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).