Reading Reflection

Tomlinson (2001) presents a lot of information on how to justify different approaches to differentiate instruction.  I will admit that was skeptical of these chapters at first—after all, it looked like a lot more work for me, and the results looked messy, unorganized, and hard to assess.  But the idea about streamlining presentations was the first hook for me:  I always find myself in a corner with time with thirty students who have projects to present.  Breaking them up into groups—be it by interest or another way—seems like a great solution.  Each student is responsible for having five other students fill out an evaluation for their presentation, and then the grading is halfway done, too.  By the end of the reading, I was starting to see how differentiation could actually make my job easier.  My lingering concern, though, is that most of the supporting details for implementation come from elementary grades.  I do not know how my students would react to the “cubing” activity, for example, and it seems that students would recognize what the colors mean after a while.Alsup and Bush (2003) remind teachers of the importance of differentiation for students whose first language is not English.  Alsup and Bush point out that mastery of conversational English does not translate to success in academic English.  Even for students who grew up speaking and writing English, proper academic use remains elusive at times.  Addressing the concerns that Alsup and Bush raise by integrating the strategies that Tomlinson describes can be one way that teachers meet the many demands placed on them.

The Leu et al. text (date unspecified; available at http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~djleu/fourth.html) represents in my mind the positive potential for multimedia text mentioned in the other readings.  I did not come to this conclusion immediately, however; it took me a minute to realize that I was not just looking at a bunch of advertisements.  My own web literacy skills are strictly utilitarian, and I usually use the internet just to find the answers to questions.  At that point, I am just trying to narrow my options and focus on a specific piece of information.  When I ask my students to use the internet, I am usually asking to spread feelers and find new information, not just look for one specific thing.  Allowing students to use the internet as a resource on a research paper recently made for some interesting and frustrating times, including the problems with plagiarism mentioned by Swenson et al. (2006).  Even more challenging maybe was explaining to students that “Google is not a source.”  I had to say it over and over.  I think students, even technologically proficient ones, lack an understanding of how their new literacies overlap and inform traditional literacy.  I think that reading in a book has less to do with reading online texts, for my students than for me.  I think they make a bigger distinction between kinds of texts and kinds of reading.

Reading Martha’s reflections (Appleman, 2000) makes me think about how prepared, or unprepared, I am to embark on the journey also known as teaching.  I know some of us in the program have been teaching for a few years or more, but for those of us who have not, I think these transformations are fascinating and daunting.  I have heard from my mentor and other experienced teachers that the first three years or so can be the most challenging because of the sheer newness of everything:  the curriculum, the relationships, the administration, etc.  My mentor said that when she looks back at her first five years of teaching, she realizes she was not actually teaching anything.  I hear / see these reflections, and it makes me nervous to enter the profession.  I mean, what is the point of doing something if you can pretty much know from the outset that you will not be doing it right or in a way that you can be proud of?  I guess it is part of having to have patience and a sense of humor when it comes to what we are being asked to do, which is literally the impossible:  making the horse drink.  But, to continue the somewhat mixed metaphor, there is the idea that we cannot pour information into students’ heads, and that it is more important for them to know how to drink in the long run.  I guess I am feeling ambivalent because, as nice as it is to hear about one success story, I still do not know if I feel any more prepared to create my own success.  I have been feeling very anxious lately, and not my usual utopian self.  Maybe the deconstruction literary theory has made me a feel little existential today.

