Let’s Get Critical!

I have discovered my new favorite literacy workshop: Critical Literacy!! The idea of critical literacy is to read between the lines, to look for alternative points-of-view, to identify who is left out of text, to consider multiple perspectives; that kind of reading generates controversy and controversy engenders engagement and engagement raises the learning curve and the achievement bar!

A good article on the subject by Maureen McLaughlin and Glenn DeVoogd can be found in IRA’s Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy 48:1, September 2004 and an effective lesson on the subject is available at ReadWriteThink: Critical Literacy and Women in the 19th Century. Another website that has both information and lessons comes from Tasmania, The English Learning Area. And finally, a more academic article: “A Tale of Differences: Comparing the Traditions, Perspectives, and Educational Goals of Critical Reading and Critical Litercy” by Gina Cervetti, Michael Pardales, and James Damico.

I approach Critical Literacy is through a three-step process, moving from images, to engaging text and finally to content print materials. I suggest this method because words don’t get in the way…students are forced to make meaning with only visual clues…well, and of course, schema! That approach levels the playing field for students who are able to think and analyze beyond their reading levels. Most students and adults seem at greater ease when they are able to try out various meanings and points-of-view with images than they are with print text.

I start with a cartoon or caricature related to the content area or theme or lesson and get students to engage in careful and scrutinizing questions about the visual representation as the foundation of meaning making:

· Whose point-of-view is at work in the image?

· What emboldens an artist to portray this type of image?

· What does the artist expect others to see?

· How are expectations and actual responses different from one another?

Of course, this is not a complete list of questions…this is only fodder for kids to get started and begin to discuss who is left out of the joke or who is the brunt of the satire. Then the discussion goes on to why this happens and how or what we should do about it…political and social activism.

From there, I move to a print medium, but an engaging texts…a fractured fairytale like the True Story of the Three Little Pigs, a poem or short story that has a grabber at the end…if not the beginning. Get them using the same questioning strategy to explore print text: whose point-of-view is at work? How doe varying points-of-view change the story? Whose point-of-view is more valuable” Whose point-of-view is easier to hear or listen to? Why? Again, not an all inclusive list, but a start. An activity that extends that reading can be the creation of a new point-of-view…using the initial genre as a model or developing the new point-of-view in a new genre–use the poem to generate a fractured fairy-tale…

Finally, content text…and now the process is a skill or at least near skill and kids can begin to really question text and in their questioning make information knowledge…accessible and useable!

Day Two at NCTE

Friday was another great day at NCTE. I’m not sure how many colleagues are here at the convention, but I’ve seen figures ranging from 6,000 to 10,000. With a crowd this size, you can meet people and run into them throughout the day…and that really builds community. First session: Marc Prensky! He was not only a motivating techie speaker, but he was funny, too! He reminisced about his own high school English teachers and opined about the canon. Actually, his thoughts parallel many of my own–we may be from the same generation. Like Marc, I don’t remember much of my high school literature, except here and there for some titles…oh, I did enjoy a couple of pieces of literature, like Thornton Wilder’s By the Skin of Our Teeth, but too many of the novels we read were canonical and without the cannon bang, at least for a teenager of the 1970’s. My best memories of literature are connected to texts from my drama class. I probably remember that one because we were engaged in dramatic representations of the text–my drama teacher did remark on my report card that, “Dea has a flair for the dramatic!”

After that, I was off to a presentation by the Grammar Goddesses–they have several books and are NCTE presenting queens. They used to give out tiaras to those attending their presentations, but have recently gone to golden stickers. Coincidentally enough, while there, I met Carla Beard, Web English Teacher. Everyone at the table was in absolute jaw dropping awe! Even after she left, teachers around the table continued to rave about herextensive web page. If you haven’t been there, take a look. She has compiled a repository of materials and links arranged by text title, content area and thematic approach. Several of the teachers at the table confessed to visiting the site daily.

The highlight of my day, if not Marc Prensky (and I’m not sure it wasn’t) was the session with Ellin Keene. The room wasn’t full so I had the pleasure of being front and center. Ellin has more energy than any presenter, with the exception of myself, I have ever seen. She talks a mile-a-minute sharing family anecdotes connected to school traumas and successes. She is confessional (we have a lot in common) and openly challenges the audience to broaden their view of the educational landscapes and horizons our profession.

