Response

There were many ideas throughout the readings that sparked discussions within our group. It was interesting to see the commonalities of quotes that we chose . "Give young learners clear feedback that they are mostly wrong, thus reinforcing the notion that the task of learning to read and write is incredibly complex." was a quote I took from Cambourne’s article. This quote was interesting to me because it contradicts what I have experienced throughout my five year teaching career. I feel, as a teacher, that there seems to be a number of unwritten rules that we should follow, such as; not marking papers with a red pen, avoiding marking answers wrong on tests instead of leaving it blank, and now avoiding the word "but" when giving feedback because it is a negative word as discussed recently with our administration. There are two extremes being presented here and my opinion falls somewhere in the middle. I believe we need to be mindful of the language and methods we choose. The students at our school understand already how difficult language is because, for the most part, English is their second language. I think if we marked all the errors on their papers, they would become frustrated and lose interest in writing and reading quite quickly. We work on small goals with each paper which seems to be working well so far.
Another quote that was interesting to me was the article by Murray, where he says, "Too many of our education courses are taught by methods and attitudes that contradict what is being taught." I related a great deal to this. Recently we had a Professional Development day that was constructed into two parts. The first part, which took up most of the morning was on Differentiated Instruction, where we took part in a number of activities. Included in our activities were facts on retaining knowledge and what methods create a higher retainment of knowledge. When you teach someone else, the retention level of the person teaching is 80%. The method with the least amount of retention was by lecture with a rate of 5% of knowledge retained. Humourously, part two of our PD was a two hour lecture on In School Support Protocol. I could not believe, after we learned about how much knowledge we retain through different methods we were sitting through a lecture on the Friday before Labour Day. This quote made me remember how frustrated I was on that particular day. I have taken a number of workshops and classes to help in my lifelong learning as a teacher and I have realized you just have to do the best you can. I used to take workshops thinking I had to leave and adopt all the learning philosophies of what I was just taught. It is very difficult to implement a complete idea that is not your own. Now I take bits and pieces of what have been given and relate it back to my own students, and apply it in a way that is meaningful to them, because we know our students better than anyone.
The final quote that I enjoyed was by Belenky, "So long as teachers hide the imperfect process of their thinking allowing their students to glimpse only the polished product, students will remain convinced that only Einstein or a professor could think up a theory". The reason this quote resonated with me was because I feel that we need to show students that we are not perfect in anything we do the first time. We have to show them the entire process that it took to get to that end point as well as the final product. This allows students to build confidence in their own tasks and understand that polished work demands time, care, revision of ideas, and effort. So many times, I have seen students give up so quickly because the task is difficult and they can not envision the polished product. They have to be taught to see the little steps in between as milestones and treat them as successes as well.
All the articles this week brought up good points and were full of useful information these were just a few of the quotes that I could relate to.

Movement through social classes

Throughout Finn’s book several themes were outlined that I could relate to as an educator. There were shocking, exciting and informative chapters that sparked discussion with my friends and colleagues. One theme that emerged throughout the chapters that resonated with me was the idea of movement through social classes. It seemed transitioning between classes was difficult because elitist would repress the classes beneath them. The idea of belonging to a certain class and having less opportunities to improve socially was difficult for me to read because I come from a household where I was the only child with both parents from the working class. They are now considered the middle class, but with my upbringing I could have had a future in either class depending on what parent I listened to. My mother enrolled me in several activities after school and did not believe that the poor grades I received in high school were what I truly could achieve. She spent a great deal of effort instilling values and raising me to be an independent individual who would be able to support myself and one who was given the opportunity to find a profession that I love. My dad however, had a different mentality in terms of raising me. He is someone I will always look up to for many reason but throughout my childhood he was rarely home, because of the intense hours of his profession. He assumed like him that school was not for me and that the grades I was receiving in high school was the best I could do. My mother enrolled me in summer school every year from grade 9 to O.A.C (grade 13) even if I was passing. At the time I thought she was trying to ruin my summer, but looking back she just wanted to push me in accomplishing my very best and instilled the importance of education; I am sure she also knew it would keep me out of trouble. She would always say when I struggled in school, “no one can take your education away from you; the knowledge will be with you forever.” I have taken that with me through high school, university, teachers college and now the masters program. My mother always wanted to give me opportunities that she was not given as a child which leads me to my paper.

I noticed in the chapters that there was a fear in class movement; the elite feared the working class would become literate. The "roadville" and "maintown" parents were raising their children to be successful in different ways. "Roadville" students learned through oral traditions and parents focused on teaching good behaviour, while "maintown" students were encouraged to communicate effectively and acquired accomplishments through involvement in activities outside of school. Both sets of parents were raising their children to maintain the class that they were born into.

