Readicide

When I was 16 years old and a sophomore in high school I got in a horrible argument with a teacher. The topic of the argument was valid, but for now lets just say it wasn’t important. That week I had a counseling session with an assistant principle and I was moved to the only English class available. The class was clearly a much lower level course.

            Two things stood out to me about the course I had been moved to. First, We never had reading to do at home. We listened to Huck Finn on tape and rarely asked to write anything of any depth. Secondly, an entire week was devoted to “test taking skills” before the High School Graduation Qualification Exam (HSGQE). This week was devoted to ruling out bad test answers and trying to find clues in the text. I’m foggy on the details because my sixteen-year-old self could care less what these “low level” students were learning. One thing that is clear though, is that the most important thing to this teacher was the upcoming test. He sat at his desk while the book on tape played or he talked about the test. I really remember nothing else about him as a teacher.

            This is important because almost all the students in the class were victims of readicide. This teacher was making reading a chore. He made it so that students were looking for the answer and even if they didn’t have the answer that was okay if they had the skills to make a good guess. The diminutization of the importance of actually sitting down and reading is enormous in schools. Not only are we telling them they don’t have to, but some teachers are teaching them how to NOT READ!

            I end this post with a simple question. Why can an upper level student be handed seven interesting books and asked to chose one to their liking, while a lower level student is spoon-fed something they will inevitably hate since it’s delivery is fit for a 7 year old? Why do we not treat all students as capable readers with personality and opinion? “I only read books I got to choose in high school” is a common saying. Let us keep it that way.

Ed TPA Guidelines

Ed TPA guidelines are almost a joke to many educators and teacher candidates. As students we hear lines like “these are the tools you will need” but I have seen great lesson writers teach lessons that would make an AP student snooze. One teacher was asked if she would write a lesson for the class she was teaching, she replied abruptly that quality teachers do not need to write TPA lessons. Not only was this insulting, but it showed an entire class how little faith even our professors have in Ed TPA.

The only quality response I have gotten about the TPA guidelines is that they attempt to prepare us for the Pearson TPA test, however, this has little or nothing to do with the actual education of my students, which at this point is all I care about. I have had several phenomenal lesson plans that I do not have time to fully develop since I have to spend my time finding research and community connections. The time I spend prepping should be spent purely on ideas for the classroom and classroom involvement. Class involvement and student voice would be the only two sections on ROSS TPA. If those two things are achieved: Your students are involved and everyone knows the purpose of the lesson. Game over. You win.

Differentiated instruction is important, but I have found many of my differentiations in the moment while teaching. Often improvisation is the only way that a solution can be found. I will spend time later incorporating my ideas into lessons, but often they lend themselves to class involvement regardless of how differentiated they are. Ed TPA does nothing but slow down our students at eastern who have a chance to be great.

I Read it, But I Don’t Get It Book Review

            I felt this book should be called I read it, but I don’t care about it. To me, that seems to be the bigger issue. I agree with Tovani that there are some readers who are comprehending and losing meaning, even I do that. The biggest problem I have faced though, is lack of interest. Last week my students wanted to talk about Ebola all class hour and that didn’t tie in really well to The Things They Carried. We read for a while, but we ended up talking about Ebola, it was inevitable. This begs the question: what can I do to make class as interesting as Ebola?

            Initially I didn’t think it was possible, but my master teacher has met Tovani and discussed with me what she has said. We discussed how Tovani wants EVERTHING connected to modern events and society. Sheila, my master teacher, even thought she went a little overboard with how much she wanted to connect text with modern events. We talked for a while and decided we had better give it a try. The next day as we discussed Thoreau with our 11^th graders, the discussion turned to dreams, Russia, George Orwell, and several other things. I discussed right along with them, but near the end I asked simply, “What would Thoreau say?” To my delight, the class erupted with opinions on what Thoreau would say about selfies and war and modern news. The students showed a high level of understanding ank knowledge of the text. For future readings I thing we will continue to let our discussions sway and let the class continue to make connections to any text or event they want.

            My seniors were just assigned a connection project for “The Things They Carried” I expressly told them that it was totally in their control and I had no say in what they choose. I hope we get the same reaction and connection with the seniors than I did with the juniors.

Ageism in Schools

            Ageism is supposedly an epidemic sweeping education in America. Common Core Standards have made education a more goal driven and thusly a more labor intensive profession for the immediate future. Teachers who have not led goal driven lessons are lost in what probably seems like a new profession. This has led to a transition amongst teachers to a younger generation of educators that have been well versed in objective and standard driven classrooms. Brought to light now is the idea that ageism is a major issue in the classroom. Forced retirement has caused lawsuits in education and furthered the stereotype that old educators are being forced out.

True ageism exists when an employer hires a younger less qualified employee based solely on age. This is difficult to prove since hiring is subjective, but regardless of the truth it is imperative that hiring be base on skill and effectiveness.

Education has always been under scrutiny for favoritism and the inability to welcome change. The accusation of ageism in schools is just a continuation of the schools inability to change to a new system. It starts a conversation of social injustice in the mini society that is created within a school. All that is accomplished is a creation of an unfair perspective showing change as a bad thing. This happens despite the fact that America is drastically lacking in educational success and achievement.

Social injustice exists in America, that is unarguable, but education is in the middle of a reset and it is not the time to argue about whether or not an older teacher is being treated unjustly. It is time to focus on the students and student achievement. If education gets lost in this scuffle then any standard for success we might set in the change to standards based education will be lost.

Critical Pedagogy Within The Canon

Critical Pedagogy is the idea that teachers have a responsibility to teach the awareness of culture, society, and hegemony throughout their yearly lessons. This idea is plausible, but far from easy with the strictures of existing curriculums and canonical texts. Duncan-Andrade and Morrell suggest that even within a Canonical curriculum critical pedagogy is possible. They suggest that to correct for a lack of cultural texts, many school simply add a text with a writer of foreign descent or a multicultural main character. This is less helpful than creating a curriculum where students analyze the Canonical texts and find out why they exist as the predominant texts for the culture and the society. Seeking out an explanation of why the characters of another race are treated in a specific way can be far more important that reading a book written by someone other than a white guy.

            Student voice is the single most critical element to every aspect of critical pedagogy. In fact Duncan and Morrell go as far as to say students should act out to change even the most innate conditions in their school. I draw issue with students being encouraged to rise up against the institution of school. Especially since Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is cited so commonly with this line of reasoning. Freire is so clearly anti establishment. If all students were to  react to teachers as oppressors then it is without a doubt that public education would fall. It’s a fun idea to have student engage in city council matters and even push legislation to help their schools, but teaching that the establishment of school and teacher student relationships can be challenged and destroyed as Freire might suggest is an absurd notion. Duncan and Morrell even extrapolate on the idea that students can place these ideas on a single figurehead in the school which can result in hatred. This is not the direction I want to send my students. I will encourage critical thinking, but the idea that students should view schools and school leaders through a hypercritical lens is wrong.