English Educator Autobiography

HEED MY MANIFESTO:

I was never one of those kids who knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.  Of course, a lot of elementary school students pick professions that they don’t end up in; they don’t become gymnasts or firefighters or presidents.  However, I never really picked one at all.  I always enjoyed reading, mostly for the escapist aspect, and I was a good student.  I had an amazing English teacher for 11^th and 12^th grades, but I decided that I wanted to become a medical doctor (or at least that’s what I convincingly presented to the scholarship committee).  I aced both of my AP English exams, so I didn’t even have to take freshman composition classes in college.  Instead, I calculated densities in my chemistry classes and dissected chicken embryos in cellular biology.  I didn’t rediscover my love of literature until I took a British Literature survey course my sophomore year of college; then, I was hooked.  Still, I never really considered options beyond college.  What does a person do with an English degree?  Why, go to graduate school, of course. 

During my time in grad school, I tutored in a writing center and taught three semesters of Freshman Composition.  I like tutoring, but I loved having classes of my own.  Looking back, I honestly had no idea what I was doing.  I used samples of departmental syllabi and activities that previous composition teachers put online.  While I wasn’t exactly teacher of the year material, I really enjoyed getting to know my students and forming relationships with them.  I’m not sure that I actually taught them much about writing, but I enjoyed the banter and lively discussions that ensued during constructive class periods.  After my experience in graduate school, I found a job working in a cubicle, with human interactions that consisted of, “This guy’s file is crazy.”  This job was not at all suited to my personality.  I am outgoing, I need to be around people, I enjoy creative problem solving, and I like to invest my leadership skills into something besides gathering coffee fund money. 

When I moved to Austin a year and a half ago, I began to reassess what I really wanted to do, which had to do with what I really believed in.  I believe in education, especially public education.  I believe in the power of the written word, and I believe in the hidden worlds of books.  I believe that every person is capable of learning and growing, and that everyone deserves to be given the opportunity for learning and growth.  And I believe that the power of reading and thoughtful writing, or literacy, as I’ve come to know it, is the key to living in a democratic community and making that community better.

As an English educator, I think that my role in the classroom is to foster that community of democracy, not only through introducing students to new material to read and different ways to write, but also through supporting honest dialogue and creative collaboration among students.  My role also requires me to lead students to higher levels of reading, thinking, and writing, without allowing them to settle for the mediocre.  I want to facilitate their access to the entire world beyond the walls of the classroom through literacy.  In order to accomplish my goals, I think that an important piece of knowledge for students is what a literate life looks like, encouraging students that reading and writing doesn’t just belong in the classroom.  In addition, they need to learn how to communicate effectively within their communities, whether they are in an academic setting or writing a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. 

I think that students can acquire this knowledge through learning and refining critical thinking skills, which are increasingly important in an era of information overload.  While I want students to constantly seek out knowledge, I also want them to be able to discern the best truth from that information.  I think that supporting and increasing students’ literate lives means prioritizing independent reading in the classroom that is based on student choice.  In my classroom, I need shelves of young adult literature and other titles that pique my students’ interest.  I need space (which may not be feasible) for students to find their best reading or writing spots.  I want to use a workshop structure, so that my students can gain the most knowledge possible as well as learn invaluable skills of collaboration. In my classroom, I want to create a community of learners, which involves students helping to structure the course.  I want to encourage my students to be lifelong readers and writers, even when they’re off at some school dissecting a chicken embryo.

New Year, New School, New Thoughts

BACK ON THAT SCHOOLWAGON, Y'ALL.  It's nice to get back into the swing of school and learning and teaching and all that jazz, but I feel like I'm starting from scratch a little on my blogpostin' style.  I should force myself to blog more than just once a week because I know it's a good habit--I tend to internalize bits and pieces of teaching thoughts that I always forget to record anywhere.  Plus, I could reduce the monstrous size of the callous on my right hand.

