Shapes and teaching: I've learned that the circle is tops in the field of education. Seriously, there are so many circles involved in good pedagogy. Lit circles, now culture circles; they're what makes the culturally relevant, student-centered world go 'round. I think that Souto-Manning's explanation of culture circles seem to work perfectly with a workshop based classroom situation, and they are the best way of setting up a critical inquiry unit. While all the steps sound fairly basic and approachable (generating themes, problem posing, dialogue, problem solving, and action), the one issue that struck me is how difficult this culture circle set-up would be in practice. The student generates all of the discussion and content, but the teacher has to be constantly listening to pick up on themes of social issues that the students bring up naturally through conversation in order to guide her unit. After that, she'd have to be the ULTIMATE discussion facilitator to ensure that discussions are productive and safe. Even before she could become a facilitator to guide instead of direct conversation, she would have to teach students what good dialogue is and how to have those kinds of conversation (there's a great article by Robert Probst about teaching talking in the classroom that addresses this issue). And while we would like to think that all of the students would want to take action on their own and figure out their own way of action, I think you'd have to provide some scaffolding there. On top of all of this, the author mentions that the teacher would have to be constantly reflective and questioning of her own practices the whole time. We definitely need to practice reflection throughout any kind of unit, but man, Souto-Manning kind of makes the concept seem completely exhausting.
Also, the example that Souto-Manning gives of her first graders utilizing culture circles is crazy. I'm sure that some classrooms work like that, but I honestly think it would be hard to get the entire classroom involved in the same kinds of conversation, especially in high school. That's probably the reason why Valerie Kinloch only focused on two students in her Harlem book instead of 20!
Still, knowing about culture circles, that there's a name and steps involved in this "literacy for social action" practice, is definitely helpful for thinking about framing a critical inquiry unit, even if I can't utilize all of the steps that Souto-Manning espouses in her version of culture circles. Freire even says that we shouldn't just "import" pedagogical practices without re-writing and re-creating them for ourselves. In other words, even when your teaching methods are grounded in best practices and culturally relevant material, you're still doing your students a disservice when you mindlessly copy someone else's methods. I have to keep this in mind for myself sometimes. When I observe a great teacher, I want to immediately copy everything I see her doing. When I inevitably find that I can't do that (because I am a different person with different sensibilities), I consider my own efforts to be less successful.
I have to keep Freire's admonition in mind this upcoming month, when I'm on the docket to teach a lot more! The test-prep unit is done, they're STAAR testing next week, and then it's on to the bigger and better world of real reading and writing. AND April is National Poetry Month! So we'll see what I can do with poetry and almost-done-with-middle-school eighth graders. What a scary thought.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
East Austin on My Mind
Man, oh man, I had lots of mulling to do after finishing Harlem on Our Minds. I've actually been thinking about the issue of gentrification for a while now, especially since I've lived for the past two years in East Austin, a part of town that is becoming/is already a "hip" place to live in town. It wasn't until maybe five years ago that this area began to really feel an influx of "white-ification," and my husband lived here before then. He explains that it was an issue of cheaper rent for more space. It's also a function of location in Austin--the east side is closer to downtown, without having to slog through all of the traffic on Mopac and I-35. However, the demographics of the area are definitely changing these days. Instead of being feared by White people (though some still ask me how scary my neighborhood is--the only terrifying thing is how early the roosters begin crowing), E. 6th is a mecca for all bars hipster. Even farther east, where I live, there are more boutiques and trendy pubs opening every week. Although they're all local businesses, instead of the chains mentioned in the book, they're definitely the kinds of shops that the lower middle class cannot afford. I can't afford most of these places. However, I would feel welcome in them, which is a function of race.
