On page 95 the authors note that one of the boys, Zach, "refused to read on vacation." As Chloe and I talked about in our meeting last night, so do I. I do not think that this is necessarily a bad thing, or something that should be indicative of literacy level or skill. I just wanted to point that out--I think that reading can be pleasurable, but whether or not it is done for that reason isn't necessarily a reflection of whether or not it is done and done well in school when it is required. In reality, many of these boys are going to get through school because they need to/have to. They are going to do the reading because the reading is assigned. I'm alright with that as long as they are actually doing it. I would prefer if the authors focus on how to get them to do assigned reading (which they do in the rest of the chapter) than whether or not these boys are going to be life-long novel readers, because, frankly, I don't care all that much. Great if they are. If they aren't, that's fine too.
I think that what we have been talking about in class has a lot to do with this chapter. The boys clearly were not willing to take on a task that they felt completely incompetent in. In my last post I griped about the difficulties of being able to meet each and every student at their correct level of challenge. Perhaps doing some metacognitive work on difficulty and creating a dialogue about competence and reading difficulty would have helped these boys to feel competent enough to take on reading tasks.
I was surprised that the authors found that so many schools did not necessarily encourage students to express their opinions, or, give them ample opportunity to do so. It's strange to me because I feel like this is a given. I imagine that having the weight of responsibility to teach a certain curriculum in these schools must be a part of that.
A lot was covered in this chapter and I'm obviously not going to be able to address all of it, but one point I did want to address was this discussion about the boys' "notions of reality" (124). It was important for the boys to engage in reading and learning that applied to their own lives or their immediate surroundings. The authors state, "Though the boys constructed their notions of reality differently, they all privileged what they considered to be the real and discounted what was not." My question is: How can we use this information and practically apply it in the classroom if our students' notion of reality varies so much? Are book clubs and giving students some choice the solution to this? Or do we need to do more? If so, then what are we to do?
Something I am still confused about from this chapter is SRIs. I am still confused about what this process would entail. Is anyone able to clarify? So the students are supposed to cut out pictures from magazines to go along with the story they are reading, but, I am completely lost on what they are actually supposed to be doing with these cut-outs. And how would we use this activity? Would this be in-class or a project that would be turned in? I am just having a really hard time picturing how this entire activity would be done or how it would be laid out.
In this comment I just want to address your first paragraph. I hope to address some of your other points/ questions later.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, part of what I'm taking from that paragraph--and from what you said during our meeting last Wednesday--is, frankly, that you are feeling overworked. Further, you are expressing a kind of feeling of solidarity with the boys, since you perceive that they, too, may feel overworked. You want to protect your--and their--free time. You want to keep up some boundaries between *school* and *leisure.* You want there to be some things (pleasure, leisure) that are none of the teacher's damn business. Is this a fair reading of your position? I think you at least sort of suspect Smith and Wilhelm of making an unwelcome *incursion* into the domain of pleasure/ leisure by asking/ expecting/ hoping that the boys break down some of the boundaries between school reading and leisure activities/ reading. Is *this* a fair reading of your position?
I do feel you could do more to turn your feeling of resistance into a well-articulated critique...I'm trying to think of *how.* Is it perhaps the case that Smith and Wilhelm have a different notion of freedom than you do? If so, could you do more to fully acknowledge their position? I tend to think that they would hate to believe that they are in any way trying to make an incursion on the boys' free time. I think they think they can show that school "work" can be a lot more like "play" than the boys had realized. I guess you're not buying it?
I'm definitely more on board with Smith and Wilhelm than you are...BUT you do raise an issue that has been troubling me pretty much ever since I started taking these courses that are all about pedagogy that foregrounds student ENGAGEMENT. I am very excited about addressing the affective dimension of learning. I'm almost completely on board with these approaches. BUT there's about 2% of me that keeps thinking of the obnoxious "motto of mom's home cooking" you see posted in some kitchens. Have you ever seen or heard this? "YOU WILL EAT IT AND YOU WILL LIKE IT."
I kind of think you want the students to have the freedom to eat it and not like it.
I guess the greater part of me feels that that's not really freedom. But, I'll concede that I continue to be a bit troubled by the extent to which all the "engaged learning" stuff does tend to seem like it's telling students how to feel. Or is it just requiring that they feel *something*?
Hi Keira, thanks for the response. I do not necessarily feel that I am "overworked" or that the boys are either--I do not know if they are or aren't. It's not about "protecting" free time. I am simply saying that some people enjoy reading and some people do not. Boundaries between school and leisure are not necessary. Life is so much easier if you enjoy reading since that is what is required of you in school. But not all people derive great pleasure (or, perhaps, as much pleasure as the authors) from reading. It is not an "unwelcome" incursion into the domain of pleasure/leisure. It is simply an unrealistic expectation that assumes everyone will derive the same type of pleasure from the same type of activity. Nope. The authors have already repeatedly established that our students are individuals, that we shouldn't look at our classes and generalize, that they are not a homogenous student body, and the importance of getting to know our students each individually to better help them learn. The authors hope that the boys will break some of these boundaries between school and leisure/pleasure down. Who doesn't? I think it's clear from the interviews that even the boys hope this. They acknowledge that life would be so much easier if they enjoyed reading much more than they do. They just simply don't. And that is to be expected. It isn't helpful to feed ourselves (as teachers) this farce that if we can only get them the right book all students individually will look at reading as a leisurely pleasure. It's not that I am not buying the authors' suggestion that school work can be more like "play." I think it can--and they make good suggestions as to how. I am saying that just because it goes one way doesn't mean it goes the other--"play" won't necessarily take the shape of school work (reading). Does this make more sense? I hope I answered your questions.
ReplyDeleteI am reading Chapter 4 right now. I'm at the part about the importance, for the boys, of "reality" or relevance to "reality." Like you, I'm struck by how differently the individual boys can construe relevance to "reality." Most notably, some discount books like Harry Potter because it doesn't deal with "real" situations; others are huge fantasy fans and feel that fantasy/ sci fi can help them deal with "real" problems. It's kind of vexing. But the one idea I have about what to do with this problem is just to *thematize* the issue of relevance to reality. I don't think we should teach all non-fiction just because a good number of the students have trouble relating fiction to "reality." I also don't think we should necessarily teach a ton of fantasy to cater to another specific population. I think we should try to teach a mixture, but perhaps always/ often bring up the question: How *might* a reader relate this to real life? How *might* we find relevance?
ReplyDeleteOk, I got to the SRI part and I totally share your confusion. I wonder: Is this something they teach in teachers' college or something? I mean, are the authors assuming that their audience knows this technique and they can just get away with MENTIONING it? What I tend to picture is students kind of trotting little figurines around and making them speak--you know, the way kids do. I actually *can* see this as helpful, b/c it can be more individualized and require less co-ordination of various people than other kinds of dramatization (i.e., with different students playing different roles). My daughter likes to play "Babar" this way because it's so hard, she says, to get enough kids to play all the Babar characters (and, I'm guessing, it's hard to get them to follow her directions...) But then, they also talk about one student working with the color of the sky--and that's not a character thing, obviously. I guess you just give your students some materials and let them make visual any aspects of the text that seem salient to them? I guess if you then share the products with the whole class, you can emphasize the dialogical nature of reading by showing how each student notices different things, re-makes/ responds to the text in different ways. Or...the whole thing could just come off as flakey-flake-tastic.
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