Readicide

Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide is impactful, because he provides a compelling argument about the damage inflicted upon students by focusing on “teaching to the test.”  Gallagher takes an in-depth look at the practices instituted in our school system to help struggling students, and his findings demonstrate that what these practices are not helping at all.  Gallagher defines readicide as “the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind- numbing practices found in schools” (vii).  I completely agree with Gallagher that we are inundating our students with too many standards and not enough time to allow for deep learning.  I want my students to love reading and I want them to derive pleasure from reading a book.  After reading chapter three, I am totally re-thinking my unit plan project.  Gallagher advises the necessity for my students to experience the “flow” when they read (61).  I think my unit plan is too “chop-chop” and I need to re-evaluate and find some balance.  I know it is important for my students to learn reading strategies, but I also need to provide them with opportunities to get lost in the book we are reading.  Since I intend to be a Social Studies teacher, I know that I will utilize academic texts in my classroom, which means I have to help my students appreciate the value of these texts.  I really liked Carol Jago’s method for doing just that, by providing my students with a “guided tour” at first and eventually transitioning them to the “budget tour” of reading on their own (79).  This means I must model reading for my students.   The process for doing this is first, frame the text before we begin reading it, provide the students with a purpose for reading each chapter of the text and craft lessons that allow students time to discuss what they like, don’t like, understand or don’t understand about the text in small and large groups (79).  After reading this book, I am re-evaluating my unit lesson plan and so I believe I must head back to the drawing board as I consider the best way to help my students love reading!

I Read It, but I Don’t Get It

            I love this book!  Cris Tovani reinforced what I have been hearing in my education classes and what I see in the Common Core State Standards, EVERY teacher is responsible for teaching their students how to read!  I Read It, but I Don’t Get It, offers practical strategies to help teachers help their struggling readers.  Tovani identifies two types of struggling readers as “resistive readers who can read, but choose not to and word callers who can decode words, but choose not to” (14). The first thing that we all need to realize is that reading is more than decoding, “reading is thinking” (18).  Good readers utilize many different strategies to help them understand and comprehend what they are reading, like using existing knowledge and determining what is important (17).  I think the most important and practical advice in this book, is that I need to be a passionate reader of what I teach.  I love historical non-fiction and my passion and for the genre can help motivate my students to read it and love it as well.  The other important piece of advice is to model for my students how good readers read.  I need to teach my students to read with purpose to help their comprehension, think aloud to make sense of the text and it helps them see/hear the mental process and mark the text to help them become engaged with the text.  I also need to make my students responsible for monitoring their understanding and to take ownership of the situation when they don’t.  This means that student can’t give up reading a text when they struggle understanding it.  Tovani offers several useful strategies when readers get stuck, like reread, reflect, and visualize.  I think these strategies need to be practiced often so they become second nature to students (51).  I also know it is important to help students make connections between disciplines and I like Tovani’s suggestion to use Venn diagrams or to have students make a list of what they know about topics in an entry task (66).  My last take away from this book is that good readers ask questions.  Curiosity helps students make connections between the text the world around which strengthens and deepens comprehension.  I know this book will be a valuable tool for me to help my future Social Studies students improve their reading skills!

“Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom”

            As I read Duncan-Andrade and Morrell’s case study, the thought that kept coming to my mind was the importance of really knowing and understanding my students.  I need to know and understand their background and the things they experience on a daily basis, because I can utilize that information to enhance their learning process.  In many English classes, students struggle to be engaged learners, because they find the literature they are assigned to read and write about as boring and irrelevant.  Duncan-Andrade and Morrell discovered the importance of combining the classics with popular cultural texts that their students found relevant to engage their students and help them acquire the necessary skills to help them communicate effectively outside of the classroom.  By creating a “cross-cultural literary study,” students can recognize the similarities as well as the differences between cultures and experiences, which helps them make deeper connections by relating it to themselves.  I also appreciated the point that traditionally our public school system in its “industrialized” form has branded forms of culture that are not traditional or main-stream as undesirable and that needs to change.  Students need to be exposed to different views to expand the way they think and perceive the world around them.  I also see the value in offering students the opportunity to explore literature relatable to their lives, like the use of rap music in a poetry unit, because it involves a medium that they are interested in and they feel comfortable with it.  Utilizing relatable material with more traditional forms of literature helps students see that they are connected and relatable. This familiarity makes classical literature less scary for students and it might motivate them to engage in these texts.  