Kinloch is quick to provide evidence that White people feel that gentrification is more of an issue of class than of race. While I feel more comfortable saying that it's only based on class, I'm sure that it is an issue of both class and race. On my block, we are the only white people. The rest of the houses contain Latino families, some of whom have been there for decades. Although we rent, we are discussing buying a house in the near future, and we would like to be on the east side. It's an area we know well, and there are many local artists and gallery spaces in this area of town that are important to us. However, I am concerned about my role in white-ifying the community. I think that, as Kinloch points out, involvement in the community is important so that I am preserving the neighborhoods rather than stripping them of their history and culture. In addition, I do think that Austin tries to alleviate some gentrification issues. For example, many neighborhoods on the east side have very strict zoning laws to prevent the construction of condos and corporate businesses. In addition, there is a housing program available through the town for residents of Austin who have low incomes to be able to purchase a house. In this way, the town is allowing people the opportunity to own rather than to have to deal with the financial strain of constant rent increases. I mean, we've even had to deal with the rent increases; interestingly, we rent from a Latina woman who owns many properties throughout the east side.
I don't think there are simple solutions. While I cannot change the white privilege that I enjoy, I can use my space constructively. As a member of the community, I plan on being involved more in activities and the neighborhood planning boards (we're a part of the Govalle community). As a teacher, I can utilize projects such as the activities that Kinloch discusses so that my students understand the history and the current state of the spaces they inhabit. And when I do buy a house, I will make my decision responsibly and acknowledge the role that both race and class play within my community and the way that it functions within the larger scope of the city.
Even with all that said, I'm still mulling. Kinloch's put East Austin on my mind.
Kinloch is quick to provide evidence that White people feel that gentrification is more of an issue of class than of race. While I feel more comfortable saying that it's only based on class, I'm sure that it is an issue of both class and race. On my block, we are the only white people. The rest of the houses contain Latino families, some of whom have been there for decades. Although we rent, we are discussing buying a house in the near future, and we would like to be on the east side. It's an area we know well, and there are many local artists and gallery spaces in this area of town that are important to us. However, I am concerned about my role in white-ifying the community. I think that, as Kinloch points out, involvement in the community is important so that I am preserving the neighborhoods rather than stripping them of their history and culture. In addition, I do think that Austin tries to alleviate some gentrification issues. For example, many neighborhoods on the east side have very strict zoning laws to prevent the construction of condos and corporate businesses. In addition, there is a housing program available through the town for residents of Austin who have low incomes to be able to purchase a house. In this way, the town is allowing people the opportunity to own rather than to have to deal with the financial strain of constant rent increases. I mean, we've even had to deal with the rent increases; interestingly, we rent from a Latina woman who owns many properties throughout the east side.
I don't think there are simple solutions. While I cannot change the white privilege that I enjoy, I can use my space constructively. As a member of the community, I plan on being involved more in activities and the neighborhood planning boards (we're a part of the Govalle community). As a teacher, I can utilize projects such as the activities that Kinloch discusses so that my students understand the history and the current state of the spaces they inhabit. And when I do buy a house, I will make my decision responsibly and acknowledge the role that both race and class play within my community and the way that it functions within the larger scope of the city.
Even with all that said, I'm still mulling. Kinloch's put East Austin on my mind.
Monday, March 18, 2013
A Measure of Success and Possible Failure
Although it was probably a crazy time for me to think that I should teach 8th graders, I created and taught a lesson the Thursday before Spring Break. And surprisingly enough, it went well! I'm sure it was partly because they got to leave the room and go to the library for part of the day, but I like to think I included a little pizzazz in there on my own. I got to interrupt the "Test Prep" unit with a lesson about how real readers choose books--I decided to talk about getting recommendations, mostly from friends, but from teachers as well. I think that it's important to emphasize that they're honing their reading and choosing skills not just for the classroom, but for all their years beyond school. Real readers depend on their friends and colleagues, and even websites, to give them recommendations about what they should read. I taught two classes, and I realized from the first class that it would be better to model the recommendation with a real person. This seems like a "duh" thing, but sometimes I forget to use the resources that I have in the room. If I'm asking them to do partner work, it makes much more sense for me to not play both partners. It's even confusing to read that sentence.
