Conferencing!

The conferencing I did during my lesson last week was among the most successful I have done to date. I was able to interact with every student during work time, and felt like I took advantage of some great teachable moments. My minilesson focused on the students' literacy lives and reflecting on which area (reading or writing) the students' thought was their stronger area. I encouraged the students to "choose" the area of literacy that needed more focus, but did not insist because I wanted them to retain the choice. The conferencing took place during the students work time, which today was a "choice" day where they could either read or write. I figured I would use this forum to share some of my notes that I took during my conferencing and my later reflections.

Destiny:

Destiny is a new student in class this semester but is adjusting well. She is reading the book "Shiver" which is the first of a series about vampires and werewolves. She enjoyed explaining the plot to me but I wanted to avoid simple plot talk and push through to some higher levels. I asked her to explain what was happening in the section she had just read. Her comprehension was high and she is clearly engaged in the material, so I asked her to make a prediction about the rest of the book. She made several predictions and seemed to recognize this as a fun reading strategy.

Elizabeth:

This conference was short but sweet. Elizabeth was reading a book on teen suicide so I asked her if this was her topic for the social issue unit we are currently engaged in. She said no, but went on to explain that it relates to her topic– Gay Marriage. She said that people who are gay often face bullying and this can lead to suicide, so she enjoys learning more about it. I loved this awareness and so I decided not to insert myself too much in her work time and just said good job and moved along. She smiled and then went right back to reading her book.

Jose (aka "C.B.":

C.B chose to write which I was pumped about because he had mentioned in my mini-lesson that he felt he was a stronger reader than writer. He began writing about life and the value that people place on their lives. I conferenced with him at this point and asked him if he saw any connection between what he was currently writing about and his broader social issue that he will eventually write about during this unit (Drug Abuse). His eyes immediately lit up and he said "yea definitely." He explained that drugs devalue peoples lives, and then waved me on and said "okay come back later." I respected his wish and when I moved back around to conference with him 20 minutes later, he had written almost two pages in his writers notebook. I read the whole thing and it was great, and I especially loved his line "Drugs are an escape from real life." I told him I loved that line and he put a star next to it.

Eduardo: 

Eduardo was reading a graphic novel type book surrounding the characters in the Simpsons. I wanted to give credibility/support to this type of literacy practice so I was very encouraging during our conference. I wanted to push him a little too so I asked him why he liked this format. He said he loved the pictures and that they helped him. I asked him if he pictured images in his head when he read books that didnt have pictures, and he said yes but he expressed concern that he never wanted to "picture the wrong thing" so this was harder. I used this as an avenue to discuss the strategy of Envisioning, which he seemed to respond to quite well. I encouraged him to continue to envision even when there aren't pictures, because this is fun and a great way to understand the words better.

Writing to Think...Thinking to Benefit Society.

Ask yourself this question: How many times, when you were in high school, were you asked to sit down with a pen and paper and write in response to your own thoughts? If you are like me, almost zero tangible memories come up. The closest moments I can think of in regards to this type of writing came from my creative writing classes where I was allowed to write original short stories and poems. Naturally, many of these creative pieces stemmed from intimate places within my own thoughts, but rarely was I asked (if ever) to directly address what I was thinking in or through my writing. The concept of “writing to think” was never introduced to me- at least not in a manner that resonated enough to remain in my memory- so I never used writing as a tool to create organic thought. Writing, as I perceived it, was meant as a tool to respond to other people’s thoughts. More specifically, writing was meant as a tool to respond to more important peoples’ thoughts. Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and all of the other “classic” authors I read while I was in high school were established as the "authorities of thought." They did the thinking and because of that I was told to position my thinking in response to theirs. More importantly, I was to center all of my writing around their ideas, meaning that the truly gifted “writer” was the student most capable of connecting other peoples thoughts in a cohesive and organized manner.  As I reflect on these experiences now, I often ask myself what the overall point was to this type of mechanistic writing. It is important to remember that this type of reading and writing practice in high school influenced me enough to not only apply and get accepted to college, but to be an English major and ultimately an English teacher. But I have begun to view myself as the exception. What were my classmates’ experiences like? What about students that went to “worse” schools? What about minority students who were forced to almost exclusively read and respond to white male authors, aside from maybe the occasional inclusion of additive books like “Beloved”? How did the “traditional” English classroom impact their life-long literacy practices? If the goal of an English teacher is to promote literacy, did their English teacher do his or her job?

