Julie’s Blog

First and for most, what inspires me to be a better teacher is my students.  Only teachers know what it’s like to come to work late and have 17 individuals applause your arrival.  Their trust, love, honesty, reliance and confidence in me not only inspires me, but convicts me to give them what they deserve, my genuine best.

I derive inspiration from other teachers as well.  Their enthusiasm, energy, dedication and perseverance invigorates me.  The patient determination of my GSU professors inspires me.  The confidence my administrators have in me inspires me.  The support of my friends and family outside of school and their constant belief in the validity of my work gives me great inspiration. 

As I read chapter 12, I have been mentally preparing to administer the CRCT.  This year there has been a significant reduction in stress and anxiety associated with the test for me.  I am sure that this reduction has also transferred to and affected my students.  I was struck by the following quote at the beginning of the chapter.  “We offer strong evidence that the status quo is not a reason to give up on teaching, but the reason for teaching” (p.471).  The current status quo in schools seems to have so much to do with academic attainment, as measured by a test.  Much more that it used to and at the cost of all of the other social and affective components and venues that schools should be concerned with.  I’ve concluded that my lessened stress and anxiety must be a product of my new knowledge, awareness and understandings.  I am so very excited and content to pass this on to my students.  In a more theoretical manner the quote reminded me of something I realized this fall.  One goal I had in becoming a teacher was to help produce constructive, well equipped students competent of functioning and contributing to our democratic society.  This fall I was forced to address the short comings of this goal.  I recognized that I should be enabling students to become change agents within our democratic society.  The notion was something that I had never considered before.  The idea continues to make me think about what other aspirations I have as a teacher that are too short or narrow sighted. 

As I read through the last letters and captions I couldn’t help but think of what Karen pointed out during our last online class.  How would the letters and their content and messages be different if veteran teachers had written them?  In What’s Worth Fighting For, Fullan and Hargreaves point out that teachers from every point of the professional continuum have something valuable to offer.  Why did the authors of this book only include novice teachers?  How much richer would differentiated professional lens make this book?  Or would it lessen the book’s opulence? 

Thank goodness we do not live in China during 200 B.C.  The lens for viewing my teacher action research project and paper is a bit rosier after reading chapter 6.  Assessment is another example of the contradictory messages systems convey to teachers.  In one breath we hear, “PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS, PERFORMANCE ASSEMENTS.”    The next breath tells us, “Distribute these benchmark assessments to see how your kids will do on the standardized test, but do not grade them or disclose their performance to parents.”  The last push at the end of the year shouts, “If you’ve covered the standard your child will pass the CRCT and you’ll be deemed an effective teacher.”  Never mind your efforts to address cultural responsiveness, emotional sensitivity and student developmental awareness.

The notion that small schools may offer solutions to promoting positive school climate makes sense, just as it is more manageable to maintain a positive learning climate with smaller class size.  Why, then are we building elementary schools up.  By building up, I am referring to the two and three story buildings that house thousands of small children.  I’m sure the answer lies between the red and black of the budget.  When will we, as a society, quit focusing on temporary cost effectiveness at the expense of our students and future? 

Components of a full service school, as described in the book, include child care, health care, nutrition and counseling.  Today’s public schools encompass much of these aspects.  Most schools offer after school child care at a reduced rate.  Many schools today invite dental, vision and hearing units housed in trailers or vans to treat students.  Food specialists and cafeteria coordinators are held to national nutritional guidelines.  School counselors, psychologists, and social workers collaborate to address the concerns of and advocate for children with special needs.  Are today’s public schools not full service schools?  What social service features are today’s schools missing?

Deficit theory is a means to attribute social and economic inequity by identifying deficiencies in the cultures, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs of disadvantaged groups.  Deficit theorists are guilty of making assumptions and generalizations regarding groups.  Just as educators have to dig deep within themselves to identify and sort out our personal issues with race and culture, the same is true for class.  We are all, to some degree, deficit theorists.  What’s as important as dealing with our own issues is beginning to consider larger systems at work contributing to poverty and classism.

I am not familiar with Ruby Payne’s work.  I am intrigued by Gorski’s critique of her work and want to learn more about her.  My question is how she became so accredited and respected for her work.  It’s easy to ascribe her success to the support from right-wing politicians.   However, it’s not politicians passing out professional leave forms for teachers to attend her conferences.  What are administrators and teachers of disadvantaged students learning from her, and why do they keep coming back.  It would be interesting if as a group we could attend a seminar of hers following the Gorski discussion.

