Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

I feel like Readicide is almost a continuation of I Read It But I Don't Get It in a lot of ways, and I think both of these texts are something that teachers across the country should be reading in order to gain a better idea of the scope of this issue. I'll say, as a student teacher, I can see how students have progressed to the point of not being interested in reading, or even being hostile towards the idea of reading, and it's something my master teacher and I struggle with on a daily basis. This is because we are stuck in a difficult situation where the district is asking teachers to meet specific goals using provided texts and assignments, but the students aren't retaining very much because of the sheer volume of the information they have to digest, process, and be able to recall. I have no problem with testing; it's a great form of assessment, honestly. However, I feel like it's not a teacher's job to craft all of their lessons around improving test scores.

I also think there is still a responsibility on the teacher's part to teach complex texts to students despite this challenge and, if possible, even engage students to become interested in reading. However, for this to happen, teachers also have to start analyzing the way we approach texts, and begin to understand that frontloading student knowledge prior to reading and promoting intertextual analysis are key to student understanding, and we can't just teach texts within a vacuum and hope that students make the connections themselves.  Rather, we should be looking for ways to use texts as stepping stones to the skills we want students to develop as stated in the state standards. We should be taking each reading text as an opportunity to build on what students already know, establishing links to previous readings and assessments, so students can actively use what they have learned. Simply put, we have to eliminate this idea of passively reading and engage our students in the text, encourage questioning, lead them towards answers, and ultimately make lifelong readers.

EdTPA

After having had a chance to get a good look at the EdTPA format, i must admit that I'm still not too keen on going through it, but I do see its uses. I definitely feel as though it's a little too vague in its questioning in some areas, such as the section on lesson connections. I'm not really sure what qualifies as research that supports my lesson plan, for example. Perhaps this is something that will be cleared up as we go on, but ultimately I feel like this section is far too open to interpretation at first glance that it would be easy for someone like me to do it incorrectly the first time.

I will say, I do like the in-depth questioning regarding student voice and differentiated education. I think that's a valuable tool for teachers with students who are struggling to perform at grade-level or who may have some sort of learning difficulty. The inclusion of learning tasks as a section also will make me as a student teacher think carefully about my choices both in the learning activities I use as well as instructional techniques. Rather than having a vague lesson plan with goals and assignments, the EdTPA is asking what I will be doing to, so that my actions in the classroom are held accountable for.

There are a few things I feel like we might have difficulties addressing as well, such as parents and community. With some of our lessons, we may be teaching a selection that is only a small part of the whole unit, and may not require parent-teacher dialogue or community involvement (allowing for students whose parents we must remain in contact with regarding progress due to an IEP or 504, or due to disciplinary issues). Also, being a fairly new student teacher, I feel like I may not be well-equipped enough in my knowledge of the students in my class to answer questions like "How does the content build on what the students already know and are able to do?", which requires me to have a little more background on the students. I think by working with my master teacher I can sort out that challenge, but it still will prove challenging, I think.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

I've always been someone who reading came naturally to, so in reading Cris Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It, the author's personal experiences as a struggling reader as well as the experiences of her students made me realize how it is important to teach reading as an active skill, and to be aware of the difficulties some children may have with reading a text.

In particular, I'm now more aware of this idea that, as Tovani said it, ""[we] have a decision to make: teach the reading or the reader?", which may come up in our classrooms when our students are struggling with a text (Tovani 39). It's more important for us as teachers to teach students how to read with the purpose of gaining understanding, and maybe even for enjoyment, rather than just to be able to fill in answers on a test. I loved how, when faced with a class struggling with canto 34 of The Divine Comedy, Tovani made the decision to change her test from asking what happened in the text to where they got lost, when they realized that they were lost, and what caused them to become lost. This activity seemed to have a greater impact in helping students approach an intimidating text compared to having them take and fail a test.

