First Impressions of Fecho

So, I haven't finished reading yet, but I thought I would post about how eerily familar this book seems to me. At times, I feel like I am reading my own thoughts and my own experiences in the classroom. Like Fecho, I stumbled across working in a school simply because I needed a job. Yet, since then I have been consumed by the challenge and struggle to be a "good" teacher and help students find purpose in education and learning. Even with small successes in my own classroom, I, too, once felt "powerless to effect much change beyond the walls of [my] individual classroom" and "wondering if it would be better to cut my losses and move on to some other line of work" (17). Nevertheless, I find that Fecho gives me hope and agency. He reminds me of the value of the classroom.

I appreciate Fecho's honesty, admitting that he doesn't have the answers, and so far I have enjoyed following his narrative and attempt to find meaning in the process of teaching. I have been marking several points where he describes his classroom discussions of race and power since that is what I think I want to focus my teacher research project on. But, what I'm also curious about is his independent and collective inquiry practices. It makes me wonder why most schools do not encourage their teachers to take this approach and provide the structure and support necessary to do so. This would seem so much more beneficial to me instead of the handing down of information that occurs during typical professional development. I know when talking about teacher education, we stress the importance of reflective practices. Yet, sometimes I feel that our school system is headed in the direction of creating anti-intellectual teachers. How do we change this course? How do we encourage and support both preservice and inservice teachers to find agency through inquiry?

Reinventing English

Reinventing English was actually given to me a couple of years ago by a colleague. I remember devouring it. I wanted to bring the topics of place, identity, culture, and sexism into my classroom, and this book gave me creative ways to do that. While I never followed any of the suggested units, I did use strategies, such as Four Corners, as well as multi-genre writing assignments, the 2-voice poem, etc. As a beginning teacher at the time, I was bored of the traditional curriculum that wasn't really making my kids think, and this book helped push me to view the possibilities of an English classroom. However, like Amy, Gaughan's labeling of his students bothered me. Instead of taking the position of power in enabling his students to "see the light", I think it would have been interesting if he had also participated in and documented his own journey towards thinking critically about these topics. Nevertheless, I think the premise of the book is one that needs to be discussed by English teachers.

I think the Noddings quote he uses on page 8 proves true, "The traditional organization of schooling is intellectually and morally inadequate for contemporary society. We live in an age troubled by social problems that force us to reconsider what we do in schools." I wonder: why don't some teachers want to have these conversations in their classrooms? Is it too complicated or controversial? Do we assume students can't handle it? Have we lost our sense of agency? Is it just easier to read what is provided in the textbook and do what we've been doing for years? I don't know the answer, but I can remember when I first entered into these conversations with my students, I was worried about my views and opinions escaping me when I was supposed to be the "neutral" one. I was worried about being seen as a teacher with an agenda. However, the more I participated in these conversations with colleagues and in graduate classes, the more comfortable I felt in bringing these topics into the classroom. Through these discussions, I began to see more of my students engaged and challenged. I remember the satisfaction I felt when a student remarked, "This is making my head hurt!"

Yet, even now, I still worry that the resources and topics I choose for my class will lead my students toward a certain belief or opinion, but I think my goal is to get them to think about why they think the way they do and what influences their beliefs - not to think the way I do. I think maybe the important piece that is missing is providing multiple narratives with a variety of perspectives and teaching students how to think critically about ALL texts, representations, etc.

More on teacher research...

So, in thinking more about my ideas for teacher research and after our discussion in class, I've realized, yet again, that these questions are too great and too broad for one project. I believe the next step is to ground myself in thinking about what data I can collect. As the authors of What Works? suggest, I will also have to define certain words in my research question, such as "discussion", "open-minded", etc., since inevitably we all may think of these differently. I can't say I've narrowed it down yet, but your comments and resources have been helpful in figuring out what exactly I'm trying to accomplish.

To complicate matters, I also am taking an amazing class on advanced multicultural curriculum, which has heightened my interest in bringing conversations about power, race, and positionality to the classroom. I've had these conversations with students previously in spurts depending on what we're reading, but I would really like to explore this deeply in relation to identity. If I go back to the classroom next year, I think it would be interesting to have students write about who they think they are in the beginning of the year, which I ususally do, but extend that from a one-project kind of deal to them tracking the shifts in their identities throughout the year, seeing if their views change or if they feel like they have more agency based on our discussions and critical thinking of race, power structures, and positionality. Again, this is just kind of a seed in my brain right now.

I know, why can't I just make things simple? Don't worry. Hopefully, I'll figure out how to fit one of these ideas into a teacher research project.....eventually. Any thoughts are always greatly appreciated...

Teacher Research

While reading What Works?, I began to figure out my own path towards conducting a teacher research project. Furthermore, since I am exploring the idea of teacher agency in another class, I appreciated Strater and Sunstein's positioning of systematic inquiry as "both a form and a method for teacher resistance and for teacher agency" (xvii). I actually tried working on teacher research a couple of years ago; but, in the end, I found my inquiry to be too broad. Nevertheless, I did gain student data that enlightened my teaching practices during the process. From that experience, I've realized that this time around I should be more focused, practical, and consistent if I am going to follow through and achieve some useful results. Consequently, I would like to use this post to share my ideas and get your feedback (and hopefully encouragement) on this endeavor.

First, I'm interested in the idea of discussion in the classroom and how to resist the traditional notion of many teachers that quiet students = good students. Often, discussion in class can turn into more of an interview format, where teacher asks a question and a student responds; teacher asks another question, and another student responds. Thus, I would like to explore the quesion:

How do you create authentic, ongoing, active discussion in a classroom that is relevant to students' lives and goals, promotes a high-level of critical thinking, and provides opportunities for all voices to be heard?

