Technology vs Teachers, part 3

(Part 3 of 3. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here)

ONLINE LEARNING 

Many students are being “left behind”, even in this age of widespread education reform. And that’s with teachers and the same classroom! Take the teacher presence out of the classroom experience—why would you expect the students to succeed? 

Yes, the online course requirement will surely “allow students to take subjects that were not otherwise available at their schools and familiarize them with learning online, something [Superintendent Luna] said was increasingly common in college.” (NYT article)

Even when I was in college at the turn of the millennium, several of my classes had an online component. Over email, we would discuss readings from class and share our reflections. However, I can firmly say that it was too slow and impersonal to feel the same as an in-person discussion. There are certainly elements that can complement or reinforce things from a class, but I do not agree that “learning” online (as opposed to practice or reinforcement) is something that happens in college, nor should it. 

I asked my college-age sister about her experience with online components to classes. She said they have discussion groups and can look at the syllabus or other class information, and for one there's even a webcam feature, which is a neat way to do modern 'office hours' or class discussion.

Online learning still requires a teacher somewhere. What it means is that those teachers might be responsible for even more students than a standard classroom, with all the attending grading and other time. Plus there is less person-to-person contact, which makes it more difficult and time-consuming to discuss a complex concept with a student. If you had the option of stopping by a student’s desk for a few minutes to review their work as they were working, and sending a series of twenty emails over three days, which would be the best use of everyone’s time? 

Not to mention the ease of distraction; we adults have all lost hours to the internet when we were “supposed” to be doing other things. Kids are going to be no different! Who will be there to keep them on track in class?

“[Ms. Rosenbaum] said she was mystified by the requirement that students take online courses. She is taking some classes online as she works toward her master’s degree, and said they left her uninspired and less informed than in-person classes. Ms. Rosenbaum said she could not fathom how students would have the discipline to sit in front of their computers and follow along when she had to work each minute to keep them engaged in person.”” (NYT article)

Discipline is the number-one issue that most teachers face—more so than even curriculum. When you’re teaching in a classroom, you can see who is with you and who is lost, not just by how many hands are raised, but also by eye contact, body language, and facial expression. All that nuance is lost when everyone is communicating only through the computer.

Perhaps one reason that it may work better in college is that the students are there more voluntarily, and they are independently trying to work for their own grades. It’s difficult enough to engage a 17 year old who cares more about upcoming graduation than concentrating on their math teacher. Plus, college professors have a high expectation of their students—a lot more passive listening and note-taking, fewer assignments, longer essays, more in-depth exams. If you do the work, you pass; if you don’t, you fail. High schools are more politically motivated to pass their students. I know the middle schools I taught at sure were.

Sometimes I tend to think that all kids hate school and think that teachers are dumb. But they understand that they need good teachers and good schools to help them do their best. Kids want to learn and want to succeed. (At least, until the system beats it out of them.) Kids know better than anyone if their teacher is really invested, and kids want good teaching more than anyone else. 

“Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students — about half of the school — staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: “We need teachers, not computers.”

Having a new laptop “is not my favorite idea,” said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum’s English class who has a blond mohawk. “I’d rather learn from a teacher.”” (NYT article)

Technology vs Teachers, part 2

(part 2 of 3 in response to the NYT article about Idaho--see Part 1 here)

CRITICAL THINKING

Students do not learn critical thinking from looking at a website or searching for something on Google. Students do not learn critical thinking from watching a video on YouTube. Students do not automatically become good writers by reading blogs and tweeting. 

All of those tools do not, cannot, should not replace teachers and teaching. They are just that—TOOLS—that good teachers can use to guide students in developing their critical thinking and reading skills. Teachers are what make the difference. Teachers provide essential direction and feedback to students, leading students to making significant connections between the outside world and their own, and helping them read, write, and talk about it in a meaningful manner.

