Technology=Time

Our education classes expound the values and merits of technology. Smartboards, blogs, twitter, wiki pages, Google Readers, clickers, and scads of other technology can be beneficial for teachers and students in and outside of the classroom. Teachers need to access technology in order to relate to our texting, television-viewing, gaming students. However, teachers can also extract the benefits of technology by creating our own Professional Learning Network, or PLN, of educational and content-specific resources. After creating my own PLN, I have learned that technology takes time.

Reading the directions for Twitter, choosing my color scheme for a blog, and figuring out how to edit a wiki page all take time. As a student with a loaded class schedule, I wish I had more time to smooth the kinks out of my PLN. For example, I want to read more about Twitter and discover its "etiquette" as well as how to actually read tweets. In addition to the time it takes to set up the technology, I spend a bit too much time looking at my Google Reader and reading the latest posts from the people I'm following. The information I'm gleaning from reading other academic blogs is beneficial, but it's also distracting.

So, technology requires people to spend copious amounts of time discovering and using its many facets, but the time pays off in terms of information acquired and concepts learned.

If you have time, you can check out some of the other blogs I follow:

Vocabulogic

Dangerously Irrelevant

Dr. DRL's "View from Here"

English Teacher Geek

readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore

Theory Teacher's Blog

Or, some of the people I'm following on Twitter:

jem2323

mindi

spillarke

usedgov

englishcomp

Challenging Those Noggins

Reading does not only include comprehension of complex texts, but also encompasses actively thinking and questioning. In others words, teachers and students have to work their noggins. One way to challenge our brains is through critical literacy. Critical literacy is, according to Heather Coffey at the University of North Carolina, "the ability to read texts in an active, reflective manner in order to better understand power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships."

The "active, reflective" manner of critical literacy is essential for all readers and teachers. Educators must teach students how to engage in texts and reflect on what they are reading in order to foster learning. Students are not only encouraged to comprehend literature, but to also question the message, ideas, and bias of the material. While it is important to critically evaluate literature, a text should not solely be analyzed based on "power, inequality, and injustice." One way to look at power and injustice is to use specific lenses to view literature. But, looking at literature through one narrow lens limits the richness of a text. If we are doing critical literacy and only looking through, for example, an archetypal lens, we may be ignoring a discussion on gender or passing over an opportunity to discuss the literature's social, political, and economic context.

Then, what does critical literacy concretely look like in the classroom? Edward H. Behrman in "Teaching About Language, Power, and Text: A Review of Classroom Practices that Support Critical Literacy," found that there are six educational practices that teachers use in support of critical literacy. They are: reading supplementary texts, reading multiple texts, reading from a resistant perspective, producing counter-texts, conducting student-choice research projects, and taking social action (492). Based on these strategies that teachers use to try and implement critical literacy, it sounds like critical literacy is, well, being a good teacher. For example, Karen Spector and Stephanie Jones' "Constructing Anne Frank: Critical Literacy and the Holocaust in Eighth Grade English" shows how critical literacy means demystifying the happy play version of Anne Frank's life by using other texts and historical information.

So, while critical literacy in practice resembles good teaching techniques, such as using other texts, being aware of different critical approaches or lenses, and allowing student choice, critical literacy is ultimately only one aspect of the ELA classroom. Similarly, a critical literacy lens should not stifle the book, but the lenses, such as gender, class, race, and authority, are valuable concepts to consider when teaching a text. I am wondering, Is it reasonable and practical to teach multiple "lenses" with one book? And, how do I teach students to read and critically evaluate without overwhelming them? While I challenge my own noggin to discover these answers, I can help my students stretch their brains and question their ideologies through some aspects of critical literacy.

Ask Me No Questions...

And I won't ask you any. How do I do it all? In order to be a teacher, I will be forced to take on unimaginable super powers, but retain my approachability. I will be authoritative yet friendly, organized yet laid back, humorous yet serious. As an ELA teacher, I have to read aloud to my students and allow time for them to read silently and aloud. They have to have time for group discussions and small group discussions, but I have to teach vocabulary, provide pre-, during-, and post-reading strategies and activities. My students are forced to take and, hopefully, pass surface-level comprehension tests to determine their reading "capabilities." I have to assign a letter grade to their reading and writing progress. Students will write in journals, and I will find the time to write back. I will inspire an unheard-of passion for reading in middle schoolers, and they will be writing novels before they hit high school. And, my students and I will be highly motivated, extremely interested in topics we cover, and will simply sprint to our class every day.