“Philosophy of Education-Pedagogy of the Oppressed”

     My response to this piece is AMEN!!!!! (Yes, that statement requires multiple exclamation points for dramatic effect.)  Even though this piece is very deep and required me to buckle up, bring a dictionary and read closely, it fired me up. Why did it fire me up? Because, as a student, I have endured too many college professors who prescribe to the “banking concept of education,” leaving me frustrated, stagnant, irritated and oppressed. I am not an empty “container” waiting to be “filled” with knowledge and I resent being treated as such!  This book should be required reading for EVERY teacher, including college professors, but that is a rant for another day………..

     Obviously this piece resonated with my student side, and I believe that will be most beneficial for me as a teacher because I do not want my students to endure this type of “learning” experience.  I believe that students need to be engaged learners and the best way to encourage them is by using the “problem posing” method of teaching.  The critical aspect of this method requires dialogue between the teacher and students.  Teachers that act as “co-investigators in dialogue” model the process of engaged learning which also demonstrates that teachers are still learning and growing themselves. I am a lifelong learner and I hope my students have that desire as well.  I am not omniscient, I make mistakes and that is how I learn.  I must model that process for my students.

     Some of the language in this piece was difficult, but some of it reminded me of the language found in the CCSS. The parts that sounded like CCSS were the parts describing the problem posing method.  It is easy to see why the problem posing method is superior to the banking model just by comparing how they are described.

“Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem-posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation.”

I don’t know about you, but I want to be in the classroom with a teacher that requires me to engage in dialogue, think critically, provide activities that stimulate my creativity and encourages me to be self-reflective throughout the process. Banking education is boring, so I will prescribe to the problem posing methodology because and I would rather engage my students then put them to sleep!

http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/philosophy/education/freire/freire-2.html 

“Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning”

            Assessment is an integral component of the learning process because it provides feedback to students and teachers about student progress toward meeting a learning objective and the effectiveness of a lesson.  I have been feeling anxious about my ability in creating adequate assessment pieces that align with learning objectives and my lessons mostly because I lack experience and I feel overwhelmed.  However, after reading Beach, Appleman, Hynds and Wilhelm’s piece Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning, and the Spokane Public School’s Secondary Standards-Based grading and Reporting Handbook, I have gained some foundational knowledge to help me formulate my own assessment strategies. 

            First, I need to assess my goals to ensure that I am helping my students engage in deep, rigorous learning and that I am not promoting a learning environment that functions merely on the memorization and regurgitation of the “correct answer.”  Second, I need to communicate my expectations for learning by providing my students with clear and articulate assessments that describe the criteria used to evaluate their work.  Third, I need to use the feedback from assessments to determine how my students are learning and progressing.  Doing this means I must be reflective about what is working for my students and what needs to be modified.

            I hope to foster a classroom environment where making mistakes is alright.  I want my students to understand that learning and growth is a cycle of trying and trying again and again and again.  Therefore I view assessment as a good thing and it is a positive tool for growth. I know that sometimes students view assessment negatively which might affect their future motivation for learning.  As a teacher, I do not have to include every assessment in my final report.  This allows students the opportunity to practice without the fear of being penalized for mistakes.  Standards-based grading is an effective way to communicate achievement in a consistent way. 

Beach, Appleman, Hynds, and Wilhelm’s “Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?” (Handout) 

https://pathubert.wikispaces.com/file/view/Secondary+Standards+Based+Grading+and+Reporting+Handbook.pdf