The more I read through Dr. Bomer’s book, the more I see how his vision is impacting me throughout this term. Although I had not read any of his texts until this semester, having him in class as well as those who work (and live) closely to him has molded me to be quite ready to lean heavily on what he presents in Building Adolescent Literacy.
Two quotes from the second half of the book stick out to me as representative practice for larger themes of education in my mind: a) students should be responsive to and responsible for more fill-in-the-blank, as the most important participant in their education; and b) teachers need to find a level of comfort in acting and believing that they are not the most important participant in a student’s education.
The first had to do with writing notebooks and how their use and purpose can create a realm that is not duplicated in the classroom, where control belongs to the student, a concept that is merely abstract or even make-believe in most young people’s lives: “By and large, notebooks are locations for students to work on self-control of the literacy that allows them to name experience, construct identities, and imagine powerful social positions” (195).
The second idea comes from conferencing with students. Bomer characterizes the interplay between student and teacher as a dance, and I see much truth in that – not the kind I had to learn that was choreographed for performances, but one that is not self-serving in “who-knows- the-moves-best” or dominating in “this-is-what-you-should-do”. He makes strong suggestions and will lead in the dance, but the decisions are left up to the partner: “What is most important is that they take on the process of decision making in revision for themselves, so I need to temper my strong opinions with respect for their agency, to reign in my expertise with questions to help them think through their purpose, audience, aesthetic intentions, motives, and reasons” (209).
I appreciate his not-so-teachery box on letting go of rules that are not “rules” on page 218 (so many have-tos and can’ts get in the way of finding fluency and hinder the creation of meaning) and his acknowledgment of student struggles with revision, often seen as a punishment of extra writing, and emphasizing a circular process to writing. I think it also valuable to discuss with students the fact that published pieces have multiple people review and edit before printing. His treatment of new technologies in association with literacies is also important, especially the idea of “composing with velocity” in that now, anyone with access to the internet can be a published writer with the simple touch or click of a button. It is important for students to see that the quick publishing is not the only way writers work, but it is definitely the way that they will face one-shot writing tests. I am glad that although he obviously does not advocate the standardized testing, he does not write for a world where the things he likes just disappear. Chapter 16 “Working Toward Tests Without Insulting Students’ Intelligence” is an important place for teachers who are disillusioned by the current state of affairs in test prep.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
An After Easter Post
A key calling in Randy Bomer’s Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms that stuck out to me, especially in light of what I have failed to do in my classrooms in the past is to recognize, expose, and discuss the implications of a text’s incompleteness. I have done a few exercises with recognizing bias, usually based on visual advertisements, but rarely have I taught with a focus on what texts are actually saying when not saying. This involves an eye for critiquing social worlds and assumptions. Most of the time, I would focus on the themes that are in a book, and we would ruminate over them for 3 weeks to a month. As the English survey teacher, I have asked students not only to buy into the assumptions of the texts we read, but also into the assumptions of the classroom – without ever exposing and discussing them. It seems that I have an ethical responsibility to make this kind of awareness the dynamic center of talking about thought.
Over all, I see that what I present in class is not only my previously held attitude about building on skills and trying to never ask students to do something that would not benefit them later in the course, but the curriculum (environment, texts, all of it) “must reflect—and make the case for—the usefulness of books and other texts in and ordinary life” (77). With the critiquing of social worlds, I think that students do that on their own, at times, but it is rarely fostered or encouraged…at least it hasn’t been in my classes. The Continent of Literacy Purposes creates a visual for thinking about the use (therefore importance) of literacy in current and future life circles. Understandably, Bomer is coming from the viewpoint that academic literacies are used less than others, so he has positioned it visually as smaller and on the border of the continent rather than at the heart of it. The point, highlighted on 51, is that the system of school has become geared toward turning out college graduates when only ¼ of 9th graders will see that college diploma, effectively miseducating ¾ of the population. The cycle then becomes that the school discourse is created by a small, “distinguished” fraction of the original ¼, those who have gained cultural capital through education and with all their wealth have emphasized becoming like them or not deserving an education that meets the interests and current positions (academically, culturally, etc) of students. Bomer asserts that “school should be about becoming educated people” and what educated people should know, do, and have on page 49, and it shows that he values individual agency and education that provides individuals with the power to live a complete and connected live, rather than segmented and cut-off from other parts of self as well as other people. No matter the existing skill level or experience, one needs help to become more “thoughtful, critical, and powerful” in their literacy lives (31).
