Ch.2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Freire

I completely am in agreement with the banking concept of education. In schools these days there is so much listen and repeat and students constantly just regurgitating what they were taught without understanding or actually taking it in. It really bothers me that schools are like this. That is why I am so fond of not having tests, but instead having free-writes or summary's being written by the students. The teacher should not be the subject of the learning process. The teacher should just be a mere assistant to provide help and instructions to set the students up for success. The students are the subjects here. Yes, teachers are there to teach, but not by having the students listen and repeat. Instead, there needs to be free thinking and personal strategies that students develop on their own to find understanding and meaning in things.

The assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world is complete crap as well. We are not empty minds "open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside". We are not spectators, or at least we shouldn't be. We should show our students how to be themselves, structure their essays in their own ways, read and understand things in their own ways, find meanings for words in their own ways. We should set students up for success at being able to re-create an idea or notion. Maybe a student reads a book, but the ending was nothing like they imagined, so they re-create an ending for that book. That's exactly how fan-fiction started. That never used to be a thing until someone made it a thing. Someone stepped out there and put their ideas on top of someone else's and re-created something. It's the same thing artists all over the world do with their artwork. They re-create something. A day at the park could look one way to one person and a completely different way to another person. Our students should be encouraged to re-create and re-imagine instead of being encouraged to regurgitate.

One of the statements that stuck out to me in a "hits-you-in-the-face" kind of way was, "Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression." This statement shows that this practice of the banking concept in schools is leading our students into oppression. They are not taking anything away from what we are saying to them. Once they have repeated what we have said, it leaves their mind. There is no food for thought, there is no insight or meaning into what they have been told. There is just, "a=5", a word and definition, or a simple right or wrong.

The concept of "problem-posing" education is confusing but interesting as well. Within the explanation of this concept, there is a phrase about students and teachers that says, "They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow." I absolutely love just this phrase right here. Mainly because as teachers, we never stop learning about how to teach, what works and doesn't work, how to do an activity, what activity to do, ect., we only adapt. Each batch of students, each class, each environment is going to be different. They are going to learn differently, experience things differently, and think differently. Teachers are constantly adapting to their students' needs in the classroom, which helps the teacher grow as well. Students are growing in their education and in their personalities, while a teacher is growing in their teaching, their style, their deliverance of material, and in their connections with the students. We will constantly be growing. We grew as students once, and now we are growing as teachers, but we are still learning from our students as our students learn from us.

Book Talk on Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Description of Book: A young girl named Sal retraces her mother’s last route with her grandparents while telling the story of her friend Phoebe. Sal’s mother left home suddenly and Sal’s dad moved the two of them from their country home to a cookie cutter house with not even enough grass for one cow. Sal’s story of her friend Phoebe shows many hidden life lessons, along with what the power of imagination looks like. Sal also tells several other stories about her time at their country home to give herself a background.

Why I chose this text: I chose this text because it was a great connection book to me when I first read it back in middle school. It helps with students who may be going through personal stuff at home and is inspiring by the use of conversational storytelling and imagination.

Rationale: I would use this book in a classroom because it has a great storyline for each character and would be a great book for teaching the basics of rise of events to climax and then the fall to the resolution. Also, this would be a great tool to have students foreshadow and make predictions on their own of what might happen.

Who is the text appropriate for and why: This text would be appropriate for 6^th through 9^th or 10^th grade. It is a smaller book with a lower lexile, so I would not recommend it for higher grades. It is a very conversational book which will appeal better to middle school or early high school to get away from the academic language used in classes.

How this book could be used in a classroom, teaching ideas: This book could be used to go over a basic format of a storyline with the rise, climax, fall, and resolution. It follows the pattern nicely because of the road trip and the events that occur while on the road trip. This would also be a great book to promote writing short stories, free-writes, or even a narrative essay on a personal event. Also, this would be a great book to teach vocabulary like pathos, ethos, logos, and different strategies or stylistic approaches the author uses within the book.

Obstacles/issues using this text: The only issue I could see would be the discussion of infant death because of the incident with the new baby’s birth, and the discussion of death at the end of the book when we find out that the Mother actually died in a bus accident. Also, the text is very basic and simple which works perfect with the conversational style of the language. Some students may not be as into it because of the simplistic and ‘easy’ nature of the language. Another reason why this would be for grades 6^th-8^th and maybe 9^th.

