Response to "Standards Based Grading and Reporting Handbook"

This all goes back to standards, which are created for the main purpose of equalizing the educational experiences of all students.  Documents like the “Secondary Standards Based Grading and Reporting Handbook” are designed to help someone else in the education equation: parents.  As a parent of students enrolled in educational atmospheres, it does me good to know that my students are being held up to a level that would make them equal with their peers.  Unfortunately, as a student teacher, I see how standards are not completely followed as intended.  The main problem there is the lack of funds needed to bring school districts up to par.  We can grade and report according to standards all we want, but if we don’t have the tools needed to do as we are being trained, a lot of futility enters into all of it.

I am not saying this document is full of crap, just the situation.  It would be wonderful if every student actually had the opportunities promised to them.  For instance, there are some very notable things said.  “When a student makes progress they feel motivated and more successful because enhancing perceived competence is motivating in and of itself.”  No one, including students, likes doing things when there are no results to build them up.  The idea here is to make sure of two things: that education: that standard are met, and to make sure students know when they succeed at meeting such a lofty level of achievement.

On page 6, I did appreciate the idea of students being graded separately on achievement, and being graded on all other bench marks separately. In other words, if a student is only graded on how well they met the standards that are being taught, so much else might be missed.  In other words, if a student works extra hard (work habits) and doesn’t achieve the level of standards that is expected/hoped for, I do not believe that all of their other efforts should not be noted.  

Response to Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning

Response to Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning

Again, the idea is to empower students to not only take control over their own learning, but also to help other students and assist them with their own learning.  When the issue of journaling came up, I felt like this article was written for me and my student teaching experience.  Every day the students enter class and work on a journal entry, usually based on a word that the teacher displays on the document camera.  The students are only required to write the equivalent of one half of one page, then the teacher and the students spend anywhere from ten minutes to forty minutes discussing the quote.  I never understood what the teacher was doing, or how to grade it, until I read, “make it clear to students that you are using journals…for the purpose of evaluation.”  One might see the informal entry-task experience is nothing but time-filler or busy work.  But, I have seen the kids turn the journal entries into the teacher and be worried about one thing: if the entries were long enough.  I don’t imagine the students know how the teacher may be using the entries as assessment—I have a feeling that they think it is just busy work.  In other words, I don’t think students know that they are being “evaluated against themselves over time based on specific criteria.”  I believe that they are missing the point of the assignment, that the teacher is assessing their ability to critically think and reason, to be willing to consider the points of view of other students.

Another point that hit close to home was the section on teaching students how to be the ones to give peer feedback.  The important idea here though, is that the teacher must “train peers to provide reader-based feedback in peer-conferences.  You can model feedback strategies…”  The important idea is to show students how to learn by modeling and showing them how to do it.  For teachers who believe that the best way for a student to learn is by standing in front of them and lecturing, they are missing at least two bits of essential learning: students are smarter than they are often given credit for, and that they want to be trusted to be the facilitator in their own education.  They are the stewards, they should be the architects.

Response to Gallagher's "Readicide"

I think one of the most important ideas here is that American readers are not poor, or substandard readers, it is more that they are reluctant readers.  When I was in school, I didn’t enjoy it.  I didn’t dislike it, per se, I was just bored.  Often I stayed up hours into the night reading books and writing stories. I was into religious fiction, something that schools never would/could put forth in their classes.

As we have become a society that is geared more towards numbers, there is less concern for the individualized student experiences.  Even when a school might say that they give their students options for their educational experience, their funding still depends on achieving a level of achievement.  Why would funds be made available to schools that do not perform?

That question does not necessarily need answered, for it can not necessarily be solved.  This education thing is supposed to be all about students.  One of my personal reasons for explaining that I want to teach is because I want to affect young person’s minds.

This is not to say that reading isn’t taught, or that what is presented to the students is something that they cannot understand or latch on to.  The problem that has been happening is that students’ appetite for reading is not being fed.  This comes to my mind the image of a cat.  As soon as a can opener is clicked onto a can and the can is opened, the cat’s appetite is sparked.  This is how I have been with reading for my entire life.  There has never been a time when I was not reading something or looking for the next something to read.  The problem is that most of this reading had nothing to do with school or the grades being offered there.

The discussion can be centered around teachers over- or under-teaching reading selections.  How to fix this “readicide?” My idea is to allow students more leeway in reading, allowing them to digest how it best serves their abilities. Of course this means less free time for teachers, and more work, in the long term, for them.  It is hard to believe that my religious fiction could be part of a school atmosphere, for there is the known belief of a separation between “church and state.”  I am just saying that there could have been/be now, more leeway in how my education proceeds.

Response to edTPA

To be honest, the edTPA scares me, and more than a little.  When it was explained in class that all professionals go through a similar all-encompassing assessments of learning, I felt a little better, until I spent time listening to one of the teachers who I am observing as part of my student teaching.  These kinds of tests were unheard of, even a few years ago, especially when they finished their schooling. They were a little shocked as to how much we go through, before we become them.  As the homework and the efforts pile up, I can’t help but feel like I am slowly being crushed by a wave of molasses.

As I read through this, specific emphasis is spent on making sure those who are going through the process of the edTPA make deliberate and careful observations of the process and of students that are involved.  While the temptation for some might be to view this as a massive test that stands in the way of many of us becoming the teachers, it is easy to see that it might be designed as a process that not only makes us better teachers, but helps us to decide what kind of teacher we want to be.