 “Teachers don't just teach the curriculum; they process it, they analyze it knowing their students' skills.  They invest their time in it so that students will want to invest their own.  They make it meaningful, relevant, and they make it fun.  Technology can help with that, but it shouldn't replace.  Teachers do more than just teach; they shape, they mold, they model behavior, and they connect.  Often that connection is worth more than any curriculum.  Worth more than any computer program.” (http://mrspripp.blogspot.com/2012/01/teachers-do-more-than-teach-why.html)

Teachers have various kinds of curriculum resources that they must present to their students. But each teacher puts their own spin or emphasis on what they teach. Teachers and students aren’t widgets, or robots, and they aren’t all on the same level—within a class or across grades. There must be some element of customization to take student achievement level into account, let alone student interest level. Certainly, technology can aid in both of those. 

"No technology is good or bad by itself; it's what you do with it," James Gee, an Arizona State University professor who has studied the use of video games in education, said. "Games are turning out just like books. Handing a kid a book doesn't make them better students or more literate. And the same gap can develop with technology." (http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120109/NEWS03/201090316/Learning-teaching-via-video-games)

There have been good teachers for as long as teachers have existed. Good teachers will continue to do good teaching with or without technology. Surely, all teachers should have the means and capacity to incorporate technology appropriately into their classrooms. Surely, there are still teachers who turn on a video to placate students.

As teachers are asked to do more and more with less time and less money, is it really a good idea to force one kind of resource in schools? Not even a specific curriculum or standard list with actual content, but just technology? Does it become yet another pro-forma part of what teachers must do, like bulletin board displays and micro-managed wording about objectives, aims, teaching points, etc—just use the computer for the computer’s sake? Will there be any allowance for teacher style and comfort, or will they be forced to use it all the time every day? Who will be the judge of a good use of technology vs bad? 

A couple days ago, Dr. John B. King, Jr., the NY Ed Commissioner, sent an email to all teachers, asking everyone to begin using the new Common Core standards and exemplars in their classroom.

“In every ELA classroom (or any classroom where literacy plays a significant role), the Common Core calls for thoughtful learning experiences around rigorous texts – you should conduct close readings of those texts with your students and ask deep and thought-provoking, evidence-based questions about the texts to facilitate evidence-dependent conversations and build students’ ability to marshal arguments about the texts.” 

Notice there’s nothing in there about technology. There’s no suggestion or requirement to use a computer, an interactive game, or smartboard. The Common Core wants students to go in depth, to THINK, and it allows that teachers are the ones responsible for getting the kids there. It’s about talking and writing, on a deep level, which is what leads to critical thinking, not just the blanket use of technology. 

Anyone can pull up a video on the internet. Not just anyone can incorporate that into a meaningful lesson, with thoughtful work from students before and after, as part of a complex curriculum. “… Ms. Rosenbaum [an Idaho teacher] did use a computer and projector to show a YouTube video of the devastation caused by bombing in World War II. She said that while technology had a role to play, her method of teaching was timeless. “I’m teaching them to think deeply, to think. A computer can’t do that.”” (NYTarticle)

I asked @19Pencils (the twitter account for www.19pencils.com, an educational new/sharing website) for a response to the Idaho article: “High tech doesn't make straight A students. And high tech doesn't replace good teaching. It's a tool. High tech also makes vast assumptions of staff, IT dept, etc. Student gains are only as good as the support.”

Technology is a tool, and an important one, but the critical piece is the teacher.

Technology vs Teachers, part 1

(I split my response into three chunks because it was so long)

Last week, the New York Times published an article about Idaho’s new state initiative, which will give every student and every teacher a laptop, and make two online credits a graduation requirement for high school students. 

At first blush, it sounds like a good idea. Kids need to be connected! Kids need to learn technological literacy! Teachers need to harness the power of online resources! Schools need modern tools!

But then the details of the program begin to sound irresponsible and dictatorial, rather than inspirational and helpful.