Although I feel that Gibson’s Teaching Shakespeare (1998) really falls apart in the final chapters, I did find several of the ideas in “Active Methods” helpful, especially the pros and cons of using film, the film terminology, and the production schedule recommendations.  I am now embarking on a film unit of my own, and I have felt like I am in over my head.  After all, I am an English major, and I do not have a great personal affinity for film.  All of my students got really excited when they heard that we were going to be making a movie.  Now I am faced with the reality of making it happen for them, and I really do not want to let anyone down.  Gibson’s suggestions made me feel pretty good:  I have scheduled a few guests to come in and help my students with various aspects of production, and students will study film in much the same way as Gibson recommends analyzing Shakespeare productions and films (203-205; 209-211).  My mentor teacher told me that the purpose of the unit was the get students to see film as text.  I think that by getting the students to go through the ordeal of producing a movie will allow me to make a useful analogy at the end:  the work they did to represent their ideas on a screen is the same work as a writer goes through to get his or her ideas on a page.  On a completely different note, Gibson’s chapter on Shakespeare for younger learners made me return to a thought I had recently about the irony of education, especially how the expectations for elementary students and high school students are kind of reversed.  For example, many of the activities Gibson recommends for younger children involve the teacher as “leader” or conductor, orchestrating student movements, reading aloud, and directly explicating portions of the play.  For high school students, the suggestions focus more on student-constructed performance and allow for greater independence.  The irony, to me, is that many high-school students lack the self-regulation and discipline to take responsibility for their own productions, partly because teachers did not allow them to develop those skills in elementary school, because the teacher was too busy leading everything.  I am no child psychologist, but it seems to me that elementary school students have the capacity to take a few loose suggestions and construct their own activity from them (kids do it all the time on the playground . . . oops.  I forgot they were not allowed to go out there anymore).  Conversely, high school students, particularly those bound for college, need the practice of sitting down for more than ten minutes, listening to a close textual analysis, and taking notes.   While I agree that having students engaged in the active construction of meaning is part of our charge as educators, I must wonder sometimes about our priorities and the realities. 

I would like to address one of the narratives in Chapter One of Alsup and Bush (2003), specifically the discussion of Literature Circles (pgs. 22-28).  I have heard and read many different definitions of lit circles:  small groups (between four and ten members per), multiple selections (ranging from two works to half a dozen), roles (various), meetings (also varied), and processes and products (reading logs, “minutes” of meetings, cumulative performance or summary).  I do not feel thwarted or stymied by all of the options and possibilities, and I am not looking for the one “right” way; I am a fan of the lit circle in just about any and all of its permutations, as long as it accomplishes the intended goal.  I am still learning how to structure reading circles for my students and for myself; my last experience was harried and not very fruitful.  Part of my problem is that my school has a tacit policy against lit circles.  I have not been able to discover the source of this antipathy, but I get the feeling that it is largely based on personal preferences:  half of the staff is relatively new and young, excited about lit circles; and the other half advocates a more reader response, student-centered learning style.  I do not quite understand how everyone divides these ideas so neatly.  Thinking, too, of the discussion about reader response and close critical reading that Alsup and Bush include (2008, pgs. 9-10), I definitely tend to see these educational matters in shades of grey, partly because I am still making up my mind about how I feel.  What I am wondering is if anyone has any good ideas on how to address the situation:  should I stick to my pedagogical beliefs, close the door, and do my lit circles?  Should I try to address the situation overtly by talking to other staff members about the virtues of lit circles?  I am not yet willing to consider the ultimate option:  succumbing to the pressure and relinquishing my dreams of the effective lit circle.Just to close on a high note, I think Rozema and Webb (under review at Heinemann) in their discussion of technology provide useful solutions for one of the problems mentioned about lit circles, namely high absenteeism.  A class blog would allow students to correspond with their group members and other classmates to keep up with part of their assignments even when they are not in class.  A class blog, if well-advertised, frequently updated, and reflective of the class culture, could act as a virtual water cooler to keep students abreast of goings-on, assignments, and discussions, among other possibilities.

