Vocabulary Redux

In Janet Allen's chapter of the Beers book, I was reunited with an age old realization: vocabulary has been demoted to a surface level concept. Teaching vocabulary seemed to officially end after eighth grade when the spelling and vocabulary worksheets were no longer handed out and pertinent words were addressed during discussion/lecture in high school. Rather than learn the words individually outside of the daily lesson, they were interwoven in our daily reading. Learning from Hawthorne, Lee, Homer, Joyce, and many others, I felt confident in my knowledge of words--at least which ones work in place of another. The curse of the synonym/antonym feature on word document is that I know the words, and by reading books with said words I have an understanding of what group they are clustered in (definition-wise) but little beyond this.


I also suspect constant runaround of information as a primary culprit. We spend twelve years of school learning virtually the same concepts only to higher degrees each time. sure the lesson is skipped over every two years, but we all return to those algebraic equations that we were taught in 6th grade for the remainder of algebra and beyond in high school. We elaborate on "Jane ran" to say Frazzled, Jane ran to the supermarket; her roommate had drunk the last of the milk, leaving Jane none to make dinner with. This paradox of learning translates into the vocabulary realm as words are emphasized early on and then  forgotten--the above concept in reverse. Less emphasis is placed on vocabulary as we get older and any instruction remains in an elementary level.

In a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Calvin is taking a test on American history, commenting on how subjects are only asked to be memorized to a certain point until it can be "forgotten"--test day, essay due date, etc. This perversion of a system that is designed to educate rather than teach manipulation is evident also in the vocabulary teaching style. In my classroom, I would like to place more emphasis on Allen's definition of "knowing" a word.

Allen's idea of a word of the day ritual is one that I would like to include in my own classroom. Alongside this, though somewhat unrelated, I would like to have a grammar lesson of the week that my class focuses on outside the regular schedule. These, along with daily writing prompts will probably make up a majority of class-time, but it would give the students more chances to work on specific skills in writing.

Who sailed the ocean blue in 1492?

Keene's chapter seeks to understand what it means to understand? It seems that my entire education is based upon the learn by chapter and then test method. Once the test was over, little review (save for when a test would be given) was placed on what we learned. Subsequent years were spent building upon what we learned the year before, just more in-depth. Basically, if we didn’t understand it the first time, we had the opportunity to re-learn it which eventually reinforced placing less stock in what we were learning because the same material would be regurgitated the following year. It is a cruel fate that school must now be seen as a place where learning does not offer more than a set curriculum of re-hashed information. What Keene proposes is to reevaluate the methods used to teach. She says “ they had learned in the classroom, understanding meant remembering the facts long enough to answer questions, completing a project, or scoring well on the test (Beers). There is little incentive for students to learn save for the grade. In a way, school could be seen as a job for minors. They arrive at a set time, perform the bare minimum of tasks when instructed to do so, and leave, hopefully receiving the payment of a high grade.

This chapter acknowledges that learning has lost its mojo to induce creative thought and stimulating discussion. Students who are ingrained with the modern mindset to merely teach curriculum in order to prepare students for what they need to achieve on tests or aptitude tests become baffled by the idea of actually sitting down in a circle and discussing what they are learning. Keene calls for a more rewarding definition of comprehension and understanding so we can start teaching from it. The basis of this concept starts with teachers simply seeing their students understand the concepts. Observing what works, what doesn’t and how students are engaged in different activities can help us help them. It is the hope that students will go beyond merely understanding and evaluate the significance that each lesson can bring to them. 

Keene divides the different stages of learning as so: concentrate, dwell, struggle for insight, manipulate our own thoughts, explore, discuss, create, feel. It seems impossible to accomplish this in one sitting for a lesson, but since they function as stages, the learning process could span from two days to two weeks on one subject. All that matters are that the students are learning. Even though they are focusing on one subject, they can still draw additional information from one subject. In an English class, after reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, students can establish the basic information given, consider the implications of the story, start to draw conclusions, change or evaluate how they think, do research or confide in an outside source, defend any conclusions, and then create a product reflecting their learning process. Giving the students semi-controlled free reign to explore their learning, rather than just telling them what they need to learn about x-book, allows them to find the underlying messages, significant points and later be held accountable for their learning.