Okay. Instead of asking, "How do I do it all?" I want to zero in on Nancie Atwell's reading workshop, outlined in her book, In the Middle. My question: Is the reading workshop successful for student literacy and practical for classroom implementation?

According to Atwell, it is successful. Students pursue their own interests, exercise their relationships, and write about what matters to them. Teachers aren't standing in front of a class and begging for an answer, but are talking and writing with students on a personal level (50). Students choose books they want to read: "If we want students to grow to appreciate literature, we need to give them a say in decisions about the literature they will read" (36). Student choice pays off in the number of insightful letters that students write to Atwell in their journals (she includes many examples throughout chapter eight). Success, in terms of developing strong readers, is achieved through the workshop.

Although the idea of students reading, writing, and discussing independently is attractive, I am unconvinced it is practical in a regular classroom with thirty students. Responding thoughtfully to thirty (times however many classes I teach) students through letters takes a large amount of time. However, Atwell says she implemented her reading journals in an elementary school with an average class size of twenty-five (40). I suppose reading students' dialogue journals takes the place of grading mindless worksheets, so writing letters may not take excessive amounts of time.

What about classroom management? While Atwell mentions mini lessons that intersperse the workshop, the bulk of the class seems to consist of reading silently or in small pairs and writing. She acknowledges that "For too many students, sustained silent reading is just a pleasant study hall," so she understands the teacher's role in challenging the students (40). Atwell also ensures that students are moving: "the physical arrangement calls for motion. In turn, the organization of the workshop structures the motion and keeps it purposeful...I have fewer discipline problems" (75). But, what is the physical arrangement of the room? What if my classroom isn't conducive to it? Atwell sets such idealistic goals because they work for her, but how can they work for me? Where I am searching for some concrete answer, experience seems to be the only one.

Although I am unsure of the day-to-day details of a reading workshop, I admire and will implement aspects of Atwell's idea. Student choice and journals (on a smaller scale) are effective ways to ensure students are motivated and actually reading. I will have an incredible library, and I plan to implement time chunks for reading aloud, silent reading, and vocabulary lessons. Although my classroom may not be as "free" as Atwell's, it will strive to be as inspiring.

While I attempted to answer one of my questions (Is the reading workshop successful and practical?), one of my professors would tell me that I can "do it all" with a good dose of self-efficacy. I also need practice, though, which is why I am anxious to begin the practicum experience. And, in reality, I want you to ask me questions because questions do facilitate learning. Just be prepared to receive my questions, too.

Carouseling

Although the instructional strategy of carousel brainstorming may not have as many bright lights, flashy colors, and bouncy music as an actual carousel, it works as an effective mid-level teaching technique and will yield more lasting educational results than a twirly carnival ride.

Carousel brainstorming, which involves groups of students rotating to various stations around the classroom and responding to questions, is developmentally appropriate for middle schoolers. The strategy appeals to students' social, intellectual, and physical developmental domains. As adolescents, students want social interaction and need to work on developing positive relationships with their peers. By being in groups with their peers and talking about ideas and information, students are practicing expressing their views. In addition to the carousel brainstorming activity appealing to the social development domain, it also appeals to the intellectual domain. Students are encouraged to respond to the question at their station, which involves relying on their current knowledge and synthesizes others' ideas. Depending on the topic of the question, students could be responding to anything from elements of a story to different parts of speech, in the ELA classroom. Carousel brainstorming also appeals to students' physical domain because it allows students to move frequently (every two to five minutes) around the classroom as if they were on a gaudy horse, circling around a mirrored music-player.

While carousel brainstorming presents some classroom management issues, with proper facilitation, the teacher can prevent the disruptions. To control the noise level of students' chatty discussions, teachers can diligently keep track of time and ensure that the questions are able to elicit a plethora of answers. Similarly, keeping the students moving will keep them focused on answering the question and not talking about their social lives or the weekend. Providing enough stations will also allow the activity to continue and last the duration of the desired period. Being in control of other "structural" aspects, such as giving each group a separate color marker and telling students to switch recorder at each station, will also ensure the fluidity and success of the activity.