By definition, transformative multicultural education seems the most simplistic of the six stages of multicultural school transformation.  However, it is the most difficult stage to realize.  I believe that this is true because it entails acknowledgment and sorting through of the most hidden and unconscious prejudices and biases of every individual concerned with the experience and climate of a school.  It’s much less difficult to recognize multicultural education represented by standards, bulletin boards and special events or assemblies as compared to matters of equitability, culturally responsive teaching and critical pedagogy.  Not only is surface multicultural education easier to identify it’s also easier to teach.  The current school environment with its emphasis on standardized tests, mastery of performance standards, progress monitoring and documentation leaves little time, energy or mental capacity for teachers to reflect and grow in regards to multicultural education and equity.  However, I am sure that most teachers and administrators would agree that transformative multicultural education is one of their primary goals as educators.  How can we, as educators, ensure that we are culturally responsive?  How can we all dig deeper within ourselves?

It is so important to me when thinking about classroom management to remember two key factors.  First, I am managing children therefore my expectations must be appropriate.  Secondly, in regards to these expectations I must remember that motivation, morality and integrity are developmental components.  Just as cognitive ability develops differently in each child, likewise do these psychological variables.  I think sometimes we forget that virtues such as motivation, morality and integrity must be encouraged, cultivated and supported in order for them to increase and become self-sustaining.  It’s easy to say things like we shouldn’t reward with ‘treats’ or learning itself should be the motivating element.  It is my belief that behaviorist’s approach can support these special virtues in children and aid them in becoming more intrinsic notions as they grow.  However, I do stand firm that treats or punishments should not compensate for boring uninteresting activities and learning.  Sometimes, especially in early childhood classrooms, the ‘doing’ should be motivating in itself.  It is the teacher’s responsibility to plan for engagement.  We need to be honest with ourselves.  The world is full of intrinsic desires and extrinsic rewards and both can be highly motivating.  Why, just this morning on the news I saw two lottery winners who had quit their jobs before even cashing in their winning ticket.  Only saints deserve full recognition for unsolicited purely intrinsic actions.

To begin, I found it ironically humorous that after I read the Goodman article in which he speaks so negatively regarding McGraw-Hill publications and those who endorse them, I picked up Teaching To Change the World and noticed that it was actually published by McGraw-Hill.  In the same way, I have found it ironically humorous throughout the readings in this program how frequent the authors have called into question traditional teaching norms that focus on skills and standards that reflect desired outcomes on a standardized test, and yet it is partially due to our performance on a standardized test that we are even a part of the program itself.  It’s like the old adage about the chicken and the egg.  What came first the standards or the test?

Now, I have never fully understood the whole language versus phonics debate.  Is not phonics an integral part of whole language instruction?  I was taught to read through a dominantly phonetic program.  I struggled with reading throughout public school, and still to this day to some extent.  So, I recognize the inadequacies of only teaching children to read by teaching them phonics and decoding skills.  However, I know that if a child is reading a text, especially a text that is somewhat challenging as it should be if we are teaching in that child’s zone of proximity, and comes to an unknown word he/she must know the sounds associated with letters to even attempt to read the word.  A good reading curriculum should be fully comprehensive. Why is this argument so defined?  Can’t we have the best of both reading worlds?   We should be utilizing every resource available ensure the literacy of our students.  This includes basals and trade books.  We can’t stop teaching skills and standards without disservicing our students.  We can, however, teach those skills and standards through integrated and authentically rich activities.  Furthermore, I disagree with Professor Pearson in that a child that recognizes the golden arches and thinks hamburgers or sees his parent reach for a book and thinks about story time is prepared for full adult literacy.  If this were the case there would be no argument for either kind of reading instruction.  What about the child that has only gone to McDonald’s twice before Kindergarten or the child that has never sat in his/her parent’s lap for a story?  The research and evidence that support such programs as Head Start and Pre-K makes clear that children are coming to school less and less prepared for even early literacy. 

As for mathematics, why do the authors of this book never seem to take into account different learning styles?  If someone gave me a long division problem and asked me to find my own why to solve it without using the steps I had been taught first I would panic, and then I would sit drawing tally marks into groups.  It would be my preference to complete the problem on paper using multiplication and subtraction, and yet I fully understand the concept of long division.  I think that this reflects my learning style not a result from the traditional instruction I received.  It’s the same as my preference for a quiet well lit setting when I read.  Some students derive meaning and understanding for those abstract concepts by following those traditional steps.  This does not mean that I believe we should neglect the learning styles of others.  Instruction across the curriculum should be reasonably differentiated to best suit individual students.  However, until college entrance exams begin accepting estimations as correct answers we must teach our students some computational skills or we are setting them up for failure.  I believe it is for these reasons that Mrs. Cheney said what she did regarding progressive math.  Not, as the authors would have us to believe, that she fears a disintegrating educational and social order. 