I also love the use of "fix-up strategies" that Tovani laid out in chapter 5. By having her students form connections between the text and their previous knowledge, make predictions, talk about what they've read, ask questions, reflect, visualize, use print conventions, retell what they've read, reread, notice patterns, and adjust their reading speed, she is able to isolate and address readers' issues as they come up without having to hold their hand. Earlier, in chapter 4, she has a discussion with a student named Dan, who wants to know why he needs to know what he knows and what he doesn't know, and like Tovani, I came to the realization that my role as a teacher is not to find out what students do and don't know, because like she said, we as educators can't read minds. Rather, we have to provide our students with the tools to address issues they run into when they come to a text or problem that they don't know or understand.

I could go on, but to put it simply, there was a lot of useful tools and strategies for teaching reading in this text. and I feel like it's probably one of the best 'textbooks' about education that I've read. Rather than addressing the process of teaching (particularly literature) with broad, general statements, this text got into the nitty-gritty and nailed out a solid methodology for the teaching of reading. As I go further into my practicum, I think this will become more and more useful to me, so I'm glad we read it for this class.

Social Justice in the Classroom: Understanding the Implications of Interlocking Oppressions - Becky Ropers-Huilman

Despite this article being written by a teacher working with higher education students (many of whom were already educators, administrators, and the like), Beck Ropers-Huilman's "Social Justice in the Classroom: Understanding the Implications of Interlocking Oppressions" hit several of the struggles all teachers at all levels will struggle with in teaching social justice issues. In her article, she uses Martin Frye's definition of oppression as being "caught between or among forces and barriers which are so related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict, or prevent the thing's motion or mobility", and uses this to build the analogy for interlocking oppressions as being similar to a birdcage, in which those who are inside the birdcage are locked in by a "layering of disappointments, hurts, and barriers that impede the attainment of our ambitions" (Ropers-Huilman 91). On the outside of this birdcage are those who are restricted in their knowledge of what the inside of the birdcage is like, and cannot know intimately what life is like within that birdcage.

What this birdcage analogy ultimately means is, educators will always struggle to connect to students because of our fears and prejudices, which will effect our teaching methodology and thereby impact the teacher-student-subject relationship. While social justice is an important facet of the educational process, Ropers Huilman suggests that attempting to teach social justice directly can be disruptive and difficult. In order to understand how best to address social justice, Ropers-Huilman describes the set of five principles of social justice that she uses to develop a method of teaching these issues:

1. Balance the emotional and cognitive components of the learning process; 
2. Acknowledge and support the personal (the individual student's experience) while illuminating the systemic (the inter actions among social groups); 
3. Attend to social relations within the classroom; 
4. Utilize reflection and experience as tools for student-centered learning; 
5. Value awareness, personal growth, and change as outcomes of the learning process.

With these principles outlined, Ropers-Huilman describes how best to teach social justice by integrating a variety of texts providing a multifaceted view of the issue, rather than devoting a class period or multiple class periods specifically to the topic. In this implicit method of teaching social justice, the critical thinking processes encourages students to overcome their binary understanding of oppression of oppressor/oppressed. Instead, it asks students to questions ways in which they might not only by oppressed, but also how they might be the oppressor. Ultimately, this seems like a much more nuanced and effective method of teaching social justice issues to students, as it makes it seem less forced and contrived compared to trying to devote lessons explicitly to the topic.

Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom

Reading the experiences of Duncan-Andrade and Morrell in North High was really difficult for me, because I've seen how a low-income, low-quality school can make students feel hopeless and angry. I can understand why the students had a hard time caring, because there was a lack of encouragement and socioeconomic and cultural connection between the teachers, their lessons, and the students. That's why I'm glad to see that there are instructors like Duncan-Andrade and Morrell work in classes like these. I honestly wish I had seen teachers like this in my middle school, because the effort these two put into connecting with the students instead of manufacturing a generic curriculum designed for white, middle class students.