If a majority of the students understand the concepts, then it should be okay to move on, right? Wrong. Even if a majority of the students comprehend what is being taught, they still possess the capability to draw more--especially in literature--as the students struggling to understand. By holding the students accountable for their learning will help ween students off the tempting preference of being told what to learn. I like the idea of having random writing assignments, in class Socratic seminars, and consistent practice over specific technicalities such as grammar. By reinforcing an environment that requires constant recall of what they've already established, students are not susceptible to the Bueller syndrome. it is not merely the mindset of the teachers that needs to be restructured, but also the students. They are the ones learning primarily and should be challenged to explore beyond what they are expected to do.

Changin' Times Take 2: Genre Explosion and Censorship

Before I delve into the response for this chapter, I should mention a legitimate citation for the book I'm responding to:
Beers, Kylene, Probst, Robert and Linda Rief. Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2007.-note on this book: the chapters are all written by different authors so their names will be acknowledged, but they all come from this source.

Now that my conscious has been cleared for the present moment, I would first like to comment on the title Teri Lesesne uses- Of Times, Teens, and Books as well as the first sentence. She, like the previous author uses Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin" as a primary thought to describe the current status
To be honest, the first three pages were read with the opening of Zach Snyder's film "Watchmen" playing through my head. Bob Dylan has that effect. This song represents more than political and social distress during the mid 20th century. In an age where everything is being--regretfully--digitalized, no medium can escape this fate. Books sadly do not possess the higher authority to transcend this new medium and have become slaves to a textually impaired youth. Even now as I'm writing, I am reminded of the chore reading for classes has become. This is half due to the quantity of reading that 19 credit hours implies, but also because I have become so ingrained in the power of images: websites devoted to captioning pictures, manga (which will be discussed later), movies, television, and even instructions for how to use tissue paper. On that last one, the package of tissue wrap came with image instructions on how to unfold, and then fashion the paper into the gift bag, making me fear even more for the fate of humanity than the hype of such mundane things as a Kardashian wedding/72 day reception.

Back to the topic at hand: Books. Lesesne goes through each new segment of young adult literature that has become popular in the past decade. Stop One: manga. During my high school years where I was the idealistic hopeful future English teacher that saw books only to be used with words and few images. Since then, it has taken the acquisition of a boyfriend who enjoys manga and a relatively open mind to see that manga does possess some literary merit. While they can be seen as easy reads, they provide a challenging element that few books printed in English offer: you have to read them completely backwards. The frames inside the pages alone are daunting enough. The fact that they also have to be read from right page to left page is enough to make a person catatonic if they aren't adequately informed prior. Beyond the science fiction and fantasy genres, manga has expanded to an educational plane with historic fiction. They are particularly helpful for students who work best with a visual aid. I enjoy manga because I get a taste of another culture and can later watch the anime television show to see the full cohesive movement of action that the books create.

We have reached the pinnacle of young adult literature in the past two decades. With a multitude of material never created, authors have leapt on the YA bandwagon to reach all types of teenagers. Some lean to the masses with flat plotted vampire craze- so-called books while other tackle legitimate issues teenagers are undergoing. Lesesne lists a massive amount of current books--most of which I have heard of but never had the chance to read. If you noticed my disdain for the vampire world, you should already know the answer to how I felt about her mentioning Twilight in more detail than Harry Potter. If not, return to the phrase "so-called books". Beyond that, however, the availability of books has expanded to offer almost any genre, plot, or outcome that a reader could hope for.

Her section on taboo books and censorship makes me consider how I would approach both topics. I do not believe in an all-consuming censorship on sensitive subjects because of the sole fact that many of these books depict what real teenagers are dealing with. While it's great to sugar coat the world in candy mountains and rainbow ponies, the reality is that many students go to school with fear, doubt, and truly traumatic experiences that they have to undermine for the sake of the many. If we exclude these books, their legitimacy as people is diminished even further because we are saying that their situations are something to be kept a secret. Christian teachers are not allowed to share their faith with the class for fear of making a student feel unequal; how is that different from a book being censored for sensitive situations that an actual student may be going through? Protecting the majority by making the minority feel unequal. While the two are not established under the same laws, they represent fundamentally the same thing.