Ended my day with a writing workshop presented by a group from Northern Illinois University. One aspect of the presentation addressed getting kids to move from the generalities of writing to specific detail using images. I love that! I believe all teaching begins with images. Another part of the presentation introduced a method to collaborate with engaging data that becomes a decision making process and culminates in a written text. Visit their site for more: talkinginclass.org

gotta run…I’ll add more links later.

Wikipedia: a teaching resource

I am enhancing a workshop that I share with teachers on the classroom use of Wikipedia. Now, you may be surprised at this, but I still encounter teachers who don’t even know what Wikipedia is!! That is shocking, but I value these teachers because anyone who takes the time to attend a workshop on a topic they know nothing about clearly is a learner! I will also note that more and more, when I ask who allows Wikipedia to be used by students for early stage research, more and more teachers are raising their hands.

Anyway, the point is, I found a blog entitled Traffic Statistics for Wikipedia Articles that links to a site, Wikipedia Traffic Statistics, showing the top 500 Wikipedia articles and the number of visits to each of those site by year. From that site, you can visit the actual site…then I suggest you go to the discussion tab and click on that tab to see how reputable the site itself is. Of course, you will see sites that a teacher would never take a student to…however, there are some excellent sites on the list…like Speed of Light which is rated as a “featured” article in Wikipedia which means it has been “peer reviewed” by an editorial board and found to be reputable and even valuable to the field of physics in the accuracy and importance of the information offered.

There is much to learn about Wikipedia and there are many ways that all content areas could be using it to engage their students and increase learning!!! I have been giving a two-hour workshop on using Wikipedia to teach the skills of Critical Literacy. There is so much there, that my workshop will be expanding to a full day to incorporate reading comprehension, Critical Literacy and writing….mulitple literacies using emerging technology!!! I almost put this baby to bed before further investigation. If you are interested in Wikipedia, check this blog out, right here on WordPress: The Way Things Work. And then go to Larry Sanger’s (founder of Wikipedia) new online encyclopedia, Citizendium. The plot thickens and my curiousity is peaked!!

 

 

High School Challenge: Challenging Schools to Challenge their Own Thinking!

Attended a two-day seminar in Bloomington, Illinois this week–the High School Challenge. The event was sponsored by Coalition for Illinois High Schools, a medley of twenty+ educational groups, among them the Illinois Principals Association. The keynote speakers were top-notch: Debra Pickering from Marzano’s think tank in Colorado and Dr. Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center. They were an interesting mix….Pickering provided practical examples and Dr. Reeves quoted research complete with citations. More than that, the topics they addressed are real concerns for teacher and administrators in Illinois and around the country.

The focus seemed to be on grading, though topics like vocabulary and gender gaps were part of the discussion. Both speakers addressed some of the minutie that teachers continue to preach and test, and both speakers addressed the challenge of meeting the needs of diverse audiences. Pickering and Reeves both drew on personal stories of their children and how different siblings can be and learn. Part of that discussion comes from Reeves research on 90/90/90 and the myths that low SES and minority kids are destined to perform at levels significanly lower than white middle class kids.

Both speakers offered workable solutions to the current A, B, C, Dilemma. Grades, as they are used today, demoralize some students while giving a false sense of intellectual security to others. Students who both 1) know how and 2) are willing to play the game of school can probably earn grades that will get them a diploma and maybe even garner them college entrance. But the fact of the matter is that most kids today are taking remedial classes in their freshman year either in English, math or both! What does that say about high school math and English?

Part of the discussion over the two day sessions dealt with methods classroom teachers can and should take to not only to more effectively evaluate, but to teach through engagement! Assessment should be a tool for engagement, not the dreaded testing situation that it has been made to be, not just because of NCLB, but through the epochs of testing as we knew it ourselves. Tell me, honestly, who ever looked forward to a test. The greatest concern I usually had was whether the teacher would test over the material that I had studied or would h/se pick some obscure fact or perhaps something not so obscure, but equally out of my reach because the information didn’t resonate with me. Twenty years later, that is my own children’s nightmare before testing. We just don’t learn. (kinda funny, isn’t it…we want our kids to learn what we think is important, but we don’t learn what research and past practice shows us is detrimental to achievement!)

In my last few years of teaching, I worked with a team of teachers on an “integrated curriculum.” We worked as a team incorporating literature, social studies, and science. Amidst that, we ensured that essential vocabulary was taught and that various ways of knowing were actively addressed. And get this…we had NO tests. All grades were based on projects and those projects offered choice both in their composition and in the lengths students chose to go in proving their mastery of content and skill. They were motivated…most of the time. And that, I must say was the finest hour of my teaching, partly due to the results but mostly due to the comradery of teachers and students. We were all learning and we were doing it together.