The second letter reveals Freire’s beliefs in constructivist learning theory.  He wrote about how a reader’s response to an author is like an exchange because the reader brings what he/she knows and believes to the text.  He also described the benefits of group readings in which several people discuss their interpretations of a given text which may influence someone else’s viewpoint.  His design of critical reading included consulting auxiliary tools (i.e. reference materials, other individuals) to aid in the invention of meaning of a text.  This all speaks to the notions of assimilation, accommodation and constructed understandings.

I found humor in letter due to my recent encounter with paralyzing fear over a text.  Those of you enrolled Dr. Jarrett’s play class will recall my presentation regarding an Erikson article.  The letter really outlined my experience including overwhelming fear, insecurity, and panic, the desire to abandon the text, seeking help, studying, and discipline and even accusing the author of being incomprehensible.  I still do not know why he had to write that way, but the bottom line is that it was a very emotional experience.  And in the end I had to rely on what I already knew, qualify that knowledge as appropriate and acceptable, and apply that to his text.  Only then did I feel adequate to present on the article. 

This is a great example of critical reading for an adult.  I agree that we must teach our students how to interact with text, but this is so much easier to believe than to do.  We as reading teachers must challenge ourselves as both readers and teachers to facilitate the development of critical reading skills in our students. 

I drew several parallels between the circumstances mentioned in the article and issues that Georgia teachers contend.  First, the five day trainings in which teachers were to attend leaving their students in the classroom with substitutes reminded me of the initial Georgia Performance Standards training.  Teachers planned to miss up to eight days in a given year as the standards were being rolled out.  The plan was eventually altered and online assignments were expected to be completed in place of the training.  What’s worse for busy teachers eight days of sub plans and lost instruction or redundant and irrelevant online tasks that serve to prove they know how and are qualified to teach?  Second, the frequent text-based assessments mentioned in the article that took up to 20 percent of instructional time is similar to the frequent benchmark assessments that many counties are requiring of all grade levels.  When your first graders are playing school and you overhear them pretend to distribute benchmarks it becomes evident of how much time is really spent given these assessments.  Lastly, the article referred to the No Child Left Behind Act.   Jaegar describes how in actuality the result of the act is that more children are being left behind than ever before and this is due mainly in part to an emphasis of standardized curriculum over teacher’s professional judgment.  I feel very strongly that the same is going to result from the state’s new Response to Intervention protocol.  All of the time consuming paperwork, data and statisitical information is viewed as more important and insightful than a teacher’s professional reasoning and analysis. 

What is the source of knowledge?

The source of knowledge for an individual is a combination of the outside world and how that is internalized by the individual.  This internalization is the variable component of the operation because so many factors, both external and internal, affect the way one internalizes anything.

Do you recognize your philosophy of schooling in any of those described? 

I can honeslty say I have highlighted something in each philosophy listed.  Therefore, I can not say that I strongly disagree with any of them.  There are parts of each that I would alter.

I do not have any thoughts to offer to enlighten the issues addressed in this chapter that have not previously been brought up and discussed.  I do, however, have some sincere questions.  First, we have established, and I hold true, that there is no such thing as a good stereotype and all stereotypes which by definition affiliate a group with characteristics should, with good reason, be viewed as invalid.  What then does one make of the notion that the “dominant culture” has used education as a means to maintain power and oppress minority cultures?  Is that not in itself a stereotype?  What’s more, how does this stereotype, which I believe it is because it addresses the actions of a group, affect me as a teacher and a member of the “dominant culture”?  Should members of the “dominant culture” be allowed to teach?  Are they just perpetuating this cycle, maybe even subconsciously?  And if we are allowed to teach, what makes us qualified?  What ensures that we won’t perpetuate this cycle?  Is it because my undergraduate program addressed multicultural education?  What if they addressed it using E.D. Hirsh’s cultural literacy?  Would a teacher with a Master’s degree be more knowledgeable about the cultural diversity of his/her students and the proper means to address the diversity?  Should all teachers that are members of the “dominant culture”, or all teachers for that matter, be exposed to such extensive cultural training, awareness, knowledge and responsibility as offered through this program?Where are the answers?  What can we do as educators today to make things right?  I mean no disrespect, but I feel like I have exhausted my resources in trying to make sense of minority, majority, domination, oppression, prejudices, privileges, racism and responsibility without in the same context trying to understand and establish ways to address and correct these tribulations.  I realize that I must be dedicated to discerning the truths, even the inconvenient ones, if I am going to reach my fullest potential as an educator.   However, I feel that I must be more dedicated to defining ways to overcome these harsh realities in order to aid my students in reaching their fullest potential.