Babb’s Book Blog

Chapter 12

I love the quote at the beginning of the chapter where the teacher says as individuals, none of us can save the world, but we must behave as though we can…When I first started teaching, I was very much an idealist and very naïve.  I like the fact that this program (EdS) has helped me to get my idealism back, but without the naiveté.  I love what the teacher quoted on page 483 says about how many of her colleagues are becoming burned out, but she feels that she’s defying the odds and has a new lease on her life as a teacher.  I feel refreshed in the same way.  As I read pages 498-99, I was again reminded that in the future, I need to fight against programs like “Open Court” (scripted reading).  As I read page 501, I loved what was said about “questioning our own views and aspirations’.  I really feel that I am doing so more than ever now…I used to think I was crazy as I constantly did this in the past, but now I am realizing that this is really a very good thing!!

TTCTH6

            These days in my county, we constantly hear the buzz word “authentic assessment”.  Our administrators make it clear that they feel that authentic assessment is very important.  I take this to mean that students can actually demonstrate that they have learned the skills and knowledge that have been taught to them.  Students can do things like create portfolios, put on plays for other students or parents, write letters, make art projects that go along with what they’ve learned, create museums that other students can tour, etc.  I have never liked IQ tests, as I don’t think they are a true measure of actual intelligence or success in life.  I love the quote by Howard Gardner on p. 226.  He says that neither school success nor standardized tests “typically predict one’s ability to seize a business opportunity, ask a good question at just the right moment, or hold a scalpel steady”.   In my opinion, every child is above average in one or more areas of intelligence.  Throughout the school year, one of my goals is to figure out the area in which each and every one of my students is gifted.  Over the years I’ve even found students that are gifted in the area of “nature”, which is one area in which not many first graders appear to be gifted.  I’m amazed what they know, what they observe that the average person wouldn’t, what they’re curious about, and how insightful they can be.  I try to pay close attention to their comments, as this always seems to help me figure out how my students are gifted.

TTCTWCH10

            We are very lucky at the school where I currently teach to have a very degree of parent involvement.  We have 100% PTSA membership and countless volunteers helping out at our school every day.  Every year since I have been at Tritt, excluding this year, I have had parent volunteers in my classroom four days a week.  This year for some reason, I have had a very difficult getting parent to come in to help.  My room mom has done all she can to try to try and encourage parents to come in, but they just don’t seem to want to make the time in their busy schedules.  Believe me though; this is not the norm at my school.  I know how very blessed we are to have such involved parents.  Not only do parent volunteers help out at our school, they also get community members to partner with our school and do a tremendous amount for the school.  We have something called “Arts in Education Day” every year at my school, where community members come in to spend an entire day educating our students.  We have actors, singers, musicians, artists, architects, potters, woodworkers, comedians, etc. that teach our students.  All of this is coordinated by parent volunteers.  Parents also help raise tens of thousands of dollars to support a foundation that pays for a computer lab teacher, a science lab teacher, and a Spanish teacher.  I feel for the low income schools where this is not possible.  The disparity is evident.  The one negative comment that I have heard from teachers, which is pointed out in chapter 10, is that parents have too much power, and “run the school”.  I love the idea of parents becoming activist to bring “socially just schooling to all of the neighborhood’s children” (p. 407). 

TTCTWCH9

            I think school culture is perhaps more important than anything else.  School culture determines how happy the teachers are, and this has a direct impact on the students.  When I walk in some schools, a feeling comes over me that everyone that works there takes pride in what he/she does.  Things such as friendliness and cleanliness really matter, but these things alone are not, of course, enough.  Teachers and administrators (and custodians, lunchroom workers and office