Back to the “High School Challenge…” One of the ideas I took to in grading was not to list grades in the book by test or quiz and the date, but by what the assessment measured…and that made me wonder why we couldn’t change our grading so that instead of having a composite score for an assessment, why couldn’t we write better assessments that truly measured what we had taught and break our grade books down into those goals rather than dates. Then, in any given assessment, we may be able to measure the students’ level of proficiency that way….once they were proficient in the skill or the knowledge, then move on…or at least they could. One way we lose kids is through repetition. They get tired of making the diorama or learning about the Battle of Gettysburg or defining a simile. Every content area is guilty of redundant malignancy.

Just a few thoughts….

 

 

Should I or Shouldn’t I???

Okay, I wrote a poem and it’s not my first. I have written many poems and so have you, I am sure. But the question is, since I have a blog, should I post this poem? The reason I consider posting this poem on this site is because I read it last night at the IRA Poetry Olio, the focus of yesterday’s blog. What in the H—heck, come on…. is “olio”? Well today, I was informed that is an Irish stew; I digress, in that I am going to now unveil this poem. My caveat is that I only wrote it over the last couple of weeks which means it is still in the cooker: 

Six feet–six inches of monochromatic black

slowly shares painful memories of the past:

“Don’t remember kindergarten;

first grade neither.

Remember fourth and fifth;

a cacophony of teacher cursing.

“Then Chicago Public became my past.

Beyond the city lay my future,

In the School of an Open Heart.

“I remember Junior High:

Caring Teachers

Shared Direction

High Expectation.

Teachers who talked to us, not at us.

Teachers who guided with questions

And helped with homework.

“Yet, here, too, was cacophony–

Not of teachers cursing

But of students pained by

stress

poverty

ignorance.

“Eventually, teachers without immunity to local disease

Fell victim to epidemic attitude.

“Teachers, please hear me–

 I who don’t remember kindergarten or first grade.

I who hear only cursing when I think on years

evoking spelling bees and field trips in your minds;

Hold conversation with your charges; build antibodies to local disease.

Tell jokes and laugh; relieve yourselves of pain.

Call me by name: Marvelle.

 

Literacy on my Mind

I arrived in Atlanta yesterday to attend the IRA (International Reading Association) convention. From the first leg of my journey, good omens flew with me. Although initially ticketed to fly from my home town to Chicago and there catch a connecting flight to Atlanta, I became a benefactor of fate due to unscheduled maintenance on the initial flight. Because of that, I was put on a non-stop flight to Atlanta (good omen #1) and having safetly & swiflty arrived in Atlanta, I struck up conversation with an equally social gentleman (good omen #2) while patiently waiting for the downtown shuttlealongside twenty other reading pilgrims. I was blessed on Saturday afternoon to make the acquaintance of Richard Hodges, author of numerous articles, book chapters and books and cited by others in support of seemingly successful literacy programs, such as Sitton Spelling. My 2008 literacy pilgrimage was off to fine beginnings with stimulating and engaging conversation that included all the elements of a memorable exchange: personal connections, theoretical discussion, pedagogical implications, practitioner application and more personal connections!!

Today, serendipity again had its way, and if you’ve read some of my previous blogs, you know how I appreciate the role of serendipity in my life. I had registered for a Sunday seminar last fall, probably the first week of IRA convention registration and of course chosen a topic that was relevant to where i was in that moment (but frankly, I had forgotten what that “thoughtful” choice had been. I can’t overestimate how satisifed I was with decision months ago: “Students Have Rights, Too: Creating Literary Experiences that Place Learners” first was the title of my full day seminar. The speakers and the researchers that spoke told stories and shared findings that validated the research I have been conducintg since January on caring in the high schools and resonated with my pedagogy as practitioner in the selection of culturally relevant texts and activities for contemporary youth.

I have spent most of my teaching career creating relevant, engaging lessons that connect across curriculum and beyond the schoolhouse doors. And that means advocating for appropriate text selection that reaches beyond the cannon. Well, today, I had the opportunity to hear Alfred Tatum speak about that very topic. However, he put a great twist on those words: “Don’t advocate for texts; advocate for kids!” His point was that Shakespeard is dead; he needs no advocators; our kids are alive, but dropping out right and left; they need advoactors. However, Tatum does not want a “waterd down curriculum” so don’t get the idea he wants Shakespeare out of the schools–rather he urges teachers to make the text choices relevant to the audience–have a real reason you choose Shakespeare that goes beyond “that’s the way it has been done here.”  