Anyway, there was exciting chatter in the classroom about the books that they've already read and why they think their group members should check out a certain book. I forget that whenever you decide that you like something, you feel like everyone else should like it too, so there's a built-in desire to tell people about what you like. They brought post-it notes with three suggestions to the library, and they spent their time actually hunting down books to read. I loved that even in the library, students were recommending certain titles with me (I had shared my recommendation of Matched, which is a book that they're familiar with). And, as always, the library and the librarian are amazing, so it was a really fun class period.
Those are the lessons that seem full of life and fairly easy to plan. It seems like that's in stark contrast to my whole class text unit plan, which was a little painful and really hard to work out. I'm sure it's because I end up working on assignments where I feel like I'm inventing the wheel, but I ended up choosing a text that isn't commonly taught at this point. Also, in working out my plan, I was not only creating assignments from scratch, I was attempting to find all these other examples of texts to include in the unit. I'm a little worried that I tried to do too much in the unit, but I tried to keep in mind that I specifically planned it out for 11th graders, so I think they should be able to handle it. (And that's another problem--I was making up an audience rather than thinking of one I'd been working with. I just decided that I couldn't envision the current classroom I'm in doing a whole class text.) In addition, I tried to work in a lot of group work so that they wouldn't feel overburdened individually, but we'll see. I'm sure it's one of those things that I'd have to be in the thick of to decide what to weed out and what to keep. Once again, I have discovered that lesson planning is really, very, extremely tough.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Real Writers
One major issue that I've run into this semester (and maybe this is an inevitable Spring semester issue) is TESTING. All day, everyday. During the course of my middle school observations, I haven't been able to observe on several occasions because the whole school is on lockdown for testing. Now, I understand that we want our students to have all the tools necessary to be able to do well on these tests, since that's the way that their success is currently measured in our school system. But it seems like we're mock testing and testing stuff that we don't even have time to teach! And here's the latest, craziest "mock" test situation: the 8th graders were being tested this past week, taking up the three English class periods that weren't already taken by a different standardized test, on something that they aren't actually testing on this year. Yes, that's right, they were practicing for a non-existant test (it was on writing a short story within that lovely 26-line block). And to what end? They had already completed a short story unit earlier in the year, and they needed to work on their non-fiction unit. My CT also explained that she had built in a few weeks for test prep, but she probably wasn't even going to be able to have time for that. Instead, pointless (to me) diagnostic testing takes precedence. Sigh.
So, to transition to Christenbury, in a perfect world, we would all be reading lots of literature (read like "litrature") and chatting about Shakespeare all the time without having our weeks and units halted and interrupted by the call of the standardized test. While she had some helpful suggestions about how to cover certain texts that may be tough to understand, I did have a problem with her overview of YA books as well as her assertion that you shouldn't teach a whole unit on poetry. First of all, her characteristics of YA books seem a little reductive, especially "a stripped-down plot." Also, the section about concern for the classics also seems too stuck in the canonical trap. Who's to say that these "classics" are necessary? And I do think that the poetry as a unit works as long as there's creative writing involved; I could see that lots of poetry gets overwhelming, but there seems to be a lot of components that you can talk about, even getting into issues brought up in hip-hop songs. Christenbury's chapters on writing and revising are right on, though, especially with her emphasis on the recursive nature of writing (since that's what we've been focusing on in Teaching Composition).
I think that the main concept that stood out to me when reading Smagorinsky was that of choice--no matter what writing assignment you're giving to students, there is room for individual creativity, which is of utmost importance. I've noticed my CT giving students a reflection at the end of the class, but she'll let them decide among three different types of reflection. So, while there's still structure involved, it lets them think about what they want to pursue and even what their individual strengths are. I also prefer genre-driven units when it comes to writing activities, because while it's important for the teacher to model certain lessons, it's also important that the students can immerse themselves in other examples of the genre. The portfolio that's produced by the end of the year is a really great idea, though I think it'd be difficult to accomplish with younger students unless you were super organized (and caused the students to be super organized as well).