First, all this technology will be *required*. “Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning.” After all, the computer is not the teacher. And you know there will be older teachers who don’t understand technology, who will either forsake it entirely, or use it in an inefficient manner.

Two, with education budgets spiraling into freefall, Idaho will use tens of millions of dollars to provide the physical resources as well as the necessary training for the 15,148 teachers in the state. Idaho already has the 2^nd lowest per-pupil spending in the nation. Is there really enough money to spare to focus so much on one aspect of school? 

“Mr. Luna, the superintendent, said training was the most essential part of the plan. He said millions of dollars would be set aside for this but that the details were still being worked out.” Is it fair to divert money that could pay teachers a more livable wage (starting salary is now a mere $30,000, though there is another new reform called Students Come First, which attempts to increase teacher pay, including pay-for-performance) to instead pay for computers that may or may not be used to their best advantage?

TECHNOLOGY AND MISINFORMATION

To me, the most disturbing part is that the state leaders don’t seem to understand how school or students work.

“For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most.

"When asked about the quantity of unreliable information on the Internet, he said this also worked in favor of better learning. “There may be a lot of misinformation,” he said, “but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth.””

This frightens and angers me—that the governor believes students will magically acquire critical thinking just from having access to Wikipedia? When teachers around the country already fight a losing battle over internet-printed “essays” in all grades and subjects?

“Schulte (2002) reported the results of a Rutgers University study based on 4,500 high school students from 25 high schools around the country. The study found that 72 percent of the students admitted to  “seriously cheating on a written work” and more than half had “copied portions of a paper from the Internet without citing the source.”

Donald McCabe, the founder of the Center for Academic Integrity, is quoted as saying that “…cheating is starting younger—in elementary school in fact. And by the time students hit middle and high school, cheating is, for many, like gym class and lunch period, just part of the fabric of how things are….What’s changed is technology. It’s made cheating so easy. And the vast realms of information on the truly, worldwide Web are so readily available. Who could resist?” (in Schulte, 2002).” (http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=9&n=9) 

Now think about how much the digital world has changed since 2002!

Now, to their credit, perhaps some of the Idaho teacher training might be about teaching responsible web use, to ensure students do not plagiarize, and making it clear that teachers will be able to catch them and enact appropriate consequences. 

(I am very doubtful of that, however; as more and more it seems like parents feel like they have the right to defend and enable their children, regardless of the behavior; schools feel more and more pressure to bow to parents’ will rather than adhering to the code of conduct.) 

Let’s hope at the least there is a state-wide teacher membership to Turn It In!

[continue reading Part 2]

The Other Side of the Story

I made it to the school level spelling bee in fourth grade and seventh grade.

In sophomore year history, we performed classic Greek plays. Our 'Furies' swept the award show after the festival.

In high school chemistry I conscienciously did my homework every day. I received an 87% in that class and was more proud of that than any A I earned.

I aced the stoichiometry quiz (balancing moles and molecules in chemical reactions).

Junior year in gymnastics, I made a list of goals at the beginning of the season and accomplished almost all of them.

I premiered a new floor routine (to Janet Jackson's Control) at a meet with one of the top teams in the district. I scored a 7.5 and tied for fifth.

I made it to the regionals in floor and beam that year.

In my first game on the JV softball team, I hit a three-RBI triple.

I worked with three peer health education programs--Planned Parenthood Teen Council in high school, a Positive Body Image group at Western, and a University Health Ed program at UW. I gave some very successful presentations with each program.

I represented my dorm building in the res hall council freshman year of college.

My first quarter of college, I took four courses and my GPA wasn't great. But my GPA improved every single quarter after that, for all four years.

I interned for two years at a national nonprofit organization. The second year I was pretty much in charge of the website. (Of course, after I left they merged with another company and had a much more complicated site.)

I was always a procrastinator with big projects and papers. In college, since the last two years required so much writing, I actually worked harder and did not procrastinate with writing. Eventually, I noticed that when I worked at it, my class writing was pretty good. Quite good, actually. I learned to enjoy writing and feel proud of my work.