You may ask, “Why the excitement” and “Where is the serendipity?” Over the last several years, I have been narrowing the focus of my research for the completion of my dissertation and in the course of that academic winnowing, I have used Dr. Tatum’s work as a resource. In the last two months, I have been part of a professional learning community (some people may call them a committee) in an Illinois school district that is studying Tatum’s latest book and reflecting/projecting ways his theoretical framework could be applied in their educational settings.

If you are interested in the happenings at IRA, keep me posted in your reading regimen. I am anxious to share what is happening here. I sense a shift from previous conventions as I look forward to sharing the evolving nature of effective and relevant teaching with you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Synergy: life and learning

Friday I was in Joliet with an enthusiastic group of teachers. Our workshop was entitled, “Boys and Books.” Much of the workshop features data comparing boys’ and girls’ success rates as measured by high school achievement and post high school attendance as well as a good body of current research on gender differences in the human brain. We also talked about we could differentiate instruction to better meet the needs of boys based on the data and research that I shared.

After I returned home, I set myself to work on my grad lesson for Monday’s class. My class is studying qualitative research, and in that bent, we are specifically looking at caring. My assignment was to read four texts and write a reflection…something that I felt really entangled itself with my concern for boys at this tine in our educational history and their point of adolescence as they move towards maturity and responsible citizenship.

Let me share a bit of my reflections with you here:

“Caring implies a continuous search for competence” (Nodding, 1995). The reading of those words echoed in my mind. Only yesterday, I had spoken to a group of teachers about the need for “self-efficacy” among students if they were to move from the roles underachievement to the lists of college applicants anxiously awaiting acceptance letters to the institution of their choice. I agree with Nodding. Teaching concepts of care can both widen and deepen opportunities for content instruction; furthermore, developing concepts of care can provide educators opportunities to connect content to real-world scenarios and provide authentic learning….

As I read and reflected on my Friday workshop, I could not help but consider current brain research and consider again the relationship of fear and discomfort to learning and retention. Our students come to us troubled and unsure, but they come and we must meet them where they are if we are to help them find their way out of circumstances that will lead only down circuitous one-way roads. But teachers, too, are wounded. And because of those wounds, they need caring principals that impart trust in the process of gaining mutual respect for all engaged in the growth and learning of a healthy community….

Alice Walker’s phrase, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender” speaks to me on this theme. Before today, I did not have those words to bolster my sense of self. Though I have always considered myself a feminist, (I shared that during my Friday workshop) I challenge how feminism has serviced or disserviced our schools. Have we pushed our girls into arenas they would have otherwise chosen to avoid? Have we limited our boys at the expense of creating equal environments which are no longer fair? Are we caring about all of our students’ needs? Are we sensitive to the differences in gender? I would think that to be “womanist” would to be inclusive rather than exclusive, to be full of color and concern for all rather than to be diminished by the absence of color whether that color be real or symbolic….

I’m Back!!

 Yes, I’ve been out of touch for awhile. For the first time in about two years, I coerced

my “other” half to take the vacation I have been wanting rather than the annual fishing trip or the family wedding trip that too often replaces what otherwise would have been a relaxing week away from work. As you can see, we traveled to France! Preparing to leave work and the country for two plus weeks was a job in itself…and upon return…more catching up and moving forward than I had planned. I am just beginning to come up for air.

Got a great email today with this link to a website that maps the future of education.  Actually, the email came from a discussion thread I am still sharing from the Future of Education virtual Conference last summer. The map has a futuristic feel and some provacative portents about the direction of society and as a result, the emerging trends and eventual needs of our education system.

Oh, what else? So much that I don’t have time to address it all. Busy with developing UbD lessons and presentations. I have been reading the collaborative work of Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe and taking a class on the Wiggins’ model. As an Illinois teacher, I had a great deal of in-servicing in the SAC model which is credited to Rick Stiggens but reads like Wiggins. The SAC initiative that was recently left out of our Governor’s budget, but lesson plans  found on the state website can still be accessed, which is really a boon for teachers. And although they don’t necessarily fully follow Wiggins’ theory, (I still see too many that mention accomodations for gifted students being “reading the more difficult passages” or “having opportunities for assignments that require high level thinking”), the lessons all establish goals and assessments prior to diving into daily activities.