I am not advocating a total recall in censorship, but I feel that there needs to be a maturation of school systems and parents. Hermione Granger's famous quote "Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself" comes to mind. Fearing the taboo topics and censoring books such as "Catcher in the Rye" by  Salinger will only desensitize the educational world into nothing more than a holding cell for young adults until they enter the adult world and realize that they were being sheltered from the fundamental truths of the world. We're already hurting students by limiting their educational potential by standardizing everything based on a test, what is there to gain by adding censored icing on the cake?

Bob Dylan's "The Times They are A-Changin'" is exceedingly appropriate to characterize today's adolescent generation. Immersed in the digital world, they have been granted opportunities that many Alvermann refer to as "digital immigrants" are unable to keep up with the massive amount of communication. While a part of me would like to join them in their immigrant status--mostly due to the lack of competency that I possess in the technological--I am unceremoniously categorized alongside people such as my sister who can hold a cell phone for five minutes and learn more about it than I can in two years. Alvermann connects this realm of technological literacy with the linguistic literacy challenges in education. The fact Alvermann is trying to make is that literacy is no longer found solely in the classroom; that literacy itself is being reevaluated to exceed mere language.

The old order of adolescents (now today's middle aged and elderly) whose youth was classified as a "purgatory or holding area for not-yet adults by Appleman (2001). Alvermann draws a very depressing picture of how things used to be with langauge and then relates it to how this generation has technicolored the world of langauage. Like Dorothy falling into Oz, we have fallen into an era of creative expression that coincides with the use of language. Using art, music, gestures, and movement, language is being expressed beyond the written word by adolescents. The visual cohesively intertwines with text to create art in ways not previously available.

The extended metaphor created by Steven Johnson in his book Everything Bad is Good for You that Alvermann uses discusses how the world would react to books being introduced AFTER video games. While this is a highly unrealistic concept with superficial justification, he does make a valid point that people would reject such a medium for reading after growing accustomed to not having to rely on one's own imagination and analytical powers. There is a power struggle between the visual and textual where one challenges the other in competency as the source of knowledge for today's adolescent age. Many cases offer compromise, but there is still a question of how both can work together to improve literacy. Perhaps this is due to both my lack of abilities with technology and an absence of hand eye coordination (or any coordination for that matter) but I feel that the text pedagogy, rather than visual should take precedence. We've already proven ourselves to be a visual oriented society; why not challenge ourselves to maintain the skills incorporated into reading- imagination, analyzing, critiquing, etc.

Blog Two- What they should know...

After reading about the need to avoid teaching standardized content, the question of “what should we then teach and what overarching themes should be incorporated into that content?” While the content is our own responsibility, Burke lays out plainly what students in this era need to be competent with and how teachers can incorporate that into lessons in the English classroom. Technology competence, reasoning skills, leadership, teamwork, evaluating, integrating, flexibility—and lo behold, he manages to connect this with a person’s literacy. Burke doesn’t just define this as merely the ability to read, but to comprehend and analyze and respond to what is being read. He emphasizes the need for not just one type of person, but multiple that make up a successful workforce that can collaborate on what needs accomplished and can effectively do so.

The three literacy skills—information and communication, thinking and problem-solving skills, and interpersonal and self-directional skills—are clearly laid out and make sense to coincide with literacy. As future teachers, our employers are looking for these skills not only in our own abilities, but also in what we teach. In many of my high school classes, the technology incorporated was limited so the strategies my teachers incorporated were mostly within the realm of Socratic seminar. This method is not discounted entirely; however the age of technology would demand a more collaborative integration of technology. As a future teacher, I do think it is important to use technology so students can become more comfortable with using it for more than just checking their social networking websites. However, I am not an advocate for replacing the element of human interaction. Teamwork does work with technology as the middleman, but it won’t surpass the benefits of working in groups where students can see and hear their peers directly. Online discussion threads, while having the opportunity to be arbitrary, do possess the value of freedom for the student. They can share what they may not be able to conceptualize immediately and then come back to class with a better grasp on the lessons.