So, anyway, I'm enjoying the Christenbury book on "Being and Becoming a Teacher of English Language Arts."  Parts of the introductory chapters seem a little basic--like, I'm pretty sure I can figure out that I need to eat food at certain times of the day--but I really appreciate her inclusion of the thoughts of actual student teachers.  She doesn't try to gloss over any parts of the teaching experience, and she admits that it's both exhausting and exhilarating.  When the author mentioned times that she confronted school violence, it was a little scary but also a necessary reality check.  I mean, this stuff will happen--you'll get knocked into, intentionally or not--so new teachers need to understand that this is an aspect of being around people approximately the same size as you.  I mean, I almost got knocked over by a 7th grader last week.  Seriously.

The chapter that I want to discuss the most is the one on "Those Whom We Teach."  Christenbury notes that in order to be a teacher, you actually have to like young people.  And to like young people, you kind of have to understand where they're coming from.  She included a study down by the National Center for Educational Statistics from 2004 that found four factors that characterized difficulty in school achievement: a household income below poverty level, a primary language other than English at home, a mother with an education less than a high school diploma, and a single parent household.  After getting to know my students from last semester, I would say that most of them dealt with at least two of those factors.  And despite these factors, I know that those students have the ability to succeed, as long as they are encouraged by a positive school environment and teachers who believe in their ability to succeed.  In addition, the author's notes on alienated students really hit home with my high school experience.  I remember having three tracks: honors/AP, college prep, and regular.  Now, the titles of these tracks were a little inflated, because regular usually meant that you would prepare for a vocational career (or, in the eyes of staff and my peers, try to simply graduate), and honors/AP actually meant that you were preparing to go to college.  So what did that mean for the "college prep" track?  They certainly weren't the focus of guidance counselors who were preparing the honors track to get into college, and they didn't have the advantage of being able to leave school early to go to a vocational internship like the regular track did.  I guess the college prep track, or really, average track, had to figure out their futures all by themselves.

The "alienated average" is a really interesting concept that I hadn't thought of before.  My experiences last semester were in remedial classes, and my prior experience of teaching composition at a university would probably equate to teaching a honors class in high school.  However, this semester, I am mostly engaging with those "average" students (there's a pre-AP class even in 8th grade; that seems a little like overkill).  And so far, it seems that my CT is amazing at engaging all of her students.  Even the librarian, on library day, was able to engage with all of them!  Something's in the water at Ojeda, and I'm trying to drink it up.

P.S. The classroom set-up that my CT has goin' on is amazing.  There's lots of round tables with chairs, a couch, papasan chairs, window seats (!), and rugs.  I'm sure that it depends on the space that you have and what your school will allow, but it's my dream classroom.  I know that doesn't actually have to do with anything, but it's a far cry from the classroom last semester, where we had to cram in extra desks during certain periods, and kids were sitting on top of each other.  And windows!  Did I mention real windows??

What's Missing Is...

I had an argument with a friend this past week, when she informed me that studying education was silly.  First of all, I wondered why would she say that to me, knowing full well what I'm in school for, and second, we had to back up for a minute.  And we had a conversation/I forced her to listen to my side, wherein I presented irrefutable (to me) evidence that yes, we should, in fact, educate teachers.  The teaching profession is not made up of individuals who have some special affinity for imparting knowledge to others; in fact, what we should really be asking here is what this knowledge is and who that knowledge is supporting.  Needless to say, the articles for this week all did an outstanding job of giving me the most important point of my argument.  What's missing from this view of education as a "knowledge of good classroom strategies" is the ultimate goal of education--changing society!

If the solution to oppression is, as Paul Freire says, "not to 'integrate' them [students] into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure so that they can become 'beings for themselves,'" (p. 74), then yes, teachers have a lot to learn.  We can't only learn best practices, but we must also learn why that is and who the practices are serving.  It's tough to do this kind of critical thinking and exploring as an individual apart from a supportive group of learners.  Not only that, but we are also doing our students and our students' futures a disservice if we think that good teaching merely consists of content knowledge.  As Bomer & Bomer point out, "much of our teaching focuses on the individual (to the exclusion of collective social knowledge and action) and ends up reproducing the same old dominant culture and social divisions" (2001, p. 1).  And if Bomer & Bomer can say that about their teaching, then what about the rest of us pleebs?