This whole year, student choice has been a valued theme in studying curriculum decisions, and it became most apparent to me that instruction and curriculum have been more an act of convenience rather than compulsory rituals. I see that mostly in challenging my experience with the class-wide novel. I am in the process of moving my thinking away from novels as the base texts for classes anyhow because of restraints of time and disillusionment with homework which presumes that the home is a safer and more work-conducive place than school, and the classroom is the place of the two that I have the most control over. On pages 10 through 12, Bomer discusses the organization of people at different levels within the classroom. The reading/writing workshop’s emphasis on choice is obviously part of his pedagogical history (knowing his wife and his time at The Teachers’ College). My understanding of the pendulum of the different groupings is that the fewer the people in the group, the more choice is available; and the more people that are in the group, the more that agendas (damaging?) compete with a singular and focused direction of inquiry or study.
Over all, I see that what I present in class is not only my previously held attitude about building on skills and trying to never ask students to do something that would not benefit them later in the course, but the curriculum (environment, texts, all of it) “must reflect—and make the case for—the usefulness of books and other texts in and ordinary life” (77). With the critiquing of social worlds, I think that students do that on their own, at times, but it is rarely fostered or encouraged…at least it hasn’t been in my classes. The Continent of Literacy Purposes creates a visual for thinking about the use (therefore importance) of literacy in current and future life circles. Understandably, Bomer is coming from the viewpoint that academic literacies are used less than others, so he has positioned it visually as smaller and on the border of the continent rather than at the heart of it. The point, highlighted on 51, is that the system of school has become geared toward turning out college graduates when only ¼ of 9th graders will see that college diploma, effectively miseducating ¾ of the population. The cycle then becomes that the school discourse is created by a small, “distinguished” fraction of the original ¼, those who have gained cultural capital through education and with all their wealth have emphasized becoming like them or not deserving an education that meets the interests and current positions (academically, culturally, etc) of students. Bomer asserts that “school should be about becoming educated people” and what educated people should know, do, and have on page 49, and it shows that he values individual agency and education that provides individuals with the power to live a complete and connected live, rather than segmented and cut-off from other parts of self as well as other people. No matter the existing skill level or experience, one needs help to become more “thoughtful, critical, and powerful” in their literacy lives (31).
This whole year, student choice has been a valued theme in studying curriculum decisions, and it became most apparent to me that instruction and curriculum have been more an act of convenience rather than compulsory rituals. I see that mostly in challenging my experience with the class-wide novel. I am in the process of moving my thinking away from novels as the base texts for classes anyhow because of restraints of time and disillusionment with homework which presumes that the home is a safer and more work-conducive place than school, and the classroom is the place of the two that I have the most control over. On pages 10 through 12, Bomer discusses the organization of people at different levels within the classroom. The reading/writing workshop’s emphasis on choice is obviously part of his pedagogical history (knowing his wife and his time at The Teachers’ College). My understanding of the pendulum of the different groupings is that the fewer the people in the group, the more choice is available; and the more people that are in the group, the more that agendas (damaging?) compete with a singular and focused direction of inquiry or study.
Monday, April 2, 2012
A Sunday Post on Monday
I think Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading is an important read for teachers of any experience. The opening NCTE Policy Research Brief on Adolescent Literacy is a great base that preservice and veteran teachers alike should familiarize themselves with in order to communicate the necessities of teaching reading to peers, parents, and outsiders.
The book, as a whole, does not have the heavy appendix of discussed strategies and activities as the other Appleman text does, but this serves to focus the teacher in pursuit of what it means to teach the English Language Arts tripod of reading, writing, and literature.
My general sense of my own experience was that I was acting as primarily, if not exclusively, as a literature teacher, not because I didn’t think that reading and writing instruction were not my job or were not important. I didn’t feel confident in teaching them. What would I have to offer? How much of an impact could I have made in their last years in high school? I don’t know how I learned to read or write, so how could I teach someone else?
From what I understand in the case study and other examples Appleman provides, I will call the inquiry-driven, student-centered instruction that gets students "reading well" a deliberate shotgun approach. Teaching reading is not a random, throw all your options out there and hope something sticks method, but rather a necessary breadth of activities and angles designed to meet the variety of researched findings on the teaching of reading over the last 20 years.
