written.  Although she began some discussions with connections, perhaps other class activities were not engaging so it didn’t capture the students’ attention.

I thought it was interesting that she admitted she wanted control of “safe” discussions. Again, she seems surprised that the kids created their own way of navigating through the text. I find that this was very common at low income schools when the students were in charge of small group discussions. And I relate to the feeling of wanting to maintain control, especially when students are connecting personally with issues.

I did appreciate that she acknowledged her mistake of talking about the lengthy novel that lost the students’ interests immediately. I think it’s very representative of teenage culture to resist “nerdiness.” It is very sad that more than 50% of students drop out before high school is over. I wonder about the future of these students. I’m sure some of them can make it okay, but there must be others that are forfeiting great potential. And so I understand the researcher’s motivation from this point of view.

Although the illustration falls apart at points, it was interesting to use an analogy of bilingualism. I think it is true that through literature, students can be thrown into a style that is almost like a new language. Even for myself, reading Shakespeare in high school felt like a foreign language and I constantly felt stupid and never participated because it seemed that my peers understood the “language.” So it is important to ease them into different styles of discourse because it helps with understand and validates their own knowledge.

Wk 10 Zhang (2007)

Being a Chinese American, I made many connections to the Zhang article. Chinese was my first language as I was born in Hong Kong but when I moved to the States at the age of 5, English became my second language.  I grew up as a bilingual but I didn’t have the same attitude toward both languages.

Cindy and Jerry received much encouragement from families to develop literacy in both languages. They ended up enjoying these practices. My parents also did the same. They gave me the freedom to choose whether to go to Chinese school or not. They encouraged me but did not force me. I had all the support and positive influence, but one heavy factor not mentioned in the article affected my attitude towards languages: what my friends thought. I had the perception that being a Chinese-speaker in American schools was not cool or socially acceptable. Being bilingual was something that made my English worse, a common myth many people have about acquiring two languages close together. I knew that having bad English would mean some type of segregation from others, or at least being different which is dreaded as a child! So I decided not to go to Chinese school. When my parents were around my classmates, I always spoke in English to them. The social pressures were stronger influences than parents and family life.

Despite all this, I still did use Cantonese daily. I experienced a dichotomy of language use like in the article. The children in the study  wrote in Chinese for more  formal, structured settings normally related to school assignments and they communicated orally family members of an older generation. I can still communicate adequately in Cantonese, but I never developed the ability to read or write past preschool level because I chose not to learn. So Chinese is definitely a language I use only to communicate orally and in informal situations. I do not have the linguistic knowledge of Chinese to speak in different registers like in a courtroom or an academic conference. Similar to the case study, I might also use Chinese as a fun way to build rapport with someone, or as a secret language when I don’t want others to hear. All other literacy practices in my daily life are in English.

Zhang makes a disclaimer that this is a case study which should not be generalized to all bilingual children. And for me, although I had great family environment conducive to developing rich literacy practices in my mother language, peer pressure was a more important factor than my parents.

Wk 8 Compton-Lilly 2011

I appreciated this truly longitudinal study because it gives a perspective that is not too often seen. For one, it provides an authentic picture of the way we construct meaning which is not linear. Rather, it is heavily influenced by scope of context (meaning the immediate environment, social, historical, etc factors around a person) and scope of time (as a person engages with the past in the present moment). The statement I find quite insightful appears in the article’s conclusion: “…events in everyday life are constrained but not determined by events at historic, systemic, cultural, familial, and institutional levels. While people experience their lives temporally, they interpret their lives using available discourses at multiple timescales.” I think this is a statement that must be proved by a longitudinal study with as much depth and width as this one.

I had an emotional reaction to the conversations about teachers. It seems to be a common theme among the community that teachers don’t care and that was very painful to read. I’m sure there were some teacher choices (perhaps not giving them enough of a sense of agency) that made reading/learning a chore for the students. But I have a suspicion there were also well-meaning teachers that either missed the mark or were subjected to the preconceived notions of uncaring teachers that the discourse community perpetuates. I think the researcher herself could be considered one such well-meaning teacher because I venture to say she cares about this former student. Also, she miscalculates as well about how much they would like Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart.” That shows she had good intentions and hoped the child would be engaged with this type of novel because of her interests. But the researcher misjudged that the white characters and the form of instruction might be a hindrance.

I suppose personally it was hard to read because most of the time in my experience teaching in a high-poverty district, I felt like I failed to do my job often. I know my students said of me what Alicia (at her older ages) was saying about un-caring teachers. One class actually had a discussion about this where I attempted to persuade them how the teachers want the best for them. One response I’ll never forget was, “You don’t care. You don’t even know me. You don’t know where I go after school.” This article brought back a lot of those tensions, trying to do my best but against a community that had adopted a certain perspective about teachers.