In the ELA mid-level classroom, the carousel brainstorming activity would be appropriate to introduce and brainstorm proper nouns, as this lesson plan demonstrates. (Although the lesson plan labels it a "gallery," it more resembles a carousel activity to me because students move around and add their examples of proper nouns to each category. What is the difference between a "gallery" and a "carousel"?) Or, this review activity uses carousel brainstorming as a larger review session from a unit. Other carousel sessions could prompt students to come up with other parts of speech, examples of literary devices (metaphor, simile), or discuss characters' personalities from literature.

The carousel brainstorming activity is a developmentally appropriate intellectual, social, and physical activity for mid-level students. With proper planning, classroom management disruptions can be minimized and student learning maximized. While this educational tool does not have blinking lights and carnival colored horses, it can make learning fun.

"What?" or, Reading

In one episode of the 90's television show Boy Meets World, Mr. Feeny incessantly commands Shawn, a less-than-enthusiastic student, to "Open a book!" In reply, Shawn's eyes glaze over, confusion spreads over his countenance, and he asks, "What?" As future teachers, we have to instigate more helpful practices than simply telling our students to "open a book."

Shawn's "What?" can contain an almost infinite number of questions: What do I do once I open the book? What are all those words doing there? What is reading? What is decoding? What is the meaning of the words, of the book?

The most important aspect of reading is that it is a complex process. It includes automaticity, fluency, phonics, phonology, morphology, understanding the context, vocabulary, and even spelling. At the center of reading is decoding, which, according to What Content Areas Teachers Should Know About Adolescent Literacy, is the "ability to correctly decipher a particular word out of a group of letters" (3). Teachers need to be aware that mid-level students are going to exhibit a wide range of decoding abilities.

Kylene Beers, in When Kids Can't Read, offers helpful strategies for improving students fluency, or the automatic recognition of words with the appropriate speed and use of expression, and automaticity, or the ability to do something quickly without much conscious thought. My favorite strategy that she presents is to improve knowledge of high-frequency words by having a word wall (213). Students form word walls by writing down common words on notecards, which are then alphabetically arranged in a visible area on the wall. In addition to word walls, chunking and teaching prefixes and suffixes are useful and practical strategies to help students with word recognition. Chunking, or dividing long words into smaller, easily recognizable parts, can help students who are daunted by monstrously multisyllabic words (235).

In regard to vocabulary, the most important and implementable strategies are having a manageable number of words each week, developing vocabulary "trees," and using logographic clues. According to Beers, learning five to eight vocabulary words a week is manageable and allows for actual learning opposed to rote memorization (182). As teachers, we have to use the words we assign in the everyday classroom and encourage students to use them, too. As Catherine Snow from Harvard University explains, experimentation with words is okay. Mistakes should be seen as "developmental progress." In addition to having a small number of words to learn each week, vocabulary trees can be used to teach students the root word and other "branch" words. Beers explains that trees are a fun, meaningful way to learn roots because students listen for and record the branch words of the root (188). Not only is it helpful to know the root of a word, but it is also necessary to apply to students' different learning styles by encouraging them to use logographic cues. By making flashcards with a word on one side and the definition and a picture on the other, students are forming meaningful relationships with the words and are able to use their artistic senses (195). Having a manageable list of words to learn, using vocabulary trees, and accessing logographic cues are three of my favorite vocabulary teaching techniques.

Above all, it is essential that my students and I read in class and have time for silent reading. Although I believe reading time is crucial, I do not know how I will be able to implement a steady reading schedule into a jam-packed teaching schedule. Although Beers cites that students should have ten minutes of SSR daily, where will the recommended time come from? How do I get students to cooperate and read for the time? I am hung up on the day-to-day practicality.

Another question that has been nagging me is, How can I create a reading- and writing-friendly atmosphere? Although Nancie Atwell in In the Middle is a proponent of the reading workshop (35), is the workshop a dream that I can bring to reality in a regular classroom? To me, the class size has to be small, the curriculum flexible, and the students exceptional. Although I can include aspects of the workshop, such as having a fully developed library (I am a book hoarder) and allowing student choice, what are other ways of implementing a reading environment?