Something that kept me from pursuing the deliberate teaching of reading in the high school classroom was my view of reading as an isolated and discrete skill. I didn't think it as simple as that. I felt reading was responsible for the base necessary for other learning, but the instruction component was so frustrating in "how to teach reading" that I was not comfortable in actively taking time in class to do such work - worried that I would become a drill and skill teacher. But reading is not just something to teach in a block of minutes within the period. “Factors including family literacy patterns and opportunities, community and individual identity, and membership in groups that traditionally had been marginalized or disenfranchised in school and society” (18) have been left out of understanding the reading equation. Not everyone learns to read in the same way and are not coming to school in an equitable fashion. Not only is reading not an isolated skill within the classroom, it is not isolated from life. And if I am learning anything, it is that students' lives and choices must have prominence in the classroom. And I think that takes levels of organization (outside research and preparation), foresight, and risk on the part of teachers that I was not comfortable with, and I wonder if others would take such risks as well when they feel their jobs are tied to state tests.
To me, this work revolves around helping students know themselves within the context of the world, and sociocultural conversations are a necessary part of that. Reframing the classroom in ways similar to those on page 20, lead to being able to then allow students "to discern the text’s purposes: the intentions of its creators, their desired responses, and their ideological premises" (27). Teaching reading is teaching reading meaning in all things, especially society since "today’s students must be able to recognize social assumptions and cultural presuppositions and must be aware that such cognitive operators are ubiquitous and inescapable" (27). So, there at least must be a concern for teaching reading, especially since I desire to help students be observant of and alert within the world around them. I still don't feel great about teaching the alphabet-decoding aspect of reading, but for possibly the first time, I want to be.
The book, as a whole, does not have the heavy appendix of discussed strategies and activities as the other Appleman text does, but this serves to focus the teacher in pursuit of what it means to teach the English Language Arts tripod of reading, writing, and literature.
My general sense of my own experience was that I was acting as primarily, if not exclusively, as a literature teacher, not because I didn’t think that reading and writing instruction were not my job or were not important. I didn’t feel confident in teaching them. What would I have to offer? How much of an impact could I have made in their last years in high school? I don’t know how I learned to read or write, so how could I teach someone else?
From what I understand in the case study and other examples Appleman provides, I will call the inquiry-driven, student-centered instruction that gets students "reading well" a deliberate shotgun approach. Teaching reading is not a random, throw all your options out there and hope something sticks method, but rather a necessary breadth of activities and angles designed to meet the variety of researched findings on the teaching of reading over the last 20 years.
Something that kept me from pursuing the deliberate teaching of reading in the high school classroom was my view of reading as an isolated and discrete skill. I didn't think it as simple as that. I felt reading was responsible for the base necessary for other learning, but the instruction component was so frustrating in "how to teach reading" that I was not comfortable in actively taking time in class to do such work - worried that I would become a drill and skill teacher. But reading is not just something to teach in a block of minutes within the period. “Factors including family literacy patterns and opportunities, community and individual identity, and membership in groups that traditionally had been marginalized or disenfranchised in school and society” (18) have been left out of understanding the reading equation. Not everyone learns to read in the same way and are not coming to school in an equitable fashion. Not only is reading not an isolated skill within the classroom, it is not isolated from life. And if I am learning anything, it is that students' lives and choices must have prominence in the classroom. And I think that takes levels of organization (outside research and preparation), foresight, and risk on the part of teachers that I was not comfortable with, and I wonder if others would take such risks as well when they feel their jobs are tied to state tests.
To me, this work revolves around helping students know themselves within the context of the world, and sociocultural conversations are a necessary part of that. Reframing the classroom in ways similar to those on page 20, lead to being able to then allow students "to discern the text’s purposes: the intentions of its creators, their desired responses, and their ideological premises" (27). Teaching reading is teaching reading meaning in all things, especially society since "today’s students must be able to recognize social assumptions and cultural presuppositions and must be aware that such cognitive operators are ubiquitous and inescapable" (27). So, there at least must be a concern for teaching reading, especially since I desire to help students be observant of and alert within the world around them. I still don't feel great about teaching the alphabet-decoding aspect of reading, but for possibly the first time, I want to be.
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