Is this too lofty? I thought some subquestions would include:

How does mobility, attendance, race, etc. come into play in creating this type of environment?
What are the roles of teacher and student in a discussion?
How is the inherent power relationship of teacher and student mediated through the use of discussion in the classroom?
How do you get students to listen to each other's conflicting thoughts/opinions?
Does this create more open-minded individuals as a result?
What effect do discussions have on students' sense of agency?

If y'all could post comments/questions that would help guide me, I would really appreciate it. I know that I often think in broad terms, so I need help getting focused, and I don't know if we'll have time in class to work through this. I have a lot of ideas (that I won't elaborate on right now), but if you know of any books, articles, etc. that would help me, please let me know. Thanks in advance for your help!

Self-Fashioning and Shape-Shifting

I found this chapter really interesting. The differences between working-class and upper-middle-class identities of teenagers are enlghtening, and the portions of transcripts Gee includes from his study support his conclusions. It made me wonder if one of the reasons why working-class teens focus more on interactions through narrations, rather than their futures, has to do with the levels of concerns. Many of the students I taught were in survival-mode, so the possibility of college was a concept of luxury rather than necessity. Gee describes working-class teens as "reacting intelligently to an 'on the ground' reality" rather than the hope for future success and achievement that the upper-middle-class kids express in their interviews (182). While I realize the roots of these differences are increasingly complex in terms of culture, class, racism, etc., I do feel our current school system perpetuates and socially reproduces ideas of which people are capable of what thinking, jobs, etc. This is obvious in Gee's description of the differences in schooling at the bottom of page 182. It is this deficit thinking personified in our schools that disturbs me. While Gee, on page 183, credits "families and the society at large" for these inequities, while later offering a simple solution of resourcing students in urban schools with modern technologies, I think we have to do much more to help working-class teens shift their thinking toward the possiblities that could await them in the future. Furthermore, we need to shift our own thinking of simply providing these teens with the opportunity for a job in the future to a liberating education of highly critical thinking.

bell hooks speaks of these differences as well in her own experiences as a teacher at both Yale with upper-middle-class students and a Harlem school with working class students. She describes the difference being that upper-middle-class students possess a sense of agency and entitlement while working class students seem to be missing this agency. You can view her 6-minute video about this here:



So, beyond providing working-class students with modern technologies, how can we encourage them to experience and embody their own agency and entitlement to a successful future?

Multimediating and more...

I'm going to discuss a few chapters here that peaked my interest, and see where that takes me. So, I hope everyone can follow along. First, in chapter 2, I came away with wanting to use more media in my own classroom. NCTE this year is focused around multiple literacies, so I'm looking forward to learning more about how to bring these literacies into the classroom. In past workshops, I've learned about implementing blogging and electronic portfolios, yet whenever I get home, it seems that technology is just never consistently available for us to use at school. I try to incorporate my new knowledge, but I always appear to fall short in the grand scheme of things. Furthermore, the majority of my students do not have computers at home, and thus, are not as technologically literate as one might think. However, O'Brian reminds me on pg. 42 that technoliteracy does not have to be simply "tied to particular tools like computers", but is a much broader concept that deeply connects, "literacy, learning, and technology together in critical, cultural ways." While I like this thinking, still most of the projects he describes do use hardware and software tools involving a computer.

How can we improve accessbility to technology for ALL students? It seems that if we don't, we are placing these students at even more of a disadvantage later in life. I always say I'm going to write a grant, but never seem to find the time. Does it solely rest on the shoulders of teachers? I do realize, though, that even with greater accessibility, I have a lot more to learn. I think I tend to fall back on print literacy probably because that is what I'm most familiar with, but integrating multiple literacies could be another way to create reciprocity in the classroom. Plus, I have noticed that when I do think of media as a literacy for students to explore, they are much more engaged in reading and writing practices.

Doh! I ran out of time, but I will post more later. I especially would like to discuss Chapters 6 and 8....

Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males

Sorry, guys, I thought I posted this, but I think I wanted to add something, so I waited and saved it. Ironically, I don't remember what it is I wanted to add. Oh well, here it is anyway:

While I sometimes wonder about the cultural symbol of black males that Tatum describes in this book, I am so grateful that attention is finally being given to a group that has so often historically been ignored in our schools. Likewise, I am appreciative of Tatum for bringing the misunderstandings teachers have of black adolescent males to the forefront of everyone's minds. Like others, I saw how this could also relate to many students in our urban schools. I have often heard teachers say certain students don't want to learn, and like Tatum, I find that students, once they assume that the teacher does not care whether they learn, then they are less likely to make an effort. Likewise, there are several studies about students' self perception which confirm this idea that once students view themselves as "non-achievers" or "nonexistant", it is a difficult path back to confidence. Thus, students "wear the mask" that Tatum describes on p. 34. In order to remove this mask, I think we, as teachers, need to celebrate the successes of students more often and show them that their strengths and life experiences are valued and can be used to improve their reading and writing skills.

Finally, I was a bit confused by the reading strategies Tatum discusses in the second half of the book. In particular, the "spelling scaffold for dictation" figure on page 99 was a bit disturbing. I don't think I would ever use this in my class. But, I do agree that teachers, in any case, need to begin to choose texts that their students can relate to if they want to give reading purpose. These texts aren't often found in schools, so as a teacher I began to seek them out on my own. Last summer, I read Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun by Geoffrey Canada, and immediately had a feeling my students would find purpose in it. We ordered a bunch of copies at the beginning of the year, and later, I have never seen so many of my students want to read and discuss the ideas in the text. This allowed me a sneek peek into what can be possible, and the reading of Tatum's book reminded me of its importance.