One thing I see is that it takes a lot to change a student’s mind because you don’t just have his/her opinion to change, but you are fighting against the past and whole discourse community they are surrounded in. It takes more than just one good lesson to engage students and get them into literacy. I can see why this perspective might actually causes teachers to assume more control, instead giving students more agency. And this perhaps perpetuates the cycle of unsuccessful or discontent students. Many times I believe teachers are only concerned about something that works for one unit or one year (if they are lucky). But we need to see instruction and learning in a bigger scope of social environment and time. After reading this article, I feel I need to turn to some other place for a bit of hope that it’s all worth it

Wk 7 Dyson (2006)

Dyson (2006)

One statement I found provocative is that, “There is no support in the language development literature for the notion that explicit correction in and of itself is effective, even if one’s goal is in fact to eliminate features from a young child’s repertoire.” Yet this statement is so contrary to what many teachers do in the classroom when “teaching” students standard forms of language, especially when there are non-standard variants present. Interestingly enough, this is the stance that many researchers in second language acquisition are supporting too when it comes to language learning. Whereas behaviorist models in the past used repetition and explicit correct to avoid and eradicate “bad habits,” the current trend is to use more communicative methods, which are mostly social in nature. The articles suggests that “young children develop social and linguistic flexibility (including bidialectism )” through social interaction. Across disciplines, this seems to be a consensus.

I’m not familiar with 6 year olds and I’m not sure if it would work at such a young age, but I might propose another way to highlight different aspects of language in Tionna’s “mistake” of using “i’s.” If the teacher had picked up that it was an issue of contractions and not the deletion of an article, she could have used that time to explain why her transcribed “i’s” “sounded good” to Tionna. She could continue that what we actually hear stands for “it’s” in written English convention. To prevent confusion for readers, the teacher could explain that sometimes in spoken speech “i’s” stands for “it’s.” I think this might be more constructive and might cause less confusion as well as not oversimplifying the “mistake” since it was a systematic habit. Also this does not give the impression that spoken variants of words are necessarily wrong in oral English.

I wonder how the study might change as the children get older because the method of writing and fixing is not as simplistic as “sounding good.” Students are expected to conform to a set of rules that might not match up to the rules they already have in their mind. It might be more helpful for students to see how conventional rules relate to their rules they operate on before they know written language. This reminded me of Ferreiro’s study how the term  “word” means something different to a pre-literate child than to a literate person. And eventually that child is expected to conform to another system of thinking that replaces their “wrong” modes before.

I also found interesting Dyson’s final statement that teachers need professional opportunities to challenge their perception of language because they “will not necessarily interrogate their own ideologies nor support children’s critical discussion of theirs.” This is unfortunate but I believe mostly true to expose the natural tendencies of right and wrong that many adults acquire as they become educated into society.

Wk 6 Newell

I thought this article was a good follow up to the Anderson text we read about CR. I liked how this article cited the Reznitskaya and Anderson (2007) research and further gave a hypothesis for the negative transfer in some of the groups. This was dense read but I think one general idea is that knowledge is transferred better in a social context. That could partially explain why the explicit instruction group in the Anderson study could only repeat but not perform as if truly internalized. It gave a possible explanation but I’m still reluctant to attribute the negative transfer primarily or even very heavily on social learning theories.

This article also argued against the conception I had in my mind about CR and argumentative instruction. They claim that it goes beyond the five paragraph persuasive essay and we are not teaching students to just be confrontational and argumentative. These were actually some critical thoughts/questions I had against it (which ironically is a good thing according to argumentative theory). One thing I question is whether this style will work in other cultures where it is not as acceptable to be critical or ague. For example, I imagine myself teaching in an English as a Foreign Language setting in China, let’s say. I think it might be harder with the administration and even with the students to adopt lessons that teach argumentative reading and writing. Does anyone have any thoughts about how that might work?

Wk 5: Maloch

I really appreciated Maloch’s research and article for a couple reasons. First, her classroom observations describe the reality of literature circles. Many times in the research literature given to us in classes, literature circles are made out to be very successful if only you implement them correctly. But this case study showed a realistic picture of lit circles in action. There is inequality and there are students who monopolize discussions while others are marginalized and speak less. I was able to relate to the issues that arose in Ms. P’s class from my own experiences trying to implement literature circles.

The other point I greatly appreciated is seeing how students’ participation and resistance is systematic. Within the real picture of literature circles that is described, Maloch notes that students’ unresponsiveness is not random but can often be traced back to a cause. The factors related to participation were divided into the categories of cultural capital, relationships with peers and the teacher, and degree of choice. The most intriguing was the notion that one participates more when he/she possesses a skill or knowledge to share. Without this capital, resistance seems to increase. Also noteworthy is that capital relates to preparedness. For students who couldn’t read independently, they needed to be coached by the teacher and have a sense of readiness before participating. It seems an obvious connection but my tendency as a teacher is to attribute lack of engagement as the students’ personality, or a personal issue in their life, or something generally on the part of the student. I want to remember to be more conscious of these other factors because these are things I can possibly help change with interventions. I want to regularly consider how to increase their motivation to participate through helping them feel prepared with a valuable contribution.