Alsup and Bush (2003) present a scenario (pgs. 144-45) that, like the teacher respondent, reminds me of myself somewhat:  confident in the classroom, young, and, at least ostensibly and relatively speaking, “cool.”  I also have many of the same off-task, defiant, and disrespectful students in my classroom as a result of my laissez-faire policies.  I am not much of an assertive disciplinarian:  I like to push boundaries and try unorthodox things, and I feel like a hypocrite holding my students to strict behavior requirements.  I like talking—productive talk—in the classroom, spontaneous discussion, students bringing in their lives and asking their own, real questions.  My warm-up (which has taken up to twenty minutes of my fifty minute day) is a perfect example:  I do “semantic analysis” or etymology.  I give them a word with a sentence for them to get the definition, but then we go through and break the word into a root word, prefixes, and / or suffixes, and then I have students volunteer words with each of the parts before we recap the definition.  Although I do not have ELL students, the etymology is a good place to draw in students’ knowledge of other languages, and I enjoy that about it, too.   Students often “get it” or act like they do, and volunteer good words that tie directly back to the definition.  But now I think the students have learned how “into” etymology I am, and that they purposely goad me.  I cannot tell for sure.  My wife and I were talking the other day, and she described a situation in which her students tried to distract her by talking about the weather or something else unrelated to the lesson, and she had to consciously resist the bait.  I think that if I learn to resist the bait, and stick to the lesson, two things may happen:  Number one, I keep class structure, the students on track and in check; number two, I miss a chance to draw them in.  There are students who have told me that the warm-up activity is fun and helpful, and that is a great feeling.  But at the same time, it can be content and not skill based, it does not benefit every student, and now I am afraid that it is working against my discipline goals.  Chapters three and four of Ramsey’s How to say the right thing every time (2002) made me feel inadequate for not being a saint; I think the suggestions provided are more of a “verbal minefield” than actually talking to teenagers (pg. 24).  I feel like I am doing many of the things that Ramsey recommends, but that they are feeding into the discipline problems I read about in Alsup and Bush.  Am I crazy?

I have not taught Shakespeare to any secondary school students yet, so reading Gibson’s Teaching Shakespeare (1998) is a bit abstract, and more than a little daunting.  Last semester, my mentor teacher taught Othello, and included many strategies and activities similar to those mentioned by Gibson, especially acting out the play.  Our class put on its own performance of Othello as part of an end of term assessment.  Students memorized their parts, created their own props and costumes, and created their own scripts.  When I thought it was going to be my responsibility to guide students through this process, I immediately balked.  My mentor teacher acted like it was no big deal and a lot of fun, but I could not imagine taking on such a task.  In part, it is because I feel that what happens in the classroom is my responsibility, instead of my students’.  I feel pressured to always come up with “things to do” instead of focusing on what the students need.  Gibson’s text assures me, in some way, that there are many “things to do,” and that they can benefit students at the same time.  Gibson’s presentation of his ideas—constructed around topics and themes—leaves me wanting some more utilitarian reference.  I can see the limitations of presenting a play-based reference text:  it would not be as easy to read as the Gibson text.  But I would still like to know if anyone could share a few references with me that have information—and specific, detailed lesson plans—organized in a different way?

Applebee describes four principles for effective curricular conversations:  quality, quantity, relatedness, and manner (Toward Thoughtful Curriculum:  Fostering Discipline-Based Conversation in the English Literature Arts Classroom, 1997).  The discussions that follow each principle highlight some pressing concerns for curriculum planning in light of the changes in English instruction over the past few decades.  Applebee references Langer’s theory of envisionments as a means to foster conversations among teacher, students, and texts.  Applebee advocates what he calls a constructivist pedagogy that seeks to construct a process of cumulative conversation by means of scaffolding and invitation into a literary “club” of peers.

This is all well and good:  curriculum should be accurate and relevant to student experience; there shouldn’t be neither so much material that conversation is stifled, nor too little to generate meaningful conversation; materials should be at least coherent and cohesive, if not necessarily thematic; and certainly unified instruction of skills benefits students more than content knowledge of a subject.  But Applebee stops here:  he offers no solutions for how to bridge the gap between using “quality” materials that may not be relevant versus using mediocre materials that generate no meaningful conversation;  no advice for how to negotiate federal, state, and county standards and curriculum development; no structure, guidelines, or even mile-markers for these cumulative conversations; no assessments for the “natural sequence of thought and language.”

