(Apparently it’s getting to that point in the semester where
teachers get really frustrated and lose all hope of a positive tomorrow. Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m hopeless, but I
did let loose a good stress cry yesterday.)
The Dreamkeepers
is kind of the perfect text to read while student teaching, but it’s also a
little daunting and frustrating. (I’m
kinda pointing to the example of the bad student teacher. I know Ladson-Billings says that she doesn’t
want to compare him with the teachers highlighted in her study, but in showing
all the things he does incorrectly, isn’t she still doing that?) Although I know that “teaching isn’t
telling,” I think that questioning aspect of good teaching requires building
relationships with students first.
Otherwise, they’ll be resistant to want to think for themselves. I think that I am lucky in my student
teaching position because I have the space to be able to create these relationships
and try to avoid telling; however, in previous teaching internships, this rut
would have been hard to avoid. I’ve also
noticed in some forms of academic writing (like rhetorical analyses and certain
aspects of mechanics in writing), it would be difficult to avoid telling.
One part that I really appreciated is the idea that students
who are treated as competent will demonstrate competence. I’ve already witnessed this in action with
the classes that I’m teaching. One of my
best students (“best” in the sense that he always works hard on both reading
and writing tasks during class) is an honest writer who carefully crafts all of
his notebook entries and essays, and I’ve told him that I appreciate him being
in my class several times. He told me last week that his senior English class
was probably the first language arts class he’d actually enjoyed, because he
felt like he was doing good work and that he belonged. I think that my encouragement of his competence
(as well as the “caring” part, too—for me, these facets of teaching go hand in
hand) caused him to want to keep writing and try new things, which, in turn,
allowed his competence in writing to shine.
I wasn’t the person who taught him these writing skills. I mean, really, I’ve only been with him six
weeks. But I am attempting to create an
environment that is conducive for his success.
The last part of The
Dreamkeepers with which Ladson-Billings really challenged me is the
political nature of the work of culturally relevant teaching. That seemed to be one part of teaching that
all of the teachers commented on: “I do what I want.” And that’s the ultimate issue in teaching in
public schools, especially urban schools, who are sometimes reliant on test scores
just to stay open. Administrators want
to see that you’re preparing students for the test, and it can be difficult to
obtain tangible data from culturally relevant teaching. I think that this will be especially hard
when we first get teaching jobs, because we will likely have the more difficult
assignments, the classes who have to take these standardized tests, and it’s
likely that we’ll be required to perform “benchmark” tests on them every few
weeks. So how do you get to be one of
these venerated teachers from the beginning?
Is that even a possibility?
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