Painful Politics

Shapiro, I believe, is telling the Clinton administration to show that it is doing good things for education as oppose to highlighting a few small accomplishments.  Shapiro wants details.  Also, later on in his piece he emphasizes how important it is to teach students in a way that connects to their lives in order for them to access the material better.  This is something we talk about in our class all the time.  He talks at length about standardized testing and how it stifles creativity and critical thinking.  Additionally, Shapiro points out that standardized tests tend to keep the culture of power at the top.  Again, something we have talked about at length during this course.

But I think Dr. Bogad had us read this article for a bigger purpose.  A presidential election year has such a focus on fake promises that I have a hard time sifting through what each candidate will really do and what policies they will really put into place.  Yes, I can look at their past history as far as their politics go (president, senator, governor). I fear that the uneducated voter listens to one source and receives a biased view of the issues at hand.  It is time consuming to watch the network news, cable news, read newspapers and listen to talk radio.  Who has time!  Shapiro emphasized this frustration when he mentions that it looks like the Clinton Administration is concentrating on education reform but in fact is more concerned about educating kids that will go into corporate jobs.  So the bias begins …

I have to say that I found this assignment particularly difficult.  I first started with the big guns … Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Brien, and I just couldn’t research them and listen to their screaming, cocky rhetoric any longer.  I literally spent hours trying to find the right biased article, related to the election, and related to a particular issue.  So, I went with Peggy Noonan who is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.  Noonan is politically conservative and was a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and a speechwriter for George Bush when he ran for office.  The piece I chose is called “Noonan:  It’s the Circumstances, Stupid” and it was written on August 17, 2012.  In the piece she talks about how important it is for Romney and his running mate, Ryan, to stick together as the campaign comes to its final days.  Noonan wants the Republican Party to focus on the mantra that they are going to “save” the country.  I guess she thinks that the American people are stupid and will all of sudden forget about all the programs they plan to cut as they “save” the country.  She creates a scenario where an old lady is in a wheel chair heading for a cliff and suddenly a young guy, Paul Ryan, stops her from falling off the edge.  She calls this “comic and sweet”.  I call it just more disgusting political crap, which is why I try to avoid reading and listening to some of these fools.  Additionally, she refers to Obama as the “big loser in the White House”.  Really?  Very strange and somewhat immature.  After reading her column, it is hard not to feel that she is so narrow-minded. 

I lean Democrat but never vote for a candidate just because he or she is a Democrat.  I try to get an unbiased view of how the candidates feel about issues that are important to me personally such as abortion, education, and gay rights.  I have never missed voting in any election but I know that my vote for president really does not matter.  What I really try to focus on is the local issues and the local candidates.

Literacy with an Attitude

As soon as I completed the reading, I bought Patrick Finn’s book, Literacy with an Attitude, Educating Working-Class Children  in Their Own Self-Interest.  I felt as though I could relate to him and I could apply what he writes about to my own classes.  He uses phrases such as “empowering education”, “domesticating education”, and “oppositional identity” which I have not thought about since my teaching classes.  Also, he references Linda Christensen’s case study in her co-written book, Rethinking Schools which is a book I have had on my shelf for some time and haven’t had a chance to read.  Finn and Christensen think very much alike.

Finn’s focus is on how important it is for “working-class students to see that literacy and school knowledge could be a potent weapon in their struggle for a better deal, not a bunch of sissy stuff for which they have not use”.  He challenges teachers who believe they cannot bring social justice connections into their classroom because of curriculum restrictions, administrative disapproval, etc.  In addition, he tackles tracking as far as using the lower level classes as a dumping ground for the behavior problems from the upper level classes.  He says, “You want to talk about a tough teaching environment.”  I sure agree with him!

Finn’s definitions on the terms noted above: 

·         Empowering education – leads to powerful literacy, the kind of literacy that leads to positions of power and authority (pg. ix); the upper class

·         Domesticating education – leads to functional literacy, literacy that makes a person productive and dependable, but not troublesome (pg. x); working class and middle class

·         Oppositional identity – when some minorities feel they have been wronged by mainstream Americans and that “acting white” is a betrayal of their people (pg. x)

Finn talks at length about Paulo Freire’s work on teaching literacy to poor adults in Brazil.  Through his work, Freire used codifications to help his students understand how culture and literacy affects their lives.  It was fascinating to see the pictures he used to break down this very difficult concept into a fairly easy pictorial handbook.  The video below is Freire’s last public interview before his death.