My undergraduate major required a thesis. I worked really hard on it for an entire school year and felt very proud. It totaled about 60 pages including a bunch of appendices.

I graduated with a 3.72 GPA.

I traveled around Italy for eight days with no reservations, no map knowledge, knowing no Italian. Obviously not really a smart thing to do, but I made it work.

Since then I have traveled alone to Paris, Belgium, Prague, and Amsterdam.

I drove alone down the Pacific Coast after college.

After my first year of teaching, I drove 3700 miles across the continent. The last two thirds was on my own.

We worked really hard in AmeriCorps. In September, we spent a week and a half canoeing down and up the Quinnipiac River clearing logjams. My arms were extra strong after that.

I applied to the Teaching Fellows almost on a whim but was accepted into the program. (I had been rejected from TFA two years earlier.)

I survived an awful first year of teaching and returned to a much improved second year. For someone who's never done anything longer than a year or two, staying in one place for four years is a pretty big accomplishment.

I think I'm a pretty good teacher. Occasionally I feel like I actually reach a student and see progress in them. I'm also getting better at talking to and relating to the kids.

Sometimes I can make people laugh. Mostly eleven-year-olds.

I make really good mix tapes/CDs.

I make a perfect caramel macchiato (because I worked part-time at Starbucks for four years).

I have a master's degree. It didn't require as much work or intellect as my undergraduate degree, but it's still nice to have.

...

I'm proud of this side of the story, but I'm still haunted by the other.

The Story of My Life.

I played soccer for one autumn.

I took riding lessons for a few months.

I played piano for a year or so.

I made the 'major' little league team in fifth grade, and never once swung the bat in a game. Ironically, I was afraid of striking out.

I played the cello for five years and hardly practiced.

I was in Honors classes and barely studied.

I did math homework in class.

I decided that acting would be fun, but never made an effort to really audition for anything.

My dream was to be an Olympic gymnast, but even in my youth I was too easily frustrated and not motivated enough.

I took two years off in middle school when my legs hurt too much and I was bored.

On the high school gymnastics team, I was too easily distracted by various aches and pains to practice hard, and too scared to learn anything new. The vault was my favorite event in elementary school, but in high school it scared the crap out of me.

I joined the yearbook staff my senior year as a half-assed way to boost my resume.

I graduated from high school with a 3.55 GPA, which even then felt almost worthless, since I hardly did any work.

I only applied to three colleges.

The UCLA application required an SAT II, and the only subject I felt I could scrape a score was in French, even though I hadn't taken it in two years. And I didn't study for the exam.

I completed the FAFSA on time but didn't qualify for aid, since my teacher parents were too comfortably middle-class.

I never bothered to apply for a single scholarship.

I was accepted to the University of Arizona and Western Washington University. Going out of state sounded kind of exciting, but it was five times more expensive.

So I took the easy way out and went to WWU.

Science was always my favorite subject, and genetics sounded interesting, so in college I thought I'd do a biochem major. The college-level pre-calc homework was so confusing and frustrating that I never completed it and somehow scraped by with a C+.

I still loved chemistry and tried to challenge myself by moving up to o-chem sophomore year. I fought to survive the first term and only lasted a week into the second before dropping.

Then I couldn't decide on a major, so I transferred to the University of Washington.

Upon entrance to UW, I declared a double major in French and Women Studies. I dropped the French major at the end of the year because it would have required an extra year to finish both.

After college, I couldn't decide what to do, so I applied to AmeriCorps.

When I was waitlisted, I kept working at Starbucks because I had zero idea of what to do in the real world.

After I quit my office job in 2004, I applied to AmeriCorps to be a team leader, and to the Teaching Fellows. I never heard back from AmeriCorps. I never called to check on the application. So I came to New York as a default because I figured I should do something.

