Paulo Freire: Chapter 2 Pedagogy of the Oppressed

This excerpt from Paulo Freire's book was both an insightful and challenging read. I completely agree with Freire that students are being oppressed when teachers impose their thoughts on them. Teachers should not tell students what to believe. Instead, they should provide students with valuable information and let students decide for themselves what they want to believe. As the old saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink." Similarly, teachers can provide students with all of the necessary resources and tools, but they cannot control how students interact with them. Instead of serving as drill sergeants, teachers need to be guides for their students and realize that teaching is not a one-sided affair. It involves both the teacher and the student. If the  relationship between teacher and student is strong, then the teaching taking place in the classroom is more likely to be effective.

Moreover, I do not agree that students come to school with an empty brain waiting to be filled with knowledge. The mere thought of that is absurd. Students often know more than what teachers give them credit for. They pick up information outside of school such as at home and online and have a general understanding of the world around them. I have always believed that teachers learn more from students than students do from teachers because lessons do not always go as planned.  In other words, students may interpret the lesson differently than the way it was intended to be interpreted.  For example, a student might mention something in a discussion that no one has even considered and that could lead to the teacher backtracking or explaining additional material.

As much as I disagree with  including the "banking concept" in instruction, I believe that each bullet point listed below it is 100%  of what a lot of teachers expect to either see or do in their classrooms.  They expect students to listen diligently while they lecture or they are under the impression that they should be the only individuals that make decisions regarding their classroom.  However, this is not the case in real life.  There are always going to be those students that are off-task and need to be redirected.  Furthermore, students should be allowed to create some of the classroom rules so that they feel part of a learning community and have a sense of responsibility.

I know that there are teachers with good intentions that end up oppressing their students in some way, shape, or form and I sincerely hope that I do not become one of those teachers. To avoid this, I plan on keeping students engaged during lessons and letting  them know that the classroom is not my classroom, but rather our classroom.

Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

There is no "one size fits all" approach to assessing student's learning. It varies based on the teacher, subject, and students. I have always believed that asking students to regurgitate what they have learned in class onto an exam is not beneficial to them or to the teacher. First of all, do students actually know the information or have they simply memorized it for a particular exam? Secondly, how do teachers know that students actually know the material? What if a student understands the material  but is a horrible test taker? How does a teachers evaluate what that student actually knows?

While every teacher has a different idea about how best to assess and evaluate students' learning, I believe that it should be varied. Students should not only take multiple-choice tests after each unit. There should be other forms of assessment such as journals, portfolios,projects, essays, or presentations. Moreover, these assessments need to focus on "knowing how" instead of "knowing what." In other words, students may be able to perfectly recite the definition of a verb, but not be able to provide an example. Additionally, not all assessments need to be graded based on right and wrong answers. I think that grading students on completeness instead of correctness will prove to have better results. Students often feel pressured when they know an assignment is worth x amount of points. In contrast, if students are asked to complete the assignment they feel more at ease. For example, knowing that I am only being graded on whether I complete this blog post on time instead of grammar, punctuation, and spelling allows me to breathe a sigh of relief and type my thoughts freely.

Teachers need to provide a rubric so that students know what they are being assessed on. This rubric should only assess students on material and content that has been covered in class. It should not be full of surprises. After students turn in an assessment, they must receive feedback as soon as possible. I cannot count how many times teachers and professors have simply taken away points without giving me a clear explanation. How can students be expected to improve when they have no idea what they did wrong in the first place? I know that teachers already have a lot of responsibilities and they cannot be expected to write detailed comments on each assessment, but  giving a short explanation should not be too much to ask for. Similar to how teachers expect students to turn in their work on time, teachers need to give feedback promptly.

California State Universities Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

After reading the assignment template, I was surprised by how much reading and writing tasks I already do subconsciously. For example, before I start reading a piece of text , I tap into my prior knowledge. What do I already know about the text? Am I familiar with the author or authors? Is there a historical event that the book is based on? While I read, I constantly make inferences and predictions about what is going to happen to the characters or how the plot is going to unfold. In addition, I also look up the meanings of words that I do not know and highlight important quotes that I might want to review later.  By taking all of these steps before, during, and after reading, I am able to think critically about what I have just read and retain new information for a longer period of time.