Finn points out that just giving people the idea that their life could be better is not enough.  They also need tools and they need to work in groups and communities to really foster change.  He quotes Desmond Tutu, “When missionaries first came to Africa they had bibles and we had the land.  They said, ‘Let us pray.’  We closed our eyes.  When we opened them we had the bibles and they had the land.”  This is where Finn brings in Christensen.  Christensen agrees with Freire, but she doesn’t stop at the fact that her students are disadvantaged and can make a difference.  She brings her students to places where they can see people making a difference such as picket lines and demonstrations.  She tells them how important it is to work as a group to make change since working as an individual is rarely successful. 

Finn talks about Robert Peterson’s work “How to Read the World and Change It” which I found fascinating.  In fact, I plan to try one strategy mentioned in Finn’s book Monday morning.  Peterson uses a circle activity in order to get students to share their writing.  I have students write in their writer’s notebook everyday and this year I have a class that is struggling with opening up.  It is a Sophomore CP class in which I have 16 advanced freshman and 10 CP sophomores.  The freshman think they are smarter than they really are and the sophomore’s resent them for being in, what they consider to be, their class.  Anyway, Peterson recommends that each person must share one personal fact or opinion.  I am going to modify it so that each period five students must share; however, they can pass on one rotation.  I am not sure how to organize it and how to grade it which is where the students will come in.  They will need to come up with the grading system.

For those of you that did not pick Finn, I would highly recommend him.  Although there was a lot to read, it was worth the time spent on it. 

Bartolome Reading

Lilia Bartolome’s “Beyond the Methods Fetish:  Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy” is an essay that focuses on how important it is for teachers to know their students well in order to properly teach them.  Bartolome argues that by not knowing our students well and by not learning about their cultural background, teachers are at a disadvantage as far as connecting with them and earning their respect.  Apparently, some disadvantaged students feel as though their white teachers do not want to know them and kind of put them in a one-size-fits-all mold.  Additionally, she says, “I have found many of my students similarly believe that teaching approaches that work with one minority population should also fit another” (pg. 175).  It is so important to not stereotype and put kids into neat little boxes thinking if a student is black, for example, then whatever characteristic he or she has is the same for all students that are black.

Bartolome is right on in so many ways when it comes to teaching students from “subordinated cultures” (a term I had not heard before).  She mentions often how important it is to have both good teaching strategies in which to draw on as well as strong content knowledge.  Bartolome quotes Donaldo Macedo by saying, “an anti-methods pedagogy should be informed by a critical understanding of the sociocultural context that guides our practices so as to free us from the beaten path of methodological certainties and specialisms” (pg. 177).  She also mentions on the same page that teacher reflection important as teachers think about lessons both not taught yet and ones that either went well or not so well (pg. 177).

 I agree with Bartolome that the tracking system that is used to group students needs some serious consideration (page 179).  Teachers and administrators become very passionate about this issue, which might be why many teachers do not challenge how a school groups their students.  At my school, all of the core subject areas are heterogeneously grouped with the exception of the English Department and the honors /AP level class.   Some teachers like it and many do not.  I am in the English department so my classes are homogeneously grouped.  I really do not like this at all.  My “comp” class last year had many of the trouble kids in one room.  Because English is tracked, the other classes these students have tends to be somewhat tracked because they follow a similar schedule.  So, the social studies department is not tracked, however, most of these kids left my English class to go to the same social studies class.  So, are most of our classes not tracked, really?  Also, does it make sense to throw 22 disadvantaged boys and 3 disadvantaged girls in one classroom and expect the class to run smoothly?  Most of the time I just wanted the 55 minutes to go by without a fist fight, “f” bomb, or a paper throwing war from breaking out.  I actually like this population of student because I find them challenging and “real” however, it is very hard to get them to understand reading and writing concepts when their behavior is a problem as well as high absenteeism due to tardies and suspensions.   I would like to see these students spread out so that they can see model behavior and possibly have the opportunity to be in a more sane environment. 

I’m not sure how I feel about Bartolome’s  analysis of negotiating with students regarding the implementation of lessons.  She says, “Their study compared two teachers and showed that the teacher who was willing to negotiate with students either the topic of discussion or the appropriate participation structure was better able to implement her lesson.”  I wonder what Delpit would think of this!!  I can see giving students choice of assessment (poem, scrapbook, or diary for example) every now and then but I do not see or understand the value in negotiating my teaching strategies.  Maybe she does not mean this as literally as I am taking it. 