Both Christenbury and Smagorinsky emphasize the importance of having time for real writing--not just writing that can be accomplished according to a certain set of rules during a class period. This real writing is tough--we're doing some of that right now in our Teaching Composition class, and it always surprises me by how much harder it is than I have anticipated. We have a few weeks built in to do revisions, and while that isn't really feasible in a high school classroom, I'm understanding the importance of time with real writing. Not that I have enough of it, but Spring Break is coming!
So, to transition to Christenbury, in a perfect world, we would all be reading lots of literature (read like "litrature") and chatting about Shakespeare all the time without having our weeks and units halted and interrupted by the call of the standardized test. While she had some helpful suggestions about how to cover certain texts that may be tough to understand, I did have a problem with her overview of YA books as well as her assertion that you shouldn't teach a whole unit on poetry. First of all, her characteristics of YA books seem a little reductive, especially "a stripped-down plot." Also, the section about concern for the classics also seems too stuck in the canonical trap. Who's to say that these "classics" are necessary? And I do think that the poetry as a unit works as long as there's creative writing involved; I could see that lots of poetry gets overwhelming, but there seems to be a lot of components that you can talk about, even getting into issues brought up in hip-hop songs. Christenbury's chapters on writing and revising are right on, though, especially with her emphasis on the recursive nature of writing (since that's what we've been focusing on in Teaching Composition).
I think that the main concept that stood out to me when reading Smagorinsky was that of choice--no matter what writing assignment you're giving to students, there is room for individual creativity, which is of utmost importance. I've noticed my CT giving students a reflection at the end of the class, but she'll let them decide among three different types of reflection. So, while there's still structure involved, it lets them think about what they want to pursue and even what their individual strengths are. I also prefer genre-driven units when it comes to writing activities, because while it's important for the teacher to model certain lessons, it's also important that the students can immerse themselves in other examples of the genre. The portfolio that's produced by the end of the year is a really great idea, though I think it'd be difficult to accomplish with younger students unless you were super organized (and caused the students to be super organized as well).
Both Christenbury and Smagorinsky emphasize the importance of having time for real writing--not just writing that can be accomplished according to a certain set of rules during a class period. This real writing is tough--we're doing some of that right now in our Teaching Composition class, and it always surprises me by how much harder it is than I have anticipated. We have a few weeks built in to do revisions, and while that isn't really feasible in a high school classroom, I'm understanding the importance of time with real writing. Not that I have enough of it, but Spring Break is coming!
Monday, February 25, 2013
On Planning and Not Planning
So, this whole creation of a unit plan is much harder than I thought it would be. It sounds silly, but I think I'm just realizing now how nuanced lesson planning can be, especially good lesson planning. And if you have your own ideas about how stuff should be arranged and what you want students to focus on, it's that much harder. The crazy thing is that we're planning units based on a class that's already had a semester to work together and we've already observed them for a few weeks now--it seems like a daunting task to create all of these plans ahead of time without having any idea of how the class is going to look and feel like. I guess it's good to have the basic groundwork in place so that you only have to tweak instead of start from scratch. But still, you're constantly tweaking after each class period as well! I think I'm just feeling overwhelmed, not knowing if I'll ever be adept at teaching.
It's also comforting to know that good teachers have to take time out like regular people. My CT took this past Thursday off as a mental health day--she said she just needed to shake some negative stuff out of her bones and get a fresh perspective. This is probably another important aspect to think about as a teacher. You have to know yourself and recognize when you're just getting drained. Since you set the tone of the classroom, you're just creating a cycle of annoyances if you're losing patience and the students are losing patience right back at you.
The previous week, she'd been having some behavior problems with a couple of classes, so she restructured the class time and asked them to all write her letters, explaining what they thought was going on and what might help. With their input, she was going to figure out a few changes to improve the classroom climate. She shared some of their comments with me, and they actually seemed very self-aware--even as 8th graders, they mostly know what's going on. They just need to be directly asked! And I'm noticing that that's something I will definitely have to take into consideration. I'm not the boss--I'm more of the orchestrator.