Now that we realize that teacher education is essential (again, not just in the sense of having a bag of good strategies on hand), and we know that effecting social justice through our students is our essential goal, how do we go about including this in the curriculum?  Wolk points out several young adult titles that bring up issues of social justice.  Long proposes using photographs of historical events or struggles as a starting point for critical literacy and activism.  Pescatore presents the use of current events in the English classroom as a way to teaching critical thinking and writing skills.  I think all of these writers presented compelling arguments for the practical implementation of critical literacy in the classroom; now, it's up to us to put forth the time and effort involved in carefully using these structures to promote social awareness and justice.  And that's really what it all comes down to--using your time to prepare to engage with students in a thoughtful manner.  That thoughtful manner isn't just a frame of mind that you're born into if you're a "good teacher."  Good teachers must have good teachers as well.  In any case, studying education won't seem too silly when our students are becoming the ones who are charged with running this increasingly globally connected society.

It's 7 AM...Do You Know What Your Child is Reading?

It's funny to think about how only a few months ago, I would not have questioned the premise behind Lisa Simon's article on scaffolding complex texts.  I understand that we want to give our students the tools to read across all genres and eras, especially when thinking about what they might be required to read in college.  But do we have to make them read stuffy texts like House of Mirth?  I was required to read this novel in college for an American Lit class, and even I had trouble with it, partly due to its length.  I think that we can teach students the same concepts with other texts; even teaching one of Wharton's short stories would be more accessible and probably much more interesting for the teacher and the students.  Simon mentions several times that students had problems with engagement.  So, yes, we don't want to "teach down" to students because they are capable of reading and understanding difficult texts, but if a constant issue is that they are not engaged, then is the exercise of making them read a complex and long novel really doing anything helpful?  Again, I think that all of the helpful points about reading a novel from a different era can be taught from a short story, which is probably much easier to engage with.  I think that we have such a limited amount of time with students that we should open up the curriculum to expose them to more texts, not force them to slog through one novel for weeks.

That being said, I have watched the students in my class at Reagan engage with their individual texts for a couple of months now.  Although they get 25 to 30 minutes at the beginning of each class period to silently read their books, I've seen several students still only a quarter of the way through their chosen books.  And generally, these books are not very difficult as far as reading levels, content, or length.  I'm concerned that time has not been given to them on an individual level to talk about their texts.  Their end goal for reading is supposed to be a project that they'll work on in a couple of weeks, but it doesn't seem to motivate anyone because they're not being conferenced with on a regular basis.  On top of that, I wonder if some of the students are having problems with comprehension; however, I don't feel like it's my place to work on these issues, because the reading time is supposed to be completely silent.  Instead, I can only read a book with them and hope that the time is useful.

This process of individual reading also makes me concerned about issues like the ones brought up Wendy Glenn and Marshall, Staples & Gibson.  These authors show that all kinds of fiction are valid for students to read, whether the fiction is considered "literary" or not, but there are issues of money and gender are raised by certain texts.  If we are not aware of what our students are getting out of the individual texts that they're reading, then we're allowing dominant systems of power to be passed down to another generation.  Instead, like the authors point out, we must teach students to question characters, their choices, and the ideas that they're promoting.  We can't utilize critical literacy and foster social justice if we aren't even aware of the books that we require students to read for 30 minutes a day.

Obviously, I have learned this semester that it is difficult for me to observe under someone else's system and not want to take charge.  Since I have such difficulty with this concept, it's definitely something I need to work on.  It's been a great learning process so far, but I'm still mostly ready to be the one in charge. :)

On Code-Switching

As I've been pondering the past week, I've noticed a common theme regarding the concept of code-switching as well as nonstandard English.  I think it's particularly relevant to the class I observe, because these students generally fall into two camps of code-switchers: African American Vernacular English and Spanish.  The code-switching from English to Spanish is more obvious in the classroom setting, just because it's easier to hear a completely different language; however, I've noticed the code-switching from AAVE to English in the context of a request to the teacher.  In fact, a couple of African American students were arguing with each other, and in order to settle the argument, one student explained the facts of what was going on to the teacher, a white woman.  The student's language didn't exactly become formal English, but it was clear that she was attempting to use a more "standard" form of English in order to convey what was happening to the teacher; perhaps she was afraid that the teacher wouldn't understand her, or she is simply aware of the fact that standard English affords her words more power than a nonstandard English.