I am happy to see that, over the past 18 years (when the essay was published), the education system has embraced and listened to Delpit, Bartolome, and others, and helped teachers change their teaching methods (student-centered, text to self/text to world methods) in order to connect with all of the students in their classrooms and NOT just the students from subordinated cultures.  The sad thing is that we are on the cusp of losing this very important connection to our students and their connection to creativity with the new Common Core State Standards.  The CCSS does not care about the teacher student connection because CCSS is specifically concerned with Text Based Evidence.  On the RIDE Website is a PowerPoint presentation that states, “What are we looking for?  Discussion that stays deeply connected to the text so that students make evidentiary arguments.”  There is no room here for a connection to self.  Also on the RIDE website it states, “The ELA classroom will focus on emphasizing informational text (literary nonfiction):  30% literary text and 70% informational text”.  Again, not a lot of room here for a connection to self and not a lot of room for creative thought.  I am not saying we shouldn’t focus on informational text, but with the PARCC test focusing so closely on text-dependent analysis, we stand the chance to lose what many researchers over the years have proven to be very effective.  Students must have the opportunity to connect their lives and their cultures to what they read.  By simply having them memorize and spit back what they read will not help them become better analytical thinkers.  The link below is Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk called “Schools Kill Creativity”.  In the presentation he discusses how important creativity is in a child’s life and it is through creativity children gain a sense of themselves and the world around them.  He says, “We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.” I hope teachers do not take the CCSS too literally and stay true to what they know is good teaching practice.  Yes, prepare students to take the latest standardized test but more importantly prepare students to function in the world and to be good problem solvers and creative thinkers.  Enjoy the video (approx 20 minutes).

Help

Hello everyone ... in class on Tuesday can someone help me attach videos to my blog properly so that all the reader has to do is hit play?  Also, I need help with attaching a hyperlink to a word.  I looked these up on line but most of what I saw talked about HTML code.  Very scary : (

Thanks!!

Rollercoaster Ride with Lisa Delpit

Similar to the Johnson reading, as I read the excerpt from Lisa Delpit’s “The Silenced Dialogue” I could not help but feel I was on a rollercoaster ride of anger, surprise, and finally understanding.  Like Johnson, Delpit does a great job at pushing the reader to the edge of exasperation and then comes in with disclaimers like “nearly adopting direct instruction is not the answer” and “neither of us is speaking of page after page of ‘skill sheets’”.  Throughout the reading, I wrote notes such as “I’m still not getting the conversation here” and “This is b.s.” and “are you kidding me?” as well as “Thank God you said this Lisa” and “Amen”. 

Lisa Delpit explains in her essay that white teachers are missing what black students need in order to be both successful in the classroom and prepared for the real world as functioning members of American society.  I have done lots of research on how to teach the disadvantaged student in a Secondary Language Arts classroom (not just black and poor but black, poor, Asian, Hispanic, etc.) and I was surprised, at first, that Delpit was going against so much of what I believed were the best strategies to connect with this population of students.  When she mentions “process approaches” vs “direct instruction” I strongly disagreed that a process approach to writing did not have a place in the classroom.  I saw the 1995 and decided that her thinking must be behind the times of the 21^st century research I have put my faith in.  However, I was happy that she suggested a blend of process and direct instruction and I’m not sure I know too many people that would disagree, at least at my high school.  I use process and creativity in order to reach my students and to build a sense of trust with them.  While using process tools like writer’s notebooks, carousels, silent discussions and exit slips (to name a very few) I am able to gather an understanding of what type of students I have in front of me.  I do not assume that because a student is white he or she has all the tools necessary to succeed nor do I assume that because a student is black he or she is poor and disadvantaged.  It is through process that students find the connections to text, self and the world.  Then, and only then, am I able to get the student to the point that direct grammar instruction (as an example) can happen without losing the student’s interest in school all together. 

At the high school level, it is very hard to turn around the fact that many poor, disadvantaged kids have been told their whole life they are disadvantaged and will not be successful.  Many students coming to me waiting for their 18th birthday so they can quit school.  They are detached and disinterested in school because they have been singled out as not bright in the tracking system and many of their teachers believe this is their single story.  As Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie, said in her Ted Talk presentation, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.  They make one story become the only story … Show a people as one thing—only one thing—over and over again, and that is what they become.” 