It's also comforting to know that good teachers have to take time out like regular people. My CT took this past Thursday off as a mental health day--she said she just needed to shake some negative stuff out of her bones and get a fresh perspective. This is probably another important aspect to think about as a teacher. You have to know yourself and recognize when you're just getting drained. Since you set the tone of the classroom, you're just creating a cycle of annoyances if you're losing patience and the students are losing patience right back at you.
The previous week, she'd been having some behavior problems with a couple of classes, so she restructured the class time and asked them to all write her letters, explaining what they thought was going on and what might help. With their input, she was going to figure out a few changes to improve the classroom climate. She shared some of their comments with me, and they actually seemed very self-aware--even as 8th graders, they mostly know what's going on. They just need to be directly asked! And I'm noticing that that's something I will definitely have to take into consideration. I'm not the boss--I'm more of the orchestrator.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Six Degrees of English
Sometimes I forget how crazily connected this old world is, but let me tell you about the craziest, weirdest, connected-est thing that happened before I taught this past Thursday.
We were starting a unit on non-fiction, and my lesson plan was about how to choose a piece of text that is appropriate to the issue that the students chose to focus on. My CT had gathered a bunch of different non-fiction articles, and she arranged them on the back wall, using manila envelopes to hold multiple copies of each article. On the front of each envelope was a copy of the article that was inside. I was glancing over them, and I happened to flip to the second page of an article about language in the classroom (I think it was about respecting students' home languages). A name at the bottom of the page caught my eye: it was the name of my 9th grade English teacher. The article quoted her on the issue. WHAAAAAT?!! Okay, maybe it's not that big of a deal, but it seemed crazy to me, since she taught me at a school in the middle of nowhere in NC, and I'm about to send my students in 8th grade in TX to possibly read an article in which she's quoted. Call it what you want, but it gave me a nice little sense of purpose on Valentine's Day morning, as my students lugged their four foot tall teddy bears and bouquets of roses into class. (I'm mentioning these things to let you know that their minds weren't exactly on the topic at hand. They were probably more interested in the non-fiction of what was going to happen at the dance after school.)
Anyway, segue to the connectedness of readings for this week: the male Bomer's chapters about writers' notebooks definitely reinforced what I've been learning about the importance of WNBs in my female Bomer's class as well as what I've been observing at school. As part of our Teaching Comp class, we are required to keep a writers' notebook, and it helps me understand why it can be so hard for students--it's really a stretch to make myself write in it on a regular basis. I definitely see how it's helping me create longer drafts and exercise my writing muscles, and I think it's really important to remember that we need to continue keeping a WNB as an example for our students and a tool for modeling. My CT actually puts up her various notebooks at the front of the class, so that when she's looking for an example, she can flip back through them for an example of a kind of entry or how she revised an entry. It also places value on writing--it's not just an assignment that you'll toss away at the end of the year, but it's a way to look back on your growth as a student and as an individual. As Bomer mentions, my CT wants students to include both writing and reflections on reading in their notebooks, so they have different sections (the first half and the second half) devoted for entries on each.
I've noticed that lots of the students go through multiple notebooks over the course of the year, and they definitely decorate them to their hearts' desires. Some girls paste pictures from magazines all over the outsides, some guys keep love notes taped there, and one girl taped a small mirror to the outside. (Her friend informed me that it's because she likes to look at herself a lot.) One student told me that she doesn't decorate her notebook on purpose--if it looks boring, then she explained that people are more likely to not want to look into it, and she writes a lot of entries for personal purposes. Also, I think her mention of "personal writing" is important; the bulk of what she writes isn't accomplished in the classroom. All of the students transport their WNBs back and forth, and this gives them the opportunity to do the kind of writing that Bomer talks about. This is a big difference from what I observed previously. During my observation last semester, I noticed that the students continually lost their notebooks, wrote for class on random sheets of paper, and never wrote about anything that wasn't an in-class assignment. I think this is largely because they weren't allowed to take their notebooks home! They always had to put them back into their assigned crates at the end of class. (I still don't understand how so many students STILL lost them.) I know that this policy was in place because the teacher was afraid that they would lose them, but they didn't seem to feel a sense of ownership or personal connection to their notebooks. There seems to be an amount of trust that you have to give to students before they can truly be involved in the real work of writers--and I don't think that merely answering in-class assignments gets to the heart of real writing.