With this handful of questions in mind, I have enjoyed reading Randy and Katherine Bomer’s many ideas about the true purpose of the modern English teacher and his or her relationship with the teaching of writing. In chapter 10 of Randy Bomer’s book, he flips the traditional idea of audience on its head, positioning the writer as his or her own audience, in order to establish a form of writing that is meant specifically to generate thought. This does not mean that teachers should remove the practice of writing with an intended outside audience from the English experience, it just means that students can benefit greatly from the practice of “writing to construct thought” (p. 167). Bomer takes his point a step further as he explicitly addresses the ideas I presented in the earlier parts of this post, writing, “I believe it’s not enough just to write in response to other authors’ texts. Part of a school curriculum should involve asking kids to pay attention to their own thinking, to notice when they have a thought, when they begin making an idea” (p. 167). These two sentences jumped off the page at me, as it seems so simple and so clear that this should be the purpose of today’s English classroom. If the goal of public education is to, as Dr. Bomer once told us, “create a public,” then shouldn’t the goal of a public education teacher be to allow students the space to generate organic thought? Our modern society is so quick to crucify the public school system and blame it for the failures of our adult citizens, yet we still allow students to spend 12 years in public education without ever being treated as important thinkers whose thoughts and ideas have the potential to change the outside circumstances of the world. In my classroom, I would prefer hearing my students’ original ideas, as opposed to constantly reading the mechanical regurgitation of themes and motifs they have pieced together from authors like Shakespeare. Regardless of the success or failure of public education, the system itself will continue to release students into our public. Meaning, even if our students are failed by the public school system, they still leave the classroom eventually and join the public as adult citizens. With this responsibility in mind, we need to ask ourselves as English teachers how we can best serve the American public during our brief encounter with its youngest members. 

Examining the NCTE, CCR, and TEKS

 

Examining the NCTE, Common Core, and TEKS standards this week was very revealing. Through all of our exploration, my appreciation for the NCTE continued to grow. I especially appreciated their attitude towards teachers, which positions teachers as active professionals capable of organizing their own curriculum, enacting their own teaching strategies and methods, and ultimately isolating the individual skills they deem most important for their students literacy development. For this reason, NCTE provides a broad outline of their views regarding the teaching of reading and writing, while avoiding the more short cycle approach of listing a data base of mandates centered on the procedural teaching of individual skills. I find this refreshing, as the extensive list of skills established within the TEKS (and to a lesser extent the CCR) can have a limiting affect on a teachers classroom practices and focus. The NCTE, in my opinion, aims to act as a professional resource for teachers to lean on in order to support their classroom decisions and allows them the ability to cite research-based materials in defense of their teaching practices. This positionality is quite different from the CCR and TEKS, which aim to drive teachers and students in a precise direction, allowing individual teachers much less professional flexibility.

In regards to students, the NCTE aims to develop readers and writers capable of functioning within a larger community- both within the school walls and beyond.

Because of this, the NCTE does not directly cite specific content that must be taught-rather they emphasize the use of a variety of literacies in order to engage in a diverse literacy community, with the ultimate goal of developing life long readers and writers capable of performing the increasingly demanding tasks of a modern citizen. Unfortunately, the attitudes and standards established by the NCTE are by no means the leading influence in the English classroom, especially in Texas. That is not to say that the Common Core and the TEKS are irreversibly flawed, but their more intrusive standards often have a negative impact on classroom practices, which inevitably affects student learning. Throughout my career, I hope to use the NCTE as a theoretical background to support my in-class decisions, while managing the constraints presented by the more intrusive state and national standards.