I was a big fan of how Duncan-Andrade and Morrell made an effort to combine modern pop culture (hip hop music, the film A Time To Kill) and more classic literature (Romantic period poems, Native Son) to create relevance and establish connections for students where previously they may not have seen them. There is a common misconception in American society and in the educational system that there is only one way to educate, a system that Nobel Peace Prize nominee Stanley 'Tookie' Williams referred to as dyseducation: education which is focused on test metrics and meeting percentage goals based off of elite school performance, rather than focusing on providing an education that is relevant to students while still teaching students to read, understand, and produce in the Language of Wider Communication.

What made me feel reaffirmed in the use of critical pedagogy by Duncan-Andrade and Morrell is the change in their students, both in school performance and civic activity. The undertaking of Serious Voices for Urban Youth by their students to create a magazine that included articles, poems, and drawings that addressed issues that mattered to them is an example of how students who had previously been discarded by the educational system can work together to put in effort and create a product that shows a critical understanding of language. Most importantly, the students were able to create an outlet for their voices, ultimately allowing them to speak to future generations of students at North High School. Sadly, North High was left in poor condition even after they had graduated, and the high income school on the other side of town had completed a 5 million dollar stadium while North High was lacking textbooks in a large number of classes, showing the hypocrisy of the educational system in regards to funding and working towards the equal education of all students. However, many of the students in Duncan-Andrade and Morrell's class went on to perform well in college, matching with their high income peers, ultimately giving me hope that there is a possibility for change in the system to occur.

Critical Pedagogy: A Look with the Major Concepts

What I really enjoyed about this chapter was its frankness regarding a variety of pedagogical issues that are important to me, and addressing how critical pedagogy deals with these issues. The biggest issue McLaren addressed is that of hegemony, which is something that the US school system struggles with. Being of a 'subordinate' culture, I feel I am more aware of the issues that teaching to the 'dominant' culture presents. The clearest statement McClaren makes about this is when he says "the dialectical nature of critical theory enables the educational researcher to see the school not simply as an arena of indoctrination or socialization or a site of instruction, but also as a cultural terrain that promotes student empowerment and self-transformation," which, to me, is saying that it has become clear that education should not be seen as a means of producing 'productive members of society' as dictated by the dominant culture, but to develop students who are both productive and critical thinkers (McClaren 62). 

 What I also appreciate about this article is the fact that it addresses the issue of cultural oppression in schooling not through just an ethnic viewpoint, but also a gender and socioeconomic standpoint. The idea that schools can and have educated students in such a way as to abuse democracy by convincing them to vote against their own interests seems like something that needs to be addressed in the educational system as it arises.

Of course, this ties into another issue, that of standards, and how they are addressed in regards to those who are not of the dominant culture which they are most suited for. Students from 'subordinate cultures' tend to perform poorly in the American school system, and it's an issue we as educators will have to address on an individual student scale by remaining flexible and promoting a variety of cultures, creating a cultural terrain, like McClaren stated.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Upon reading this chapter, I found myself in a love/hate relationship with the author's voice. I definitely agree with the issue of nutritive teaching, since it doesn't promote the critical thinking that students should be doing, particularly on the secondary level. However, I dislike the politicized way in which Freire approaches the issue. It seemed to me that he was focused more on the Libertarian ideology that he promotes instead of on the issue of narrative pedagogy. Overall, I definitely agree with the finer points Freire makes, and it gives me a clear idea of why educators should avoid narrative pedagogy, but I feel like his use of hyperbole and heavy bias results in a weak argument.
One of the biggest points Freire makes that I agree with is that teachers should not assume absolute ignorance on the part of the students. This ignores all of the experiences, ideas, and opinions that the students have, resulting in a distinct lack of student voice in the classroom. I think this can set up teachers for failure, as students who are force-fed facts and data lack the ability to perform thoughtful inquiry that is needed to develop cognitive thinking.
However, I feel like Freire assumes that all teachers operate in this way. While this may have been true in the past, the development of inquiry-based teaching methods results in teachers who are prepared to learn as much as they are to teach. I found it frustrating that he groups all educators in the category of "banking teachers", implying that it is the individual teachers who are creating the automatons he refers to. I think that Freire assumes that all of the issues in education rest on the shoulders of educators, and while educators play a big role in development, I think he has this idea that teachers are lazy and are not trying to implement teaching methods that promote deep and critical thinking. I don't think this is true at all, and is more an issue with the way standards were developed previously. With common core state standards, I think the ability of teachers to use teaching methods that require students to come to their own conclusions is far more common than previously seen, and I feel Freire's idea of what education is like is rather outdated and simplistic.

A Response-Based Approach To Reading Literature

It seems to me that this article's primary focus is on the way in which instructors perform literature-based instruction, and the importance of a response-based approach. I feel like this article is a bit vague on this idea in the first few pages, making it a bit dry to start off with. However, the latter half of the article provides an excellent framework for teachers to build their instructional methods off of. Most importantly, Langer emphasizes the importance of a response-based approach to literature as a means of developing students' critical thinking skills and helping them learn how to ask questions as well as answer them.
What's great about the framework of optional teaching experiences that Langer establishes is that it's primarily focused on helping students make connections with the text, gain understanding of it, and to have students consider the implications of a text, without focusing on the objective statements that can be made about it. My favorite example Langer makes regarding these sorts of shallow, superficial forms of literary analysis is the multiple choice question "Huck Finn is a good boy. True or False," which is the sort of thoughtless, bland question that lacks any depth, and would not provoke much discussion.
It's clear to me that Langer's response-based approach to reading literature is a means of encouraging student growth rather than stagnating them with facts for the sake of facts. In our pedagogical methodology we need to be leading students to information by prompting them to ask themselves and their peers questions, not providing them with the answers in the hopes that rote memorization will promote learning. It's clear that by putting education in the hands of the students, with help from an educator, the classroom can be a place where each student develops the ability to interpret literary texts in more than one way, without being confined to one method provided by an educator.

Common Core State Standards App

Here's a fantastic app to view the common core state standards, there's an Android version as well as an iPhone version.

Word Count Tool

For those of you who want it, here's a link to the Word Count Chrome extension

The Common Core State Standards for ELA Instruction in Grades 6-12

The common core state standards, it seems, will result in a lot of changes in how teachers will instruct, but there are a number of concerns presented in the text that still worry me. Primarily, the issue of homogenization in education concerns me as both an educator and as a person of color. Due to the rigidity of standards-based teaching, and the often "teacher-proof" curricula that is developed for teachers, there is little opportunity for instructors to develop their instructional methods to allow for a variety of classroom contexts and cultural diversity. In the example the text provides, a new instructor runs into this issue, in which she wants to teach American literature with a strong multicultural emphasis, using authors such as Sherman Alexie, Rudolfo Anaya, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neal Hurston. However, she ends up teaching a "'dead white guy' curriculum," as she calls it.
This homogenization of instruction also results in a failure to acknowledge cultural diversity in assessment methods, which I am fully aware is a prominent issue, particularly in Title I schools. This notion is supported in the statement the author quoted from Stoniauolo, Hull, and Nelson, which notes that "traditional assessments of reading and writing[. . .] continue to reward those children who share the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the test-makers," which of course, are predominately white, moderate to high income educators. This means students who are low-income, English language learners, non-white, or some combination thereof are heavily biased against in standards-based assessment, and results in low academic performance and harms the self-esteem of these students. As someone who wants to work in a low-income school, this is a really important issue to me, because I want my students to feel like the assessments connect to them on an individual and cultural level.
Ultimately, while I have hope that the common core state standards will improve upon and deal with the issues of homogenization and a failure to acknowledge cultural diversity, I am hesitant. As a future instructor, I plan to teach to all of these standards, but I am hopeful that there will be enough room for me to work in literature and assessment that speaking to all of my students, regardless of socio-economic, cultural, educational, and ethnic background.