As a future teacher, I think it is crucial for all students to know how to become not only critical readers, but also critical thinkers. These skills go hand and hand because students need to learn how to think critically about what they have just read.  Being able to think critically is a skill that will be valuable in school and  beyond. It is a skill that students will use in every day life such as debating whether a post on social media is real news or fake news or whether they should reply to a text while driving. 

The students that I work with at my placement are sophomores and throughout the year they have learned how to become critical readers and thinkers. Through practice and reinforcement, students automatically begin to annotate a piece of text when it is given to them. Some students get a dictionary to define words. Once students have finished annotating a piece of text, they share with a partner and then discuss with the entire class. These whole class discussions have proven to be extremely beneficial because they provide students with clarity about questions and even lead to a deeper dissection of the text. I am still working on asking more thought-provoking  questions to students, but I feel fairly confident about how much their critical reading and thinking skills have developed from the beginning of the school year to now.

Book Talk #1

Harriet the Spy

Louise Fitzhugh

Outline

Harriet the Spy is a children's novel published in 1964. The protagonist, eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch, is an aspiring writer living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her family and nanny, Ole Golly. Harriet hopes to become a successful novelist one day, so her nanny encourages her to keep a daily journal. In this journal, she writes down brutally honest observations that she notices on her personal spy route. She also writes rude comments regarding her classmates and best friends Sport and Janie.

The climax of the story takes place when Harriet loses her journal during a game of tag. As a result, her classmates discover what she really thinks of them and form a Spy Catcher Club to make her life miserable. This antagonistic club is led by Marion, the editor of the class newspaper and a girl that Harriet strongly dislikes. Although Harriet realizes that she has hurt multiple people with her words, she continues to plan how she will punish each member of the club. After skipping school and not doing her homework for many days, Harriet's grades begin to suffer. To make matters worse, she has no one that she can talk to. Both Sport and Janie still have not forgiven her and Ole Golly has recently moved away after getting married. 

Harriet's parents begin to worry about their daughter's mental health, so they take away her journal. When that does not work they send her to a psychiatrist who suggests that she write to Ole Golly. Harriet writes to her former nanny and receives two pieces of advice. Ole Golly tells Harriet that if people ever read her journal she needs to apologize and then lie. Otherwise, she is going to lose friends. At the end of the story, the Spy Catcher Club dissolves and Harriet is appointed the new editor of the class newspaper. She uses the paper as an opportunity to retract observations that she wrote about in her journal and eventually earns the forgiveness of Sport and Janie. The paper goes on to become a success and features stories about people on Harriet's spy route.

Biography

Louise Fitzhugh (1928-1974) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books in the 1960s and is often credited with introducing a new realism in children's fiction. Her characters were popular with girls that did not conform to female stereotypes. While she wrote two sequels to Harriet the Spy (1964), titled the Long Secret (1965) and Sport (1979, published posthumously) they received mixed reviews from the public and never gained much popularity. Apart from the Harriet the Spy series, Fitzhugh also wrote the novel Nobody's Family Is Going To Change (1974), the play Bang, Bang, You're Dead (1969), and illustrated multiple children's books.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee to wealthy parents, Fitzhugh was raised by her father after her parents divorced when she was an infant. She attended three universities and lived in Washington D.C., France, and Italy.  Fitzhugh died from a brain aneurysm at the age of 46 in 1974. 

Rationale

I first read this book when I was in the fourth grade and I remember wanting to be exactly like Harriet. She is an easy character to relate to because she writes the things that we have all thought of at some point in time. Moreover, Harriet shows readers that material objects are not the stuff that happiness is made of. These aspects make her story as relevant today as it was when it was first written. This is the perfect book to read at the middle school level because it is set in the sixth grade and covers issues that students may encounter such as loneliness, depression, bullying, and other challenges of growing up.

Teaching Ideas

·         Students could keep a journal of observations for an allotted time. These journals should be factual instead of insulting. After the allotted time, students can share their journal entries and compare their observations to their peers. What did they observe? Who included the most detail in their observations? Keeping a journal could also help students improve their writing. 