What I believe Burke was trying to evoke in his writing was that teaching should be student centered. Everything he claims students need to excel at in order to achieve and maintain a good job involve letting the students be innovative for themselves. Not to be confused as a way to be lazy, but there was the implication that teachers are merely the guide that directs students to their own critical thinking. This is especially true for high school students who respond better to working with their peers and having the freedom to discuss the concepts explored in class. Giving the students opportunities to direct their own learning will prepare them to direct their own work as adults.

One idea I got while reading this chapter was to encourage students to free-write with only a line of un-translated Latin. This came from Burke’s section over synthesizing; having the students look at a broader picture without the specifics of the translation would be an excellent way to get them to look at words and try to develop a personalized image of what they are responding to. In order for the free-writing to be complete, they would receive the translation and then build off what the Latin actually means and seek out a broader picture. While it may not initially coincide with his concepts from the synthesizing section, the idea sprung from Burke’s comment by Pink to see relationships from apparently different things.

Blog One- Getting them to Write

Finally! Three years at college with education classes spewing the good graces of NCLB and at last I find a published someone in the education field who does not see the value in punishing schools that are struggling. Having to read through text books devoted to promoting the statutes of NCLB and speaking with various high school teachers about their experience with having to meet adequate yearly progress, I’m finally desensitized to the idea that standardization is a good thing.

What I’ve noticed that Beers alluded to in her first chapter is that when students do not find relevance in the curriculum, they separate themselves into an “underground” realm that places value on their interests. School loses its legitimacy when the students are not given the primary focus and becomes based on a series of standards that no one can pinpoint to benefiting the student’s future.

While complying with NCLB does promise some good benefits, such as holding every student to the same standard with necessary concessions made to students with disabilities, the ideology behind meeting “adequate yearly progress” does not coincide with a practical use of school materials. What does “adequate yearly progress” do for employers seeking an innovative worker? Students, contrary to what some may believe, are not mindless drones. They see when they are being fed irrelevant information, and react with rebellion (or for those who fear losing their teacher’s pet status like I was, do nothing but accept the mediocre garbage that teachers gave in order to justify taking practice standard exams). In my high school, my class far surpassed the Illinois standards for the ACT, PSAT and the AP tests and we were given a pizza party. While food does draw crowds, we all knew that this was provided for us only because we made the school look good. This is not to diminish the teachers who brought about the school’s success. In fact, our teachers offered more opportunities to be expressive in addition to learning the NCLB curriculum. While I only speak from experience with our school’s English and History departments—I avoided math and science like the plague due to my inadequacy in calculating the amount of moles in a chemical equation…not even sure if that’s scientifically correct—each department was highly praised by parents and, yes, even students.

The principal is an enthusiastic educator and now works with the school system ten miles from my hometown that are failing miserably by incorporating more AP classes into the curriculum. I am hesitant to support his method because the risk that students who are forced into these classes by demanding colleges and parents and even peer pressure. This issue is not just about achieving adequate yearly progress with standardized testing; the gap established between remedial and AP classes creates a  potential sense of inadequacy into the student mindset. The fear of being thought of as dumb is just as bad as the fear of not being popular, or even well liked. Many students in my school were forced by their parents to take these classes in order to earn college credit without regard for whether or not they were actually ready for such an advanced curriculum. The ever famous Admiral Ackbar quote “It’s a trap” comes to mind as students are being enrolled in classes beyond their current skill level or students who are ready for such a higher skill level are held back because they do not have the same advantages of the other students. High school is supposed to prepare students for both adulthood and college, but instead, the curriculum is creating cookie cutter, take the test and never remember it afterwards, lacking innovative adults who have not been given a chance to learn for themselves. With the amount of opportunity students are given in this age of technological explosion, it is depressing to know that the only opportunity they have to express themselves comes from outside the curriculum.

Blogging, while it does have the potential to be an online diary, could potentially be the best instructional tool an English teacher assigns their class. Allowing the students to choose their point of interest to write about weekly, whether it be the environment, an issue being addressed in Congress or a response to a piece of literature, helps the students’ interests are being acknowledged. Who knows? They might even learn something about writing and finding credible information to respond to in addition to writing about what interests them. If this were done on a secure blogging network that connects nationwide classrooms, the students could learn about critiquing work. It is the fate of every internet writer to bash something with a keyboard-shaped club. Take that brutish tendency and transform it into something constructive!