In New York, I couldn't be bothered trying to learn about individual schools and the job fairs were either cancelled or crazily overattended, so I couldn't find a job.

I remained in the reserve pool until called for a permanent position. I've been there ever since.

I'm a pretty good teacher, but I never take work home with me.

I go to conferences and workshops on my own time, but rarely incorporate new ideas or practices into my teaching.

I don't 'plan lessons.' I just think of things and jot down a couple words in my lesson plan book. I never even had a lesson plan book until this year.

I roughly follow the curriculum, but I'm always behind. I can't be arsed to keep up.

I take a lot of pictures, but almost never make an effort to plan and execute and perfect. I received some technique books and only began them. I glossed over the technique pages because it's too confusing.

And I feel like an incompetent wannabe with a camera.

I get cards or little gifts in the mail, and I never respond. I want to, and mean to, but...don't.

I never read a newspaper or watch the news. I see things on the Daily Show or SNL (yes, I'm *that* twentysomething), or sometimes on blogs.

I feel kind of dumb about that.

I don't read the 'real' edublogs because the posts are long and boring.

I can't even make an effort to think of interesting things to write about my own blog.

I'm reasonably smart, but I've never bothered to work to reach any kind of potential.

This is the story of my life, and I am ashamed.

Recovery and Readjustment

Returning from a big trip is always a letdown. Sure, you get to sleep in your own bed and you don't have to live in the same three outfits anymore. Sleep cycles are disrupted, of course, but it's bigger than that.

A long time ago, I wrote in a trip journal about how it feels. It's like the normal world is one of those wooden toy boards with different shaped holes in, and each person is a peg that has to fit in their own slot in the board. When you go on a big trip, you do all these new things, you see who you are without the creature comforts of everyday unchallenging life. You grow new bits and pieces, you expand and feel an awakening of the possibilities.

Upon your return, the hammer of life tries to force your now-explanded shape back into your slot. It's uncomfortable, because you've got new things about you that the normal world doesn't care about, wants to eliminate, wants to get you back, complacent with dullness. And eventually, you can't resist and succumb; sliding back into your place.

You never get back to complete normal, though; the scars of your experiences remain as a testament to the new growth that you sought. Sometimes those scars fade until you barely remember them; other times they scab and bleed and they're all you think about. Or they seem to have healed, but flare up and remind you--hey! over here! look what you've done! look what you're capable of! normal life doesn't have to be the end-all be-all!

It's disappointing because other people can never really understand the change that you go through. Too many people never travel; worse, too many people never *want* to go anywhere. And let alone going anywhere alone! If you are lucky enough to go somewhere with other people, you'll share that bond, that brotherhood, forever. You got to see and grow and wonder together, and you'll all understand the difficulty of returning home after an amazing new experience. Most of all, those fellow travelers understand the pull of wanderlust.

You have changed, but when you get home, nothing has changed. Your room is still messy and the city is still dingy. You still have to do the shopping and the dishes and go to bed at a reasonable time. You still have to make small talk and condense your adventure into twenty interesting, yet nonthreatening, words. The alarm in the morning doesn't signal the start of another adventure; it signals Just Another Regular Day. Not something to be looked forward to, not something to document with photos and an internal narrative, not something that holds the potential of New and Different and Exciting.

Ever notice how singledom goes in cycles?

After a relationship, there's obviously the mourning period (even if you were the one that ended it). You miss having the stability, the familiar face, the voice that doesn't need to identify itself, the comfort.

Sooner or later, you get that feeling of relief and freedom. You aren't tied down! You don't have to spend time with the other's family or friends. You can spend the entire Saturday night eating ice cream if you want. And you don't have to run it past anyone! You don't have to do a perfunctory Saturday Night Couples Activity (get your heads out of the gutter; I'm talking about social things like movies, dinner, clubs, whatever).

Eventually, the shine of solidarity wears off a bit and your eyes open up to the multitude of attractive people around you. Ooh, look over there. You flirt, you hope, maybe you start dating again.