The chapters gave me an understanding as to why there are so many different levels of literacy comprehension. With all the different learners and levels in the classroom, how do you achieve literary success? As many scenario were mentioned throughout the chapters with the success and failures of teaching literacy, I found myself with the challenge as a teacher in creating an enriched literacy environment where all my students can be challenged and can achieve personal success. Success for me entails a career that can provide financial stability, self gratification and happiness. I see too often students graduating high school with no idea what field they would like to embark on; or graduating university with a degree and not knowing how to use it, or even an adult working a job that they hate because they are not being challenged. I am one of the lucky ones who for the most part did not enjoy school but thankfully had a patient and persevering mother who gave me many opportunities to find a field that I would enjoy. One who saw my strengths and steered me in a direction I did not know I wanted till I was there. Now a days subjects are theory based where the teacher is encouraged to make their lessons fun, hoping students find enjoyment out of it. We need to bring back the technology based classes like shop and home economics even hands on field trips where students can experience first hand real life skills that even if they do not want a career in the culinary field they are learning life skills that may be more useful to them. Students need to be given opportunities from parents and school to find which direction they will do well in and have the confidence to achieve more than what is expected of them.

As a grade 7 and 8 math teacher for the last 4 years I have seen the importance of literacy as many of my students are unable to read a math problem, let alone retaining problem solving skills previously taught, ultimately they are unable to answer the questions thoroughly. My school is in a low income, high ELL population, where all classes have a mixture of students with literacy skills across the board from reading at a grade 4 level to a high school level. These levels greatly affect their achievement in my subject areas. As a society we have taken away many opportunities for students to become successful in school by focusing more on test scores, six week grade goals and board initiatives all while teaching concepts to make sure students will be successful next year.

How do we challenge the needs of every student so they will experience future success, where they will be able to give back to our society in a positive way? Finn’s book opened my eyes to see where students are coming from and now I have a better understanding of the upbringing of some children to see why students learn literacy differently and at different stages in their schooling career. This does not change the fact that, I am still faced with the challenge of teaching students to read while working on a math problem involving the Pythagorean Theorem.

Overall I feel there are several reasons why students learn literacy differently; social classes, upbringing and the value of education within the household all lead to students not being given opportunities to experience a plethora of areas that will provide students with the understanding of what they may want to do in the future. We as educators are trying to challenge each of our students to achieve standard results on tests and report cards while trying to teach children the basics.

Where I'm From

Where I’m From
I am from a family of bears teaching life lessons.
From a lost man in red, while wearing his glasses.
I am from 7 little men singing hi ho; a beautiful
princess that lost her glass slipper to a monstrous beast who
learned to love. From a grumpy green monster who lived in a garbage can.

I am from patient teachers who taught Shakespear better
than cliff notes. I am from plays of Hamlet and Macbeth.
From Macleans university magazines to help determine my future to
Thunder Bay’s classes of literature for children and women.
I am from rewriting a letter to a young lady on her wedding day.

I am from curriculum documents to differentiate instructions.
To home decor magazines to low light plants for a balcony.
From rigor, reflexive qualitative and quantitative research.
From the streets of Harlem to a pawn shop with nothing to buy.
I am from wanting to see the world through others eyes.

Where I'm From

jess blog

The articles from the first three workshops have touched a number of issues that we deal with on a consistent basis as educators. I found Garland’s article quite interesting because my school is in a low income area with a tremendous amount of those living in government housing. We have a number of students at our school who are faced with the decision of joining gangs, and for them these gangs provide a sense of family and a sense of belonging. In my experience these students have not been academically high, causing them to assume they don’t have a chance at a successful career.

The articles indicated that programs available to help the underclass do little to encourage work; in fact they promote staying on welfare because it is easier. I am not sure why we spend millions of dollars on programs if they are not improving the living conditions of people on subsidized programs. Is there a way to fix this? Is giving monetary gifts the answer? The value of money is not present if money have not been earned.

Financial difficulties later on in life can be stemmed from loss of interest in school. Students need the opportunities to find these areas to explore different outlets. Even students who do graduate high school many have no idea what field they would excel in because we have taken away many classes that create environments that students can succeed in. The high school that our students will go to has many programs to spark interest of our students however not all high school students are as lucky.

The readings also brought up the point of equity. I have noticed that the budget for schools varies drastically from boards to schools and even classrooms. As an educator for the past four years I have seen first hand the differences in programs at schools based on the money that the school is allotted. It is difficult to compare schools and academic achievement when one school has document cameras and LCD projectors in every classroom to another school where finding enough textbook is a challenge.

I believe, like Andy’s article mentioned that we need to constantly have an ongoing discourse of the educational issues at hand, to learn what works and what does not. We are all here to learn better ways to initiate ideas into our program. I find at least at our school we are trying to implement too many initiatives that rarely one is ever followed through entirely. It would be nice to focus on one area to the best of our abilities.

These are just a few issues that have stuck with me from the readings and the discussions in class.