The code-switching between English and Spanish occurs constantly in the classroom, as many Latino students are efficient at finding the exact words that they need to express themselves in both languages. The school has flyers that utilize both English and Spanish, so it's not like the school is actively suppressing their mostly native tongue. However, they also realize that standard English is the language of power.  I came into class this past Tuesday with a "Yo Vote" sticker on (I can't find the accented e on here).  A couple of the Latino students questioned me about it.  They wondered why a voting sticker would be in Spanish, even explaining to me that "that's not English, Miss."  I took the opportunity to have a conversation about the fact that English is not the official language of the United States, which they expressed surprise about.  Their way of infusing their English with Spanish and vice versa is such a rich use of language, but I honestly haven't seen them doing this in their writing at all.  Instead, they focus on using English conventions that are sometimes very stilted at the expense of richness and creativity.  I think this is unfortunate, and I think that it comes from teachers never explaining to them that they can actually write this way.

As always, I think the most important aspect of writing that we have to keep bringing up with students is considering your audience.  As Hill's article recommends, "Teachers must facilitate distinctions and support students as they negotiate appropriate contexts for employing language features."  So, sometimes students' different versions of nonstandard English are the most appropriate to use; at other times, we (sadly) must work within the existing power structures of language and try to use a more formal, "standard" version of English.  I went to a presentation this weekend given by the woman who's the director of reading, writing, and Social Studies assessments for the Texas Education Agency. It was interesting to see how the testing measures were constructed, especially from the other side, but one of the biggest recommendations that she gave to teachers was to instruct students to consider their audience.  Of course, she's talking about audience in the sense that it would guide your essay structure, but I also think that this is true for code-switching and nonstandard English.

While we don't want to tell our students that their version of English is wrong, we do have to explicitly introduce them to the tools of power that currently exist in our system.  And one of those biggest tools is "standard" English.  While, as Hill notes, "standard English should be a choice, not an imposition," she makes this statement conditional.  Yes, it "should" be, but standard, or white English, remains imposed on American society as a structure of power, and I'm not sure how quickly a change will be made to this structure in the foreseeable future.

Complaints About the Time-Space Continuum

So, it's November.  I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and frenetic about all the stuff I have to do in the upcoming month.  It's always a tough time because I'm not very good at organizing my schedule so that I get certain things done ahead of time; instead, like many students, I depend on deadlines to push me to produce.  I'm beginning to realize that teaching is a profession that doesn't improve this tendency.  Because of all kinds of last minute issues that come up, planning lessons often occurs at the last minute, whether you intend to do so or not.  I think that's where I've been struggling to see progress in the classroom--I feel like there are days when not much is taught or learned, and I wonder if it has to do with poor planning.  However, there are times when there's not much to do about it.  For example, my CT has been required to go to two all-day workshops in the past two weeks.  Luckily, they didn't both fall on an A or B day, but still.  It's tough to think about that much time being wasted over the past couple of weeks, when there's had to be a lot of catch-everybody-up time already (due to a lot of student turnover).  And it is wasted time--the substitutes at Reagan pretty much let students have free reign.  (Two students wandered in our classroom the other day from a class whose teacher wasn't there and promptly proceeded to throw things at another student, start a fight, and cause the class to completely lose focus for a good 20 minutes.)  And they're testing for two days this week, which takes away from class time that they could be using to actually learn.