Also, Smagorinsky's different assignments were interesting, but some of them seemed a little gimmicky. At this point, I'm still getting acclimated to what levels 8th graders are at and where they should be in reading and writing, so I think you'd really have to know where your students are at before you can begin to think about which assignments would be helpful and where to include them. (It seems like these could perhaps be included in unit-long plans, but there'd be no way you could anticipate them in a year-long plan, I think.)
We were starting a unit on non-fiction, and my lesson plan was about how to choose a piece of text that is appropriate to the issue that the students chose to focus on. My CT had gathered a bunch of different non-fiction articles, and she arranged them on the back wall, using manila envelopes to hold multiple copies of each article. On the front of each envelope was a copy of the article that was inside. I was glancing over them, and I happened to flip to the second page of an article about language in the classroom (I think it was about respecting students' home languages). A name at the bottom of the page caught my eye: it was the name of my 9th grade English teacher. The article quoted her on the issue. WHAAAAAT?!! Okay, maybe it's not that big of a deal, but it seemed crazy to me, since she taught me at a school in the middle of nowhere in NC, and I'm about to send my students in 8th grade in TX to possibly read an article in which she's quoted. Call it what you want, but it gave me a nice little sense of purpose on Valentine's Day morning, as my students lugged their four foot tall teddy bears and bouquets of roses into class. (I'm mentioning these things to let you know that their minds weren't exactly on the topic at hand. They were probably more interested in the non-fiction of what was going to happen at the dance after school.)
Anyway, segue to the connectedness of readings for this week: the male Bomer's chapters about writers' notebooks definitely reinforced what I've been learning about the importance of WNBs in my female Bomer's class as well as what I've been observing at school. As part of our Teaching Comp class, we are required to keep a writers' notebook, and it helps me understand why it can be so hard for students--it's really a stretch to make myself write in it on a regular basis. I definitely see how it's helping me create longer drafts and exercise my writing muscles, and I think it's really important to remember that we need to continue keeping a WNB as an example for our students and a tool for modeling. My CT actually puts up her various notebooks at the front of the class, so that when she's looking for an example, she can flip back through them for an example of a kind of entry or how she revised an entry. It also places value on writing--it's not just an assignment that you'll toss away at the end of the year, but it's a way to look back on your growth as a student and as an individual. As Bomer mentions, my CT wants students to include both writing and reflections on reading in their notebooks, so they have different sections (the first half and the second half) devoted for entries on each.
I've noticed that lots of the students go through multiple notebooks over the course of the year, and they definitely decorate them to their hearts' desires. Some girls paste pictures from magazines all over the outsides, some guys keep love notes taped there, and one girl taped a small mirror to the outside. (Her friend informed me that it's because she likes to look at herself a lot.) One student told me that she doesn't decorate her notebook on purpose--if it looks boring, then she explained that people are more likely to not want to look into it, and she writes a lot of entries for personal purposes. Also, I think her mention of "personal writing" is important; the bulk of what she writes isn't accomplished in the classroom. All of the students transport their WNBs back and forth, and this gives them the opportunity to do the kind of writing that Bomer talks about. This is a big difference from what I observed previously. During my observation last semester, I noticed that the students continually lost their notebooks, wrote for class on random sheets of paper, and never wrote about anything that wasn't an in-class assignment. I think this is largely because they weren't allowed to take their notebooks home! They always had to put them back into their assigned crates at the end of class. (I still don't understand how so many students STILL lost them.) I know that this policy was in place because the teacher was afraid that they would lose them, but they didn't seem to feel a sense of ownership or personal connection to their notebooks. There seems to be an amount of trust that you have to give to students before they can truly be involved in the real work of writers--and I don't think that merely answering in-class assignments gets to the heart of real writing.