Administrator’s response to text: I do believe an administrator would approve of this text after going over a plan of how to approach the topic of how the baby died. Granted, it is not an over the top serious topic. Same would go for the topic of death.

Parent’s response to text: I cannot see the parents responding in a negative way to this text. If they did respond negatively it would most likely be on the topic of death in this book. If parents did have a problem with how I went over or talked about death when it comes up, then I will discuss it with them and if they still have a problem I will send them to my administrator.

Student’s response to text: I believe the students will respond positively to this book because of the style it is written in, and because it is not too old of a book either. It might relate to students more so because of the aspect of moving from country to city, losing a parent, making new friends, wild imaginations, or even the humor that is shown in this book.

Other comments on the text you should know: Again, this book is more meant for middle school to maybe 9^th grade students because of the conversational style of language and the fact that the main character is thirteen. On another note, it is a pretty great book. 

Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

Trying to find new and better ways to assess and evaluate our student's learning or understanding of anything is going to be a continuous on-going battle. Chapter 13 in Teaching Literature to Adolescents is all about ideas on figuring out what your students have learned.

We all have our personal opinions on assessments we like and don't like. Personally, I never liked tests or quizzes, I would much rather write a paper, reflection, or do just about anything else. Then again, now that I understand the use and the 'why' behind giving a quiz or a test, I have become less appalled at the idea of them. Tests will still make me uneasy, but quizzes I see potential and use for. I like that quizzes don't always have to be an actual graded assignment. Instead, it could be for participation, or for a teacher to just get an idea as to where their students are currently at and if they are understanding so far.

Interpretive strategies are suggested within this chapter, but also listed is the criteria for evaluating those interpretive strategies. One that stood out and seemed actually enjoyable to me is perspective-taking. The criteria for this strategy is "students compare and contrast characters' perspectives to infer tensions or conflicts between characters." (pg. 227). This would be a fun activity to do like midway through a book involving a protagonist and antagonist and for students to be able to make their own predictions or express thoughts and ideas about the characters. Not only would this show me that the students are reading and paying attention to the book, but also help them to become more interested in the book by making predictions about the characters.

We discussed previously on discussions as a way of teaching and using discussions in the classroom. I liked the suggestion of evaluating classroom discussions by paying attention to students' use of certain discussion skills like, "their frequency of participation, their ability to formulate an interpretation, provide support for their interpretation, restate others' interpretations, pose counter-interpretations to these others' interpretations, ask questions to the group, define an emerging consensus, define links to other texts or resources, and adopt certain critical lenses." (Pg.228). When we did discuss as a class the use of discussions in the classroom, we did not really talk about using them as a tool for evaluation. I honestly did not think about it, but it makes sense. This would also be something for students to reflect back on or take notes on to use later for a paper or another assignment. For them to be able to discuss their interpretations and provide support could help them later when writing an essay that needs claims and evidence.

As teachers, we need to make sure students are picking up what we are trying to get across to them or teach them. An idea presented in this chapter called "exit memos" sounds like a simple and easy way for teachers to determine what the students have taken in and what they might not be understanding. an "exit memo" is a freewrite where you ask the students to either reflect on what they learned or where you even just ask them what they have learned for that day in class. I personally like this idea because it isn't like a test where there is a bunch of stress on the students to make sure they regurgitate exactly what you have taught them. Instead, they can freely express in their own words what you taught them and/or what they are not understanding or catching onto. This is a great way to keep stress and anxiety levels down in a classroom, because in all honesty, who doesn't freak out when you hear the word 'test'.

CSU's Expository Reading and Template

Throughout my reading of the California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing course Assignment Template, I could not help but notice the sidebar to the left with the blue writing. I noticed how they would tell you the common core state standard that each activity correlated to and met. For example, how "Surveying the Text" meets standard 5a. Analyze the use of text features. I liked how it showed the common core standards for each individual activity presented in this template. It helped to give a 'why' to the reason for each activity in the template. In class, our teacher went over the reasons and gave us the 'why' behind his discussion and the questions for the discussion we had. As teachers, we constantly have to keep in the back of our mind why we are giving a certain assignment, why we are reading a certain book, or why we are doing a certain activity in the classroom. If we can't completely explain in a logical manner why we are doing something then we should reconsider doing it.