The idea is not to drown us in work, for on page six it warns, “You will want to think carefully about how much content to address in your edTPA learning segment.  This is a significant decision about manageability…but also for the capacity of the students…”  In other words, this pays homage to one of the adages one might hear in the service industry: “quality is better than quantity.”  The isn’t to send the grading board a whole bunch of crap, but a considerate, well-molded bit that will show who I am, and what I can do.

We must not forget the most important participants in this process the students.  Page 12: “Establishing respect and rapport among and with students is critical for developing a mutually supportive and safe learning environment.”  The idea isn’t to spring the experience on them one day, showing up with video cameras and audio equipment, but to ease them into it.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons we don’t full-time student-teach our first quarter, because the students aren’t used to us, and we aren’t used to the whole process.

This is going to take a while.   I just hope that by the end, I am as excited then about being a teacher, as I am now.  I have come a long way, to just walk away.

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

I liked how Tovani wrote in “I Read it, but I don’t get it.”  So often, education advice is delivered in a method that knocks the reader over the head and tires them out.  Very little time was spent on re-reading what she was trying to say, which makes it more accessible to me.

In chapter one, she dispels the myth that fast reading means that the reader comprehends what they read.  Too many times I have seen my kids read for thirty minutes, set the book down and announce that they are “done.”  I asked them what they read about, and they give me a blank look.  I don’t think some readers comprehend what comprehension is.  As is discussed in chapter three, some of them might need more than just holding the book in front of them, interpreting the meaning behind a string of symbols and expecting something to come of it.  Tovani discusses certain strategies like “thinking aloud,” “marking,” “double-entry diaries,” “modeling” and more.  Often text, even when it isn’t so deep to require multiple readings, needs manipulation to achieve the level of understanding that a student needs.

Chapter four gave a particular useful idea; kind of a method for dismantling the hold that confusion has on some of us.  By teaching students to be aware of when confusion comes creeping into their learning, they are able to understand how to work around the barriers that confusion might cause.  In this chapter, she mentions six signals that readers might need to look for.  This skill might be hard for accomplished readers to do so she suggested finding a particularly difficult piece of reading for them to use to be able to discover the signs that confusion might be limiting the levels of comprehension needed to achieve understanding.

One of the things that occurred to me, as I was reading this, is that there is no easy and quick path to fixing any kind of learning strategies.  Like habits that take concerted time to alter, learning habits are the same way—in the beginning, change may feel particularly elusive.  With deliberate and constant work, eventually, change will feel swift and the process may feel less intrusive. 

Problems with Social Justice?

so·cial jus·tice

noun

1.      justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.

The word that catches my curiosity most is, “opportunities.”  Initially, it sounds nice and just to share everything, to have no one person or people better-off than another.  Why should anyone?  After all, we are all part of this world, this place that was here long before any one of us were here.  But, is this viable?  Did anything or person take opportunities away?  To me, it makes sense that all of us, as citizens of Planet Earth had the opportunities, and some of us chose not to.  In other words, not everyone wants to live up to an opportunity or possibility.

Social justice exists when “all people share a common humanity and therefore have a right to equitable treatment, support for their human rights, and a fair allocation of community resources.”  And, “equal opportunity" and similar phrases such as "personal responsibility" have been used to diminish the prospective for realizing social justice by justifying enormous inequalities in modern society.”  In other words, if a responsibility or opportunity is to be met, the only issue is not that it is there or offered to all equally, but that people must use that opportunity.  This is where I ask the question—do people really want equality?  Change is not a passive thing, change won’t knock on one’s door one day and announce its presence—it must be worked for.  I am also saying that if someone tries to ignore change, it will happen. It’s like teeth—the teeth will rot out—some change will come whether one likes it or not. (1)

There is the idea that some inequalities are unjust and simply not fair to those who they are imposed upon (which opens up a whole new batch of discussions) and should be lifted off of them.  If a society lifts burdens off of people, does this not create a whole new version of social equality?  Does it ever end?  If not, is the answer to the endless cycle of social “equality” actually to do nothing?  It just does not feel fair.

(1)   http://gjs.appstate.edu/social-justice-and-human-rights/what-social-justice

Resonse to "Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom"

“Multiculturalism [is] more closely related to pedagogy than to curriculum.”

“Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom” gave an optimistic look at what can be done for young people in an Urban, or any, classroom.  While it may make sense that it would be more work to pair “canonized” text with texts that are more contemporary, I do not think a teacher, at least one with any type of concern for her his/her students would shirk at the extra work.  For me, it seems like having a class full of students engaged in the lesson, and empowered with personal ownership for what is being taught, would be much more enjoyable than one in which I am parked in front of a group of people who stare blankly at me, counting the seconds down to the bell.

As for the line at the beginning of my response, though it takes almost a dozen times of reading it to understand, it makes perfect sense.  In other words, the idea that teaching with a student’s personal experiences and unique culture in mind, used to be part of how a teacher teaches, not actually affecting what is actually being taught to students.  The whole idea of “critical pedagogy” is what it says—the idea that one must be critical of anything  that asks one to teach or do things the same way for every person, every time.  “Our students existed in a world where they would be expected to take and perform well on standardized tests that served as gatekeepers to postsecondary education and, as a consequence, professional membership.”  I distinctly remember being told that one of the worst things one can do for a student is to ask them to do something, but then not giving them an opportunity or ability to succeed.

The whole idea here is to all “students to be able to present themselves powerfully.”  This should always be the idea, and goal for any teacher to work for.  The future of our society depends on this.