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

So it takes time to breakdown this barrier in order to gain students’ trust so they know I do care about them as human beings and I truly believe they have every ability to succeed as much as, if not more than, the honor and college prep students.  What this population has, in addition to their ability to learn, is their ability to survive in the real world.  Because they were not coddled by their parents and the education system and they were not told everyday how wonderful they are, they have had to figure this out themselves.  They have the ability, so many of them, to survive and make adjustments in order to “fit in” to the culture of power.  However, many of them have not been told this so they do not believe it is possible.

As I said, I have done a lot of research on teaching disadvantaged students and I did not think about the fact that white people performed most of the research I was reading.  This did not occur to me until Delpit pointed it out in her essay that “people of color are, in general, skeptical of research as a determiner of our fates.  Academic research has, after all, found us genetically inferior, culturally deprived, and verbally deficient” (pg 31).  I do not really agree with the latter part of the quote since I did not notice this in any research I was reading.  However, I went back to one of my favorites Linda Christensen, author of the books “Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word” and “Writing the Word and the World”, and I have to think that Delpit would find Christensen to be an exception.  Christensen taught disadvantaged students, mostly African-American, for 30 years in Portland, Oregon.  I would like to assume that Delpit is not saying that no white person can research how to teach black students successfully.  In Christensen’s article (with accompanying lesson plan) “The Danger of a Single Story”, she talks about her students’ reaction to the Trayvon Martin murder and uses this as a teachable moment for the entire class.  Christensen says,

         “Creating assignments that do the double duty of teaching students to read and write while also examining the ways race and class function in our society is absolutely fundamental today.  As I write this article—to discuss an assignment that pushes students to analyze how their lives have been shaped by the “single stories” told about them—I am also writing to talk back to the galloping standardization that expects all students to reach higher standards through uniform readings that either bore them or have little relevance in their lives.  When students are pulled from police cars, followed in stores, suspended for refusing to obey ridiculous orders, our job as teachers must be to produce a curriculum that demonstrates that they are not alone and not crazy.  At the same time, we must give them tools to dismantle those mistaken assumptions.”

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/26_04/26_04_christensen.shtml

Thankfully, people like Christensen have made connections, researched and published their findings about teaching students that do not look like her.  I think about this often at my urban-ring high school.  I think about the fact that not only am I white, but there is not one black teacher in my entire school (I think school system as well but I am not positive about that).  How can I teach a population of kids who look at me as part of the problem in their oppressed life?  What can I offer them that they will see as genuine and real?  The answer to these questions is always the same:  I can offer my experience of working with students of all races and I can offer the knowledge I have gained by authors like Christensen and Delpit.  Through experience and research, I have tools to gain my students' trust and to help them make sense of the world they currently live in and a world they will enter very soon as an adult.  Delpit tells us how important it is that the black student learn how to navigate in the culture of power by using the right words and presenting themselves in the right way without losing a sense of self in the process.  I hope I have been able to help at least some of my students with this white navigation system by not dismissing their culture but embracing it and finding a place for it in the adult world of work, school and/or the military.

Allan Johnson argues in an excerpt from “Privilege, Power, and Difference”, that there is value in difficult conversations regarding privilege, racism and heterosexism to name a few.  He mentions that he is part of the privileged (white, male, heterosexual) class and how it can make him uncomfortable or even guilty at times but I wonder how uncomfortable he really is.  Johnson wants people to use appropriate words such as privilege, racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc. instead of words like diversity and tolerance (pg. 11-12) even though there is a place for these words at appropriate times.  Johnson feels as though when people do not use what he perceives to be appropriate vocabulary, there is the impression that the real issues surrounding these very important conversations somehow become less important and less valued. 