The concept of the teacher and student co-constructing participation is intriguing. I really like the techniques Ms. P used to draw the students into the discussion. She made them viable sources of unique information. The little things she did to help scaffold might have appeared small but made a visible difference in students’ engagement. I was pretty impressed with her actions and even felt heart-warmed by her care and consideration as I’m sure the students felt.

Wk 4 Collaborative Reasoning (Anderson)

First thing I wondered was how much development of CR was a reaction to writing portions of standardized tests. Many if not most of the types of essay questions asked are similar to the skills asked of in CR. As instruction moves toward including more CR, I wonder if writing in other genres will get less attention. I agree argumentative and logical reasoning is an important strategy to learn, but I’m wondering if this emphasis growing in the past years is influenced by high-stakes testing.

I also had the expectation that if students performed better articulating the structure of arguments, they’d be able to write better. The results of Anderson’s study did not turn out this way. Even though they had “internalized” how to use CR, they didn’t systematically apply it when writing. He offered two explanations. One that they might have been able to articulate but without mastery of applying it in writing. So to further research and answer this question, a follow-up study could include more instructions and teaching to apply.

The second explanation for the results was the “school-like” exposure having negative effect on students’ motivation. This is the first time I’ve encountered “short-term negative transfer” explained through low motivation. I can recognize and understand this phenomena from experience but it’s interesting how researchers can use this as a (somewhat) quantifiable reason for poor achievement on some aspect of a task.

CR was reminiscent of the way our school district taught our students to write. Teachers were told to model writing with a diagram similar to the house with three columns holding up the roof. Except our diagram expanded to a 3×3 box with three reasons and debunking counter-arguments dispersed within the support. The majority of our writing in class was based on this model. We did not have as much time to explore other types of writing. By the end of the school year, the students were able to perform to this script as we looked over their exit exams. In the study, the students were able to articulate argumentative method but unable to perform. For our students, I wonder about transfer the other way. They were able to copy the model as they applied the skill to a task, but did they understand the general over-arching principles of how and why to create an argument gracefully? I’m not sure. And I wonder which is more important in the long run.

Wk 3 Teaching Reading, Dutro (2009)

After reading Dutro (2009) the two applications I take away as a teacher are the following: being critical of mandated curricula and having flexibility to talk about issues within the institutional constraints.

Literacy curricula creators must be more aware and sensitive to middle-class-rooted assumptions when developing materials. Policy makers also need to make more informed decisions based on the facts of student and family demographics. However, from the teacher’s point of view sometimes there is little we can do to change the constraints of mandated curricula. When that’s the case, our role is to critically look at the materials. The textbooks with Leah’s Pony posed economic hardship as a temporary situation because the materials developers wrote it to a middle-class audience. When teachers are asked to use certain materials, they should at least examine underlying ideas that are problematic and anticipate some of the responses their students may make.

When the students responded, the teacher Sharon felt she did not have much room to address their personal issues in class. While the topics kept coming up during the unit, she felt she couldn’t “deviate” from the curricula to address the issue. The materials assumed students would write generically about hard times or even temporary difficulties, not respond about a present and possibly permanent reality. I understand Sharon felt boxed in by the mandated curricula. Certainly observations, literacy coaches, and administrators put much pressure on classroom interactions. I like how she sympathetically responded to individuals. If possible, perhaps she could have developed some follow up tasks that took place outside of class time. Or if she could be very creative, she could rework the curriculum to still cover the literacy strategies but with content that allows for discussions about their personal connections. This article shows how there are key opportunities to discuss the core issues in the students’ lives. But it does require extra work and flexibility on the part of the teacher when given mandated curricula.

My personal reaction is one of understanding toward Sharon but also a bit of shame and regret remembering my own shortcomings as a teacher. Like Sharon, I came from an upper-middle class family and first started teaching in a high-poverty district, similar to that described in the article. During teacher in-services, we were only a little prepared for what was ahead in terms of the demographic and how to teach to poor students. We had the data and even the literacy program was designed to help the district do better in AYP. To be honest, especially in my first year of teaching, I went along with prepared materials without considering the assumptions underlying the texts and questions. It’d be interested to retrospectively critique the materials we were asked to use. Certainly children responded to texts with the kind of connections that hinted at deep losses and hard circumstances in their lives. I did try to engage in class discussions and individually respond to students. But the unit of “Connecting” was only one of six or seven reading strategies we covered. This is the one where students most clearly identified themselves with the text. The other strategies did not allow as much room for students to share personal connections. Perhaps I could have been more flexible in teaching the required strategies while incorporating creative ways to let the students personally respond. To make effective adaptations and even changes to mandated curricula, teachers need to be more informed and empowered to see the biases in materials.