·         Since there is a movie version of Harriet the Spy, students can compare the book with the movie and list similarities and differences. Did they like the book or movie better?

·         There are many lessons that Harriet learns throughout the course of this novel. Perhaps students could explore theme by compiling a list of all the lessons that Harriet learned.

·          Harriet is brutally honest (and very detailed) in her descriptions of people. Students can practice characterization by giving people physical and personality traits.

Obstacles

Despite its popularity, Harriet the Spy has been banned from some schools and libraries because it is said to set a bad example for students. Critics believe that it teaches children to lie, spy, back-talk, and curse. Another potential problem that people may have with the book is that the characters depart from the gender norms. For example, Harriet dresses like a boy and Sport takes on the roles of cooking and cleaning in his household.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_the_Spy

http://www.gradesaver.com/author/louise-fitzhugh

English Language Arts Common Core State Standards

When I first heard about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) I had mixed emotions. On one hand, I was happy that I had some sort of standards to guide my lessons.  On the other hand, I felt overwhelmed. I had no idea how I was going to teach all of the given standards in an entire school year. After reading an article on the origins, goals, and challenges of the CCSS, I was relieved to learn that they do not specify how or what I teach. It is up to me, my colleagues, and the school district to develop the curriculum. In my opinion, this is the way that it should be. The people that should be allowed to determine what is taught in classrooms should be educators---individuals that work closely with students and know their needs and interests best.

Although simply looking at the CCSS can give you a headache, it is amazing how practically every lesson ever taught can tie back to at least one standard in some way, shape, or form. For example, the students in my practicum recently finished reading The Odyssey. At one point in time, I had them compare Helen in the book to Helen in the poem, "Helen" by Hilda Doolittle. The standard that I based my entire lesson on was "Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person's life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account" (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.7). While I had them compare/contrast how Helen was portrayed in the book and in the poem by using a Venn diagram and then writing a short statement, there are various activities that I could have asked them to do. Despite the fact that the CCSS appear daunting, there is  actually a lot of freedom when it comes to teaching the standards. As I have discovered,  the best lessons are usually the ones that are closely aligned with the CCSS.

While it is great that there are standards to guide teachers in creating lessons and developing curriculum, I agree that the CCSS are by no means perfect.  It is a difficult to expect students to meet the standards if they face economic problems or do not even speak English.  These kind of students will need a lot of assistance in reaching the standards. Otherwise, they will continue to fall behind their peers and the achievement gap will get even wider. 

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

As a student, I have witnessed and been a part of many discussions. While some of these discussions have been rewarding, others have been downright horrible. To ensure that discussions are successful, there have to be rules in place and everyone partaking in the discussion must be aware of these rules beforehand. In his article "Discussion as a Way of Teaching," Stephen Brookfield offers a variety of techniques that are often helpful in generating satisfying discussions. 

The two techniques that stood out to me are Circle of Voices on page six and Hatful of Quotes on page ten. First of all, what I liked most about Circle of Voices is that everyone gets the opportunity to speak. The fact that groups are fairly small in size makes it easier for introverted students to want to share their ideas. Although there are two options when it comes to sharing, I prefer having students share in a circle rather than having them volunteer. My rationale for this is that everyone will have to eventually share and perhaps knowing when  may help reduce their anxiety about public speaking.  Moreover, I like how during the discussion students are only allowed to react to their peers' ideas. Not only does this force students to listen carefully to what their peers are saying, but it also prevents students from getting off topic.

Secondly,  Hatful of Quotes is a discussion technique that I am already familiar with from high school. My Honors 11 English teacher, Mrs. Colbert, once asked my classmates and I to draw quotes from a cup. After everyone had shared their interpretations,  Mrs. Colbert hung up the best ones. When my teacher did this activity in class all of the quotes were completely different. Although I see the potential aspect in having multiple students discuss the same quote, I also see the negative value in allowing students to not think for themselves and merely repeat what a classmate said earlier. Instead of having a group of students explain the meaning of a single quote, I believe that each student should select his or her own quote and if they need help interpreting it other students can offer their opinions. 

By implementing these discussion techniques into my future classroom, my hope would be that discussions would be more authentic and students would feel comfortable contributing their ideas.