But I’m not just going to kick Applebee around, because I’m sure he could do all that if he wanted to.  Besides, these principles of curriculum have given me some great ideas.  The most relevant here are Appleman’s literary lenses (2000):  the lenses provide the unified, over-arching context to the curricular conversations that Applebee envisions.  Students get background on each of the major theories, or do their own research to present to the class.  Each text can get a different “treatment,” or multiple interpretations.  The ethic of inquiry can promote conversations that in turn spawn opportunities for writing to peers, which can then be polished for other purposes (like each school gets a monthly magazine with articles about the readings and current events from that perspective).  Students eventually write an analysis or explication of their own, drawing on others’ research and their own ideas.  They could create their own works with themes based on particular schools.  Students could develop their own modes of interpretation, present them to the class, and see who can get the most adherents, and then interpret a piece.  I just love it when the ideas get rolling!

The thing I couldn’t help thinking while reading Applebee was that he was still thinking in terms of the binary that Appleman describes:  New Criticism and Reader Response.  Maybe that just has to do with the order I read them.  I also had to peek ahead and look at the activities that Appleman includes in the Appendix to Critical Encounters in High School English (2000).

I found the Writing Assessments both amusing and terrifying:  When I was in the third grade, I was learning how to glue macaroni to construction paper; as students progress through the test levels, they are tested on fewer kinds of writing.  That makes it easier for teachers in high schools to “teach to the test,” and I know it goes on in my school.  A teacher told me last week that every Friday she was giving practice EOCT’s because she needed the day off.  I didn’t bother asking her what kinds of mini-lessons she was planning during the week.  I know in other schools that “instruction” for the graduation test starts early in the year, too.  I think about Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire (Esquith, 2007) and wonder why more teachers don’t trust the ability of quality content and instruction to cultivate the skills required for the test.

I think the Alsup and Bush reading provided a nice middle-ground among the readings.  The Writing Assessment and the IRA sites contrasted nicely.  I wonder what the IRA folks would say about the fact that the Writing Assessment is written in that formal, pseudo-legal prose that bureaucrats wield so well.  My wife and I were talking about the discrepancy between schools, testing,  and funding:  giving more money to schools that do well on tests, and taking money away from schools that perform poorly—and punishing the teachers to boot—makes no sense to me.  I don’t think it’s ethical or practical in the long run, but I would love to hear another take on the subject.

The Johnson and Fox reading on the two eighth grade females trying to relate to female characters in novels made me wonder if attitudes change as females get older, or if they find the characters they are looking for and where.  I have made a conscious effort to try to use inclusive language (“you all” or “everyone” instead of “you guys”) in my classroom, but I hadn’t considered issues within texts.  Of course I realize that most literature is written by men, and it can be perceived as sexist or narrow minded for that reason.  But is there a way to help students see that literature is not the total picture, even in a literature classroom?  How can I help students critically analyze literature for its good points as well as its limitations?  I can hardly convince students that literature is worth enjoying, much less worth studying closely for how it reflects, or misrepresents, the culture in which it was written and our own time.

The overviews of critical schools of thought in the Gibson text provide some clue to helping students focus on certain aspects of literature.  I felt torn by Gibson’s questions about the respective values of traditonal literature analysis and the different schools of criticism (Teaching Shakespeare, 1998, pgs. 27-29).   I am sure that I am not the only one who finds himself in the middle of these two schools.  I think that teachers can best serve students by presenting some of these critical theories as they are appropriate to a particular work, but never by suggesting that there is only one right way to read, critique, or analyze.  Teachers should make the skills available to students, along with practice, and let students decide what makes the most sense for them.