Soon enough, that scene gets old and you start looking at those cuties more and more often. You hope that one of them is really great and you start daydreaming about them, but of course you get really disappointed when they don't pay you enough attention. You know they're already taken, but you can't help that little seed of hope that they'll see the light in you.

You start getting lonely. You start feeling extra, truly alone. You long for a familiar face again, for inside jokes, for someone to scratch your back without being asked, for a steady date each weekend. You feel bitter when your friends are in a happy relationship--or in a relationship at all. Romantic comedies make you sigh with hope but glare with disappointment that it's not you being swept away by a handsome, dashing, funny man. You wonder what is wrong with you. Why doesn't anyone see the gorgeous princess you know you are? Ha, yeah right, what a horrible monster you must be; that's why you're single! That must be the reason. You wistfully think about past lovers and paramours and flirtations, and you wonder where it all went wrong with each of them. You wonder why that one cutie three years ago never called you when clearly there was a real connection between you. You might even contemplate calling or emailing your ex, to reassure yourself that at one point, you were both lovable and loved.

So you sit at home on the weekends, being dull and boring and you ache for companionship. You would give anything to have a warm pair of arms to wrap around you at the end of a long and frustrating day, to get out and see all those great movies that keep coming out, to hang out in new and different bars, to go to all the restaurants you've only heard about. You feel like this solitude will imprison you for the rest of time, that nothing can and nobody will rescue you.

You know that it's just part of the cycle, you've been here before and you'll be here again, but still and nonetheless, it feels interminable. And it really and truly and utterly sucks.

"The Pedagogy of Poverty"

Truly a fascinating article. Here is the full text by Martin Haberman. Please read it, especially if you're a teacher, most especially if you're an urban teacher. It will be quite enlightening, I believe. This is my own response.

As a “white girl,” I know that I must walk a fine line in discussing urban children and school systems, as in theory I am part of the oppressor. However, being a female and thus exposed to some stereotypes and derogatory remarks, as well as a student of international women’s studies, I am confident that I can move past my white privilege to understanding and helping bring about cultural sensitivity.

I was an undergraduate the first time that I had to read the article, “Unpacking the Backpack of White Privilege,” and at first I really resisted the idea. After all, I’m a girl! I’m oppressed! All the bad stuff was a long time ago, right? We’re past the overt racism, aren’t we? But through further readings of the article, and heated discussions in class, and other readings and other classes, I began to see that yep, I have all kinds of ascribed status due to my skin (and even eye) color, and those attributes have allowed me to do things and go places much easier than other attributes, and they have also helped me look good in the eyes of other people (and thus succeed) in the dominant culture.

In that vein, when I began to read Martin Haberman’s article, “The Pedagogy of Poverty,” I had a sinking feeling of “oh, here we go again, with the ‘bad white people’ thing…I swear I didn’t do anything wrong! There’s got to be more to it than just white teachers keeping black/Hispanic/poor students oppressed.”

"The teaching acts that constitute the core functions of urban teaching are:
giving information,
asking questions,
giving directions,
making assignments,
monitoring seatwork,
reviewing assignments,
giving tests,
reviewing tests,
assigning homework,
reviewing homework,
settling disputes,
punishing noncompliance,
marking papers, and
giving grades."

When I got to this list of acts within the pedagogy of poverty, I was, quite frankly, confused. How is that anything other than just plain teaching? My view of teachers and teaching (which I grew up around, so it’s not just this year) has always included those activities. How do you teach without things like monitoring, testing, grading, etc? How can teachers, parents, and community expect anything differently? If teachers don’t do that, what in the world *do* they do?

Then, once I got to the next set of lists, things starting clicking into place. The logic of how students and teachers are on parallel but unequal tracks and wavelengths was quietly enlightening for me. The first one, about teaching vs. learning, is very true of dominant culture’s expectation of roles to play in schools.