Overall, reading is a complex process that students struggle with and need the teacher's help with. As Beers reminds us, we have to believe our students can succeed (243). Have confidence in our students and share it with them. As a future teacher, I will be able to help my students who don't know how to read--who respond with "What?" when I ask them to open a book--because I will implement the variety of strategies that the complex process of reading demands.

Teaching: Leading and Learning

According to the OED, one definition of leadership is "the position of a group of people leading or influencing others within a given context." In schools, teachers are the people leading and influencing their students within their classrooms. Especially in the mid-level grades, teachers need to be a model and guide for students. Although there are other aspects of effective teachers besides leadership, there are also important learning goals for middle schoolers that I will strive to help my students meet.

Effective teachers are not only leaders, but are also passionate, challenging, and positive. They understand middle school students and establish a safe and welcoming learning environment. Learning to be a leader is a life-long learning process, which I have begun, thanks to strong teachers and leadership seminars. When it comes to passion, I could gush about literature, language, and writing for eons, but I need to discover how to instill passion in my students. To understand middle school students, I will continue to spend time with them and will learn facts about eleven- to fourteen-year-olds through Mid-Level Literacy and Pedagogy. In regard to attitude, I must remind myself to have confidence, watch my sarcasm, and think of every day as a good day. In addition to having a positive attitude, I will learn to create a safe learning environment through experience.

Effective teachers need to meet the goals for mid-level ELA students, which are to learn to become independent readers and writers and to make connections between their individual lives and their academic coursework. In When Kids Can't Read, Kylene Beers describes how an "independent" reader is a person who can struggle with a text and make sense of it (15). By contrast, a dependent reader is someone who depends on an outside source to tell her what to do or even relies on another to read for her (16). Although students in both middle and high schools should strive to be independent readers, mid-level students should focus on becoming readers, while high schoolers are generally pushed farther up the pyramid of Bloom's Taxonomy and are engaged in a different kind of rigorous reading.

Another important goal for students is to be able to make connections and have "aha" moments in regard to school content and their personal lives. Students learn when they can make connections and see the relevancy of literature and language arts.

Based on the important goals for mid-level students, there are two goals I am setting for myself for this education course:

1) I will learn how to teach reading and will improve a student's reading abilities.

2) I will continue to build on being a life-long learner. By studying and interacting with middle schoolers, I will be able to learn ways to challenge and connect the content I am learning to their lives.

As a future teacher, I will strive to be a leader to my students and lead them to be passionate readers and learners. Leadership and teaching are so intimately connected that the OED should add a footnote underneath "leadership," which says, "See also: teaching, n."

Avoiding Stupidity

Because this blog exists for educational purposes, there are some guidelines that will allow myself and others to exchange our views in a safe environment. To me, the most important guidelines to follow when blogging are:

1) Stick to the purpose or topic of the post. As one of the "Ten Commandments of Blog and Wiki Etiquette" attests to, bloggers should start a new post to deal with a new topic. Readers expect order and usually begin reading a post with the notion that the ending will be dealing with the same subject as the beginning. Stay on target.

2) Think before posting. The International School of Bangkok's guidelines remind bloggers that there are consequences to every action. Also, as stated in my first entry and as the Arapahoe High School's "Safe and Responsible Blogging" guidelines discuss, the internet is a public place. Only post something that will be appropriate for the entire worldwide web to view. Along with using my noggin while posting, I will check my spelling and grammar and be careful not to share any personal information.

3) Credit and cite information or evidence. Pete Babb in the "Ten Commandments of Blog and Wiki Etiquette" states it best when he explains, "People can come up with statistics to prove anything; forty percent of all people know that." As teachers, we will be more credible, reliable, and intelligent if we cite our information.

4) Be respectful. If I am inclined to argue with another, I will follow another one of the etiquette commandments and argue with the post, or idea, and not the poster, or person. Because no one is perfect, I also expect to follow the sixth commandment by happily owning up to my mistakes. After all, teachers are especially prime candidates to learn from their mistakes and adapt.

Creating a safe blogging environment includes sticking to the purpose, thinking before posting, citing evidence, and being respectful. If all else fails, my number one "commandment" is, as Arapahoe High School reminds me, not to write anything in a blog that I wouldn't say or do in a classroom. Or, in the words of one group of students from Bud the Teacher's class, "I will not be stupid."