Also, Smagorinsky's different assignments were interesting, but some of them seemed a little gimmicky. At this point, I'm still getting acclimated to what levels 8th graders are at and where they should be in reading and writing, so I think you'd really have to know where your students are at before you can begin to think about which assignments would be helpful and where to include them. (It seems like these could perhaps be included in unit-long plans, but there'd be no way you could anticipate them in a year-long plan, I think.)
Sunday, February 10, 2013
TESTING, TESTING
So. We looked through all the bajillion standards of the TEKS as well as the Common Core (I feel like that sounds very ominous...the COMMON COREEEE), as well as the hippy-dippy stuff of the NCTE. I'd like to say that I don't see the point in standards, but honestly, my rule-following heart-n-soul can see the good in such things. I think that they're a little outlandish on some accounts (the silly titles that the CC gives as examples for what your class should be reading are a bit outdated and blah), but I do think that we need to make sure that students are learning helpful skills in each grade. And honestly, I think test prep is part of that.
Yes, yell at me, call me a Republican (yikes), but we can't escape one simple fact: at this point, and for the foreseeable future, success in America (not necessarily real success, but what we like to measure as success) is based on test scores. They're silly anti-measures of true knowledge, but that's how the people in charge like to see that kids are learning stuff. I think we do a disservice to our students if we DON'T prepare them for this stuff. When I was in 7th grade, my mom knew that we were going to take SATs in preparation for the TIP (Talent Identification Program) thing. We didn't have money, but my mom (who is college educated and played the game herself) knew that doing well on this test would be good for me. She checked out a thick test prep volume for the SAT for me, and I did all the practice tests. And I made a 1210 on the SAT, in the 7th grade. Was I brilliant? Probably not. But I knew how to take the test.
My CT told her classes the other day that while tests aren't the end-all be-all of knowledge, "there's power in doing well on tests." She's right. Whether or not we should be giving power to standards and tests, there is certainly power in that right now. And I think that my CT is going about the test prep game in a helpful way. She and her co-teacher made up a test with just poems in it, and they reviewed how to read a poem, and how to explore a poem. Even while the students were working on the test, they talked about how to really get down to what a poem is saying. So it's not just about being able to answer the test questions in class, but it's also about the reading and analyzing process. While I think one is certainly more important than the other, we're explicitly helping our not-so-advantaged students access power. So while standards are certainly not going to facilitate standardized learning, we do need to make sure that all of our students have access to similar levels of knowledge, and, perhaps more importantly, power. Because isn't all knowledge power?
Yes, yell at me, call me a Republican (yikes), but we can't escape one simple fact: at this point, and for the foreseeable future, success in America (not necessarily real success, but what we like to measure as success) is based on test scores. They're silly anti-measures of true knowledge, but that's how the people in charge like to see that kids are learning stuff. I think we do a disservice to our students if we DON'T prepare them for this stuff. When I was in 7th grade, my mom knew that we were going to take SATs in preparation for the TIP (Talent Identification Program) thing. We didn't have money, but my mom (who is college educated and played the game herself) knew that doing well on this test would be good for me. She checked out a thick test prep volume for the SAT for me, and I did all the practice tests. And I made a 1210 on the SAT, in the 7th grade. Was I brilliant? Probably not. But I knew how to take the test.
My CT told her classes the other day that while tests aren't the end-all be-all of knowledge, "there's power in doing well on tests." She's right. Whether or not we should be giving power to standards and tests, there is certainly power in that right now. And I think that my CT is going about the test prep game in a helpful way. She and her co-teacher made up a test with just poems in it, and they reviewed how to read a poem, and how to explore a poem. Even while the students were working on the test, they talked about how to really get down to what a poem is saying. So it's not just about being able to answer the test questions in class, but it's also about the reading and analyzing process. While I think one is certainly more important than the other, we're explicitly helping our not-so-advantaged students access power. So while standards are certainly not going to facilitate standardized learning, we do need to make sure that all of our students have access to similar levels of knowledge, and, perhaps more importantly, power. Because isn't all knowledge power?
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