There were a few things about the template that I did like. One being that in pre-reading students are to make predictions and ask questions and then in the actual reading they are to reflect on their predictions to see if anything turned out to be true. I also enjoyed the suggested questions to use in each sub-section. These questions that were suggested helped paint the picture of the actual assignment in class a little better for me. Another activity within the template I liked was "Considering the Structure of the Text" (pg.8). Thinking back on my time in grade school, I can't really remember times where we focused on the structure of the text. The visual they give with drawing lines where the introduction ends and where the conclusion begins. Having students decide this for themselves makes them have to look deeper into whatever they are reading. The visual could also help them later down the road when structuring their own writing.

When this template talked about revising and editing, it had an activity called "Rhetorical Analysis of a Draft" (pg.24) which I actually thought was different but could be very effective. "A rhetorical analysis of a rough draft requires the writer to assess writing based on the purpose of the writing, the message of the argument, the needs of the audience, and the ethos the writer adopts." (pg.24). I personally wish I would have started thinking more about my audience and my purpose back in high school. I noticed last quarter when I wrote a narrative paper after not writing one for like three years, it was so difficult for me. I had to take like four steps back and remember why I was writing and who I was writing for. If you don't have a purpose for whatever you are writing, then you should just stop right there because you will not get very far. You have to remember your audience and your purpose.

Common Core Standards - Reading

When looking at the common core standards for the first time, they can be confusing and a little much. There are a lot of words that would not make sense if you showed them to a parent. Teaching based off of the common core standards is not a bad thing. It is a universal group of standards that schools all over the country follow. Which means that even though each teacher has a different style of teaching, they are still teaching the same standard needed for their students. As teachers, however, we need to remember that parents will not understand when we say something like, "I am teaching your student how to analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme. As stated in the common core standard RL. 9-10.3." A parent would just smile and nod and act like they understand but in reality, people not well versed with the common core standards are not going to understand what they are saying. Instead, a teacher should explain how based off of the common core standards that I have to follow I have chosen to go this route with my lesson plan and chose these activities to teach the students how to show the development of characters in a story we are reading. When parents come to you asking you why you are teaching a certain thing in your classroom, you can not just spit out a common core standard and hope they understand. 

The Reading: Literature section of the common core standards gives a nice broad overview of the basics of what students need to be able to do when reading a book or a story, but also says how the students need to become more analytical. Analyzing not only the theme or characters of a story but also what the author is doing as they are writing. In 9th-10th grades, students are becoming more analytical of the stories and the author's choices within the stories to answer the question of 'why did the author do this?'. The common core standards are providing a baseline for what the students should know and should be learning. 

Overall I believe in common core standards and the use of the universally throughout the country. With the common core standards, teachers are able to understand what their students need to know and what their students need to accomplish. 

"Discussion as a Way of Teaching" Brookfield

Stephen Brookfield's "Discussion as a Way of Teaching" is a great article overviewing the types of discussion that could be useful in a classroom. Having a student-orientated discussion in the classroom has always been an interesting interaction to witness and participate in personally and from that, I do feel that it is beneficial in a classroom. Personally, I like the structured examples of discussion that Brookfield gives in his article and the rules that help guide the discussion. Brookfield gives an example called "The Circle of Voices" where it is a circle of students going around in a circle discussing their ideas on a topic. Once the circle discussion is over, each student has to present to the class an idea that another student in their circle discussed instead of their own. Being able to regulate the discussions and make sure they do not get off track is a rough job for a teacher, but with a regulated, rule-oriented discussion like "The Circle of Voices" it could help students stay on track and all equally participate in the discussion.

Another great example Brookfield gave was "Mutual Invitation". Where the discussion is started by a facilitator and then chooses the next person to speak about the same topic. When that person is done speaking, they choose the next person, and so on. Students do have the option to pass, but they must still choose the next person to speak. When a topic arises that is heavily debatable or controversy, this would be a great way for everyone to express their opinions and ideas on a topic. The room could be divided into the 'for's', 'against's', and 'neutrals', and they can choose to have a student in their group speak or listen to a student in another group speak.

Many of Brookfield's examples could be used in many different situations or environments and can still be regulated by the teacher so that nothing gets out of control. Discussion in the classroom, I believe is a great tool for teaching, with the multiple attributes it promotes.

Having your students lead a discussion in a classroom, especially high school, can help you as a teacher show your respect for the students' voices. It also shows your confidence in them as students to be able to handle a student-led discussion on their own without you having to interject every five minutes. If students feel respected by their teacher, they tend to be more willing and engaged in the classroom.

Overall I did enjoy reading Stephen Brookfield's article and will probably keep it for the many examples it provides that I may one day use in my own classroom.