"Teaching is what teachers do. Learning is what students do. Therefore, students and teachers are engaged in different activities.

Teachers are in charge and responsible. Students are those who still need to develop appropriate behavior. Therefore, when students follow teachers' directions, appropriate behavior is being taught and learned."

Learning is something that I’ve always loved; I therefore know at least a little bit about a lot of different things. I did what I could to pass on interesting facts and information to my students when I could, things that they wouldn’t normally get to learn or hear about. I wanted to pique their interest with new tidbits, in hopes of nudging them towards motivation to learn more on their own.

On several occasions throughout the year, students would look at me wide-eyed and say things like, “Miss C, do you know everything?” “How come you’re so smart?” “Do you know all the words?” And though I usually kept a straight face (with difficulty), I was delighted at this response. I thought it was cute that they thought I was some kind of omniscient being, instead of just a teacher. And I also thought to myself, “Ha! At last being a so-called nerd comes through! Maybe I can help them want to learn lots of things too!” But through the lens of this article, I can see that all the dispensing of knowledge on my end intimidated my students. How could they hope to know as much as I do? Teachers are for telling you things, interesting and boring, and students’ jobs are for listening and behaving.

The discussion about the evidence of this pedagogy’s ineffectiveness made me really happy, only because I could so well identify exactly with those things. YES, I have totally had to transform myself into a mean, nasty, authoritarian to even attempt to survive in my urban classroom. I knew I would have to, though, since I’m a softy young white female first year teacher. Even though I knew the students would be really tough on me, but I had no idea just how tough I’d have to get. And I’m not even there yet! Next year I need to be much meaner right of the bat, to set a no-nonsense tone for my classroom.

Haberman’s line that says, “But if pedagogy of poverty will not force the learning of low-level skills, how can it be used to compel genuine thinking?” was such a perfect summation of my feelings and experiences this past year. My biggest complaints have been that the students cannot think for themselves, nor do they possess knowledge of the building blocks of the mechanics of the written language. I know that in future examinations and life experiences (like resume writing), that is going to be a serious problem for them. Since we were not allowed freedom in teaching grammar and mechanics, I was very frustrated. The balanced literacy/TC/America’s Choice has fostered too much abstracts and ignored all the concrete skills. The few things that I did teach needed a lot of time to reinforce, and even things that we repeated multiple times over the year, the students just did not absorb them. But it was their automatic complying of anything requiring copying off the board. They got that. Mind you, they didn’t actually read or take in any of the words they were writing down (and many students copied them and made spelling errors!). But it got me some quiet, industrious students. I was shocked. No wonder I’d had such a hard time; I had been asking them to think and analyze and actually use their brains. Other schools and teachers did nothing of the sort; they just trained the kids to be what I called robot-monkeys.

Occasionally I definitely made use of that Achilles heel in my lesson planning. I knew that I could effectively waste time and see students quietly working if I made them copy things off the board before they had to work on them. However, it quickly became a mission of mine to prevent any more growth of robot-monkeys my classroom. I said, “You HAVE TO THINK! You’ve got brains, so show me!”

In this way, I was relieved to see that I’ve started to unconsciously reject the pedagogy of poverty, and embrace good teacher concepts that hopefully allows students to learn the excitement of knowledge, as well as gives them a safe place to be themselves. I actively use heterogeneous grouping, I work with them to extract big ideas and principles of different works, I try to include discussions of differences and historical mistakes when possible. Time and politics make it very difficult to easily implement all of the strategies that Haberman suggests. However, I do believe that many teachers have begun noticing that things, such as they are, are not working. There’s also currently a big movement about student self-empowerment, which I think is the core of good teaching. We as teachers don’t want to be burned out and bitter about our difficult students. It’s too easy to bring the negative attitude into the classroom. While it’s not realistic to be all Mary Sunshine either, there are plenty of positive ways that students can learn about themselves, and the world around them, and of course how that relates to them.