Johnson is a sociologist, has studied and researched this topic for many years, and is obviously passionate about how people and organizations can make the shift to a society where we can at least talk about why we do not get along better.  That is something I applaud, however, it is a huge topic to undertake and there are some very strong feelings in this regard.  A goal this year in my classroom is to have a more open dialogue with my students even if it is uncomfortable.  I am not very good at debating and arguing because I have always thought of myself as more of a believer, than a doubter (to coin terms Peter Elbow uses in his book “Teaching Without Teachers”).  I enjoy a conversation where I see both sides and appreciate both sides, while not compromising my own views and values.  But, Johnson made me second guess why I think this way.  My family background is such that my grandparents felt all blacks were bad (and they did not use this particular vocabulary word to describe blacks), my mother felt that the only seamstress worth anything was the Portuguese woman across the street because “they know best how to fix clothes”, and my father never read a book by a female author until I forced him to and I don’t think he has read one since.  I can not help but wonder if I feel comfortable discussing issues over debating them because as a female, my thoughts and actions were not valued when I was younger.

Johnson talks about fear and how the fear of the unfamiliar is what keeps us stuck in our thoughts.  Some fear homosexuality because they simply cannot imagine that life style so homosexuality must be bad.  I like how Johnson says, “All of us are part of the problem … we could also make ourselves part of the solution if only we knew how”.  I kept waiting for him to give some thoughts on how the privileged can be part of the solution, but in the excerpt, I did not read that.

So, I wonder if anyone in our cohort feels as though this excerpt is dated?  I look at my 21 year old daughter that does not think twice about her friend in a wheel chair and does not believe her friend was less privileged or at a lower status or less capable than my daughter.  Her friend had obstacles to overcome and she needed to work harder to achieve her goals of going to college and being a functioning member of society, but she did it.  I think about so many of my high school students that are tolerant of other’s differences.  The fact that someone has an IEP or is part of Special Education, to most of the teenagers I have been in contact with, really means nothing, unlike the 1970s when I grew up.  I know we are not talking about the specific terms Johnson feels are “uncomfortable” to talk about, but I guess I am saying that there has been a shift in attitude over the years and maybe more so over the past 10 years.  When Johnson writes about how a black female does not have the same opportunities as the white male I agree with him, but I want to ask him so what?  What is his solution to the problem?

Johnson mentions organizations need to make significant changes in order for society to see a shift in attitude, especially “in colleges and the workplace, where many people have their first true experience with people unlike themselves”.  Although there have been shifts in attitude about diversity with new laws on quotas in the workplace and at colleges, I almost wonder if the quotas create a bigger divide.  I thought it was good to be more inclusive of blacks, females, etc. in the workplace; however, when I worked at Fleet Bank, some people treated newly hired women and blacks as though they were hired only to fulfill the quota and not because of their merits.

Sometimes I wonder if we talk about racism, heterosexism, and privilege too much.  By talking about it so much there is the possibility of turning these issues into a reality.  Talking about it too much is a form of oppression in itself.  We keep saying that females and blacks are a lower class so we all believe it.  I have always had the belief that we can manifest anything we want, both negative and positive.  When one says, “I am stupid and will never get math” then he or she will believe it and therefore live it.  However, if one says, “this is really hard but I know if I keep working at it I will be successful” then that person will succeed.  There is always the hope that we can all have a better life if we are willing to work hard and rise above stereotypes dictated by the privileged.

I am trying to understand where Johnson would like us to have more conversations about gender inequality, racism and privilege.   I hear these “uncomfortable words” all the time and do not feel uncomfortable using or hearing them.  I know there is a glass ceiling that is hard for women to break through in the workplace, but I want to know what Johnson feels is the solution.  We have conversations about these issues all the time and we have made great strides over the years.  We continue to converse and we continue to slowly break through the glass ceiling knowing we have a ways to go.  Technology and instantaneous social media outlets have brought so many of these difficult issues front and center as well.  As soon as a woman, for example, exceeds or screws up it is all over Facebook and Twitter. 

One day I was handing out papers to my students and I missed one of my African American students.  He said, “What’s up Miss?  Is it because I’m black?”  Now, my response could have gone two ways:  ignore the comment and pretend it was not said or use the situation as a learning experience.  I like to think that because I stopped and we all talked about where that reaction came from and why the student said it (even though he said he was joking) was because we have come a long way in our society since we can talk about it.  I do not think we fear talking about these things, I think we are troubled about the solutions.  The goal is to have an inclusive society where people feel valued and respected for who they are and what they offer to the bigger group.  People who feel oppressed and feel they are impacted by racism, heterosexism, etc. not only need the privileged to fight for them, but they need to fight for themselves.  They need to become good mentors and good role models to the young so that there is hope that a better more successful life is everyone’s reality.