12th Grade Standards	NCTE	CCR	TEKS
Main Focus of the standards.	Focused on developing individual readers and writers to function within a literate community, both in school and beyond.	Focused directly on preparing America’s students for college and career. Because of this, its very “results” oriented in order to give students the most access possible to social mobility.	Focused on the cultivation of a variety of language related skills, judged partially by performance on the state test, although there are areas of the TEKS that are not directly monitored by the STAAR. Simply put, the TEKS are just a list of skills that adults determined adolescents should acquire.
How intrusive are the standards?	Least intrusive. Establish a set of guidelines for teachers to fall back on and to use as a professional basis to support a teacher’s curriculum decisions. Allows for a wide variety of instruction.	Intrusive in terms of what you actually teach (content), however in terms of how you ultimately teach (pedagogy), it is not intrusive at all.	Intrusive in the types of skills a student is expected to perform. It is not intrusive, however, in the content used to cultivate these skills. Unfortunately, the skills that are directly tested on the STAAR often end up being the focus of a curriculum.
Focus on Content (How much does it drive curriculum content)	Does not directly cite specific content, although the recommended purpose and variety of literacies seems to focus on diversity of culture, as opposed to a curriculum centered on dominant culture.	Most direct. This focuses directly on content, as they even mention teaching Shakespeare, “include Shakespeare and a play by an American dramatist.” The focus seems to revolve around dominant cultural literacies (i.e. the Declaration of Independence, speeches by Lincoln, and the Bill of Rights…)	Have very little direct reference to literature, although there is an emphasis on teaching free-enterprise texts about Texas and the United States with the purpose of becoming thoughtful and active democratic citizens.
Focus on pedagogy (How much does it dictate classroom practices)	Views teachers as professionals who are capable of determining the skills necessary to allow space and access to literacy development. For this reason, NCTE provides broader literacy goals as opposed to short cycle skills.	Views the teacher as someone whose main focus must remain on allowing students the highest level of access to dominant, social, educational, vocational, and financial mobility.	Views teachers as in need of monitoring, and as people who may not directly know what skills to teach. For this reason, the TEKS provide an exhaustive list of short cycle skills.

A Conceptual look at Conceptual Concepts...Conceptually.

The idea of conceptual units is among the most empowering theories/methods I have read to date. The concept itself allows the teacher a large range of motion, distancing him or herself from the typical daily constraints of curriculum standards and administrative pressures, instead focusing on a large sweeping conceptual emphasis for a unit of study. Within a unit, of course, a teacher still must construct daily lesson plans that meet the requirements placed upon them, but few outside sources can really manipulate or intrude on a teacher’s conceptual goals for his or her students over a long period of time. In Smagorinsky’s book, he describes a conceptual unit, saying “a conceptual unit of instruction dedicates a period of time- roughly four to six weeks of fifty minute classes or two to three weeks of ninety-minute classes- to sustained attention to a related set of ideas” (Smagorinsky, p. 111). Although I agree with this assessment, and I think running 3-6 week units based around an extending conceptual concept is essential, but I am especially excited about the idea of one consistent overarching conceptual unit/idea that can extend across the entire year of study. This would allow one main theme/goal to remain the continual focus of the course (the “sustained attention”), and all of the smaller conceptual units (3-6 week units of study) could unite underneath the existing overarching unit.

Lets say, for example, the concept of “identity” was a yearlong conceptual unit. I could then organize the rest of my units under this blanket concept. I could base my first unit then, around the genre of memoir (Smagorinsky, 120). Students could use their writer’s notebook to begin exploring memories and themes within their own lives, and use their self-reflective stories to examine their own definitions of the “self.” The next unit could focus around the theme of “culture,” where we could read poems or short stories in a whole class setting (along side the students’ continual chosen independent reading) to examine this theme and its relationship with the individual (Smagorinsky, p. 118). I could then continue with this organizational strategy throughout the year, positioning the smaller units within the centralized concept. I admit that my example is painfully under-developed, but I am writing off the cuff at this point. What I hope to show, however, is that conceptual concepts can have a positive presence that offers some fluidity and consistency to unite/organize/direct a students studying over a long period of time.