Maybe I'm just sounding negative because I've been listening to a lot of problems voiced by my CT about the school culture and administration.  Teachers were recently informed that they should not send students to the principal's office.  Reason?  The students already have to face problems at home that are scarier than anything they could encounter in a principal's office.  WHAT??  I do understand that we should be cognizant of our students' issues at home, and I'm also aware that some teachers will attempt to avoid confrontation by making principals deal with issues of student discipline.  But when you create a school culture that coddles students' behavioral problems, you're condoning bad behavior.  You're giving them an excuse.  Rather than saying, hey, I'm sure there's a reason behind why you're acting out, you're saying, hey, life is tough, so don't worry about it.  Instead of providing structure that may be lacking at home, and that the students may want, the school seems to be avoiding this issue, lest students may have a problem with it.  I understand that they really want students to show up, but they're lowering their expectations of students.  Also, they're making a broad generalization that seems pretty prejudiced.  So all students who come from a lower-income household have a bad home life?  A lack of money does not equate a lack of family support.  So anyway, I'm not sure what I would do as a teacher in this situation.  The administration recommends sending a "problem" student into another teacher's classroom to cool off, but this could cause unwanted distractions in that teacher's classroom.  I'm not really sure that there is a good solution, other than the fact that I'd try to avoid a blow-up from occurring by utilizing other classroom management techniques.

To address this week's articles about online literary communities and responses, I think that providing an online space for students to express themselves is a great idea.  However, the logistics could be a problem.  I know that it seems fairly easy for the students in the articles to have access to a computer and the Internet, but I don't even know where a computer lab is at Reagan.  There are two computers in the classroom, but for work on the computer to be helpful and accessible for everyone, I think that there would have to be a lot of explicit instruction on how to use the programs and time would be an issue.  There doesn't seem to be enough time just to get through the TEKS requirements, so I think you'd have to start at the beginning of the school year with regular instruction on technology use and a focus on online writing.  Ah, time.

In Search of a Writing Life

I've never been much of a diary writer or a journal keeper.  I definitely have desk drawers full of failed efforts, where I've never made it much past the page full of New Year's resolutions.  I used to think that I just wasn't a creative writer, but after taking a Creative Writing class in college, I think it's more that it's hard work on my part and that it's never been highly valued by teachers during my school career.  In addition, I think that most aspects of creativity related to reading and writing are lacking once students get to high school.  While I don't think that "book reports" are always helpful for engaging with texts and assessing reading comprehension, I really enjoyed the creative aspect of book reports in elementary and middle school.  But once I got to high school, there seemed to be no place for that creativity.  Instead, I was taught a specific five paragraph form within which to rangle my ideas, and writing about and engaging with texts was all analytical.  (I do remember one project where I wrote some journal entries in the voice of Yossarian from Catch-22--loved it.)

I think that the focus on all "good" writing being academic analyses caused me to think that creative writing was somehow a lesser form of writing, and I didn't want to "waste" my time on it.  However, I think that a lot of the articles we read for this week actually show that being aware of how to utilize and write in different genres (creative writing!) is helpful for the real world as well as for discussions on the how and why of different genres (as noted in Whitney, Ridgeman, and Masquelier).  Also, one of the most important aspects of writing, at least that I think, is being aware of audience; creative writing, at least in the sense of multigenre projects, forces students to really think through who they're writing to and for what purpose.  As noted in the Whitney article, students should be able to "take ownership of their writing as a tool for social life" (2011, p. 533).  We don't want students to think that the only purpose of having a literate or writing life is to do well in school.  We need to show them that good writing skills are important for having a rich, communicative life.

So, I am glad that we are taking part in a multigenre composition.  It's good to know what we're asking our students to do and note any problems that we come up against: "[B]y becoming writers themselves, teachers would better understand the composing process and use these newfound insights to work more effectively with their students" (Cohen, 2004, p. 120). But also, I think it's good practice for teachers to have a writing life beyond putting comments on student papers.  If we encourage our students to write, they need to see that we practice what we teach.  I think it will definitely be a stretch for me, but becoming a better writer is something that I definitely want to work on.  Even writing this blog is a good practice for me because even though I keep things mostly academic, there's a different voice that I get to use and hone.  I mean, my grandpa wrote an epic poem about his father a few years ago; I really have to flex my Homeric skills if I want to show him up.