What Am I Supposed to Teach?

Brauer and Clark's work, "The Trouble Is English: Reframing English Studies in Secondary Schools," presents an interesting claim at the beginning of the article: English Education has an identity crisis.  B and C point out that English Education in our current system is so broad that there is a lack of definitive quality.  "

Given this variety of purposes, what subject or curricular content do English teachers teach? Skills and content driven by state tests? Character development? Literary theory and criticism? Self-knowledge? Class-based literacies providing upward mobility? Charged with educating students in terms of academic literacy, moral development, cultural tolerance, media savvy, literature appreciation, standards achievement, and civic responsibility, most English teachers (ourselves included) frequently end up feeling like the so-called jacks-of-all-trades—and masters of none" (296).


After reading this passage, I totally identified with the feeling that I am teaching with many of these objectives in mind.  Does this "thing" called English Education feel like a grab bag of sorts to anyone else?  In my department, there is debate over what books to teach, what to do with each book, how to be creative and yet get our kids read for the standardized tests.  In the end, I am at a loss to REALLY know what my kids should be getting and what it looks like when they get there.


B and C are encouraging teachers to understand the frames of influence that shape their methods and objectives in the classroom.  I think the most interesting one was that we teach texts as windows and position students as tourists/witnesses.  I've been inclined to read vicariously and I encourage my students to do so as well.  I do have to take into account a major issue--the way in which I teach is never void of bias.  When I teach a text, I am superimposing information that may or may not be present based on my background/experiences.  Being aware of that bias can also help me to teach more effectively--partly because I can neutralize the bias, but also because I can help students realize that we are all biased in some fashion.


What will English Education look like in the future?  That's up for grabs.

American Literature is Male Literature and Black Matters

Fettery's article made me think of the literature that I have on my shelves in my study.  How many of the texts contain female perspective?  What about the movies as moving texts that I watch?

We live in a patriarchal system that has affected every facet of American life.  The key phrase that struck me in her work was: To be American means to be male.  A woman's only option for identifying herself with an American ideal is to associate male symbols and schemas.

I just wanted to post a few books I have and the male perspective they present:

1) Hatchet--Brian, a boy, learns how to live in the wild after his plane crashes.

2) Lord of the Flies

3) Animal Farm

4) The Inheritance Collection

I haven't done an exhaustive count of all my books, but in looking at these key texts, it's apparent that a male perspective is definitely dominant.


Toni Morrison, a well known poet and essayist wrote this piece with a similar motif--the repression of a people group in literature.

Morrison points out that Black identify in literature and life is being overshadowed by whiteness.  She reveals points of political historical moments and movements as being rooted in blackness.  I was intrigued with this argument and found it fascinating.  I've always been an avid reader of "black literature," but I never really made the connection that Morrison made in relation to how blackness is infused in all writings because it provides the lens that we view/interpret other events.

The American Civil War--literature devoted to this topic must be interpreted through the lens of black slaves.

The Civil Rights Movement--which lead to better public schools for all--must be interpreted through the black identity as well.

Overall, Morrison makes the claim that literary criticism is not making room for the black lens of literary scholarship to be fully recognized and embraced.

Snow, Snow, Snow, and Snow

These four stories contain the imagery of "snow" and do so in creatively different fashions.

The first two selections by Butler and Alvarez provide similar metaphors for snow. 

I noticed in Butler's piece that to the Vietnamese restaurant worker and the Jewish lawyer, snow was a symbol of death.  The Vietnamese woman had seen and thought of snow as covering and killing the wonderful items beneath it.  She also thought of herself as dead because of the snow covering the shelter where she was staying in St. Louis.  Similarly, the Jewish lawyer associated snow with the death of his father.  Every time it snowed, he remembered the moment when his father sent him away from the ever-nearing Nazi regime that planned on killing all Jews.  He threw himself onto the frigid snow in protest to his father, and this desperate act of defiance was the symbol that represented his father's death--that he intuitively knew well before news was delivered.

In Alvarez's piece, Yolanda, a young immigrant attending a Catholic school during the Cold War, experiences snow for the first time but interprets snow as nuclear missiles.  She is a taught to be afraid of objects falling out the sky and to conduct fall-out drills in preparation for "the end."  I thought this piece was interesting because of key terms/ideas: snow and Cold War.  Snow is a symbol in Yolanda's mind for a disturbing event on the horizon.  It is my inferential judgment that Yolanda, if she was a real person, would associate snow with her first impression of it as being a sign of the end of her life.

Overall, the two stories both connect the "snow" as being related to fear, death, and loss.


Baxter's piece contains snow--based on the setting.  However, I noticed the term "snowed" as a synonym for being impressed.  "She will be snowed!" (47).  I also noticed that the brothers saw Stephanie get snowed (50) as they when on the snowy, icy lake to view the car that broke through the ice.

Beattie--this piece was difficult to follow.  I interpreted snow in the last paragraph of the piece as a metaphor for the life span of a person.  Snow was used to conceptualize the large mass of life that is unnoticed and that the small, meaningful parts are covered and lost by the enormity, like bird seed being thrown outside while it's snowing heavily.


 In closing--all four stories relate snow as being a primarily negative object.  Loss, death, somber, and ubiquitously engulfing everything important.   

It was interesting and enjoyable to read all four selections and seeing the connections they share.

Travis Dalsis--Testing and Engagement with Literature Response

A key idea that I was intrigued by is this idea of "text repoduction" within the framework of whole-class discussions.

Initially, when I think of discussions in a classroom, I DO think of text reproduction as a way to "test" whether or not my students comprehend and read what they were supposed to read.  As the study shows, this is not student engagement with texts.

What about making connections, finding passionate positions to stand on and argue about, or inserting your own dilemmas and working them out?

I just wanted to share this important idea and how we sometimes think that students are really "learning" when all they are doing is comprehending.  Comprehension is an important part of learning to become a critical reader, but with standardized testing, it limits the ability to extend beyond those boundaries because the standardize testing is a calculated a,b,c,d opportunity that only involves knowing an answer.  It doesn't ask students to engage in the themes and determine what about them connect or challenge them as humans.

Travis Dalsis--Transitions of High School to College Readings

Claim: Most college students are not preparing by reading articles, chapters, and books for class. 

Students who were invested into reading practices were so for other purposes than college classes.

For the study:

1) Questionnaire
2) Reading journal
3) Interpreting Journals

What this article is mainly trying to expose is the lack of depth students are experiencing in their readership as college students.  It "urges faculty members and program administrators at [their] institution to think differently about reading in their courses.


What were the conclusions this article draws?

1) College students are reading, but not studiously as it relates to their courses.  They are using reading practices to pursue areas of deeper interest than those presented in the classroom.  Reading for the classroom was "uninspiring, painfully required, and dull."

2) Few students made text to self/world connections.  They didn't take time to think about the text as a social document speaking to them about their own lives and the innate implications it provides.

3) Texts that students interact with most are technology based.  "The majority of their time reading for pleasure is spent reading and writing emails, instant messaging, or creating and perusing Facebook and MySpace profiles."

Suggestions for faculty:

1) Explicity teach reading practices that engage reading with the kinds of texts college students are being required to read.  This is connected to the lack of support that the Common Core Standards are moving away from.  The METACOGNITIVE aspect of reading needs to be explicit in all levels.

2) Integrate technology to the reading experience for classes as well as technology that allows discussions to take place (Blackboard).


My personal commentary:  I am very intrigued by this article for a couple reasons.  One, it made me think of the connection with my last blog post regarding how we teach at the secondary level.  Also, it helps us to critically think about emergent tools that technology provides.  Literacy today is defined differently than it was 10 years ago.  Today, digital literacies and multi-modal literacies are very fascinating items to consider.

I also am intrigued by a recent TED Talk related to using interactive texts.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/shilo_shiv_suleman_using_tech_to_enable_dreaming.html

Check out the link if interested!

Travis Dalsis--Reflecting on the Common Core Standards

Travis Dalsis

LITR 585

Eastern Michigan University

Dr. Daumer and Dr. Baker

4 March 2012

"The Common Core Standards: How to Interpret is the Key"

As an educator, I highly agree that reform in education is something that should be a "living document."  Like any other field, when progress is not being made, areas can begin to stangnate and be rendered ineffective.

However, the common core standards do not address pedagogical aspects of learning; it responds to the question: "What should my kids be learning?"  With that being said, I believe the more something becomes steamlined, the more vague it must become to be as inclusive as possible.

The old Grade Level Content Expectations addressed a very important element: metacognition--how should we teach students to think about their learning processes?  The new standards do not address this explicitly.  This then may be overlooked.  I know that when I teach my students "how to read critically," I refer back to the metacognitive standards in the GLCE's.

What are the metacognitive standards that are going by the wayside?

R.MT.08.01 self-monitor comprehension when reading or listening to text by automatically applying and discussing the strategies used by mature readers to increase comprehension including: predicting, constructing mental images, visually representing ideas in text, questioning, rereading or listening again if uncertain about meaning, inferring, summarizing, and engaging in interpretive discussions.

As we start to examine the idea of reading, this eighth grade glce addresses a very important part of being a skilled, successful reader--strategies. 

-predicting

-teaching visualizing

-visually representing ideas (perhaps a group exercise or diagram)

-questioning

-rereading

-inferring

-summarizing

-interpreting and discussing interpretations

These are the key words and elements of this glce.  Doing away with this gcle means that these strategies will not be part of the state's benchmark for teaching.

As a teacher, I really like this glce because it helps me to see that having kids read and do the "textual evidencing" is a process that utilizes many of these strategies beforehand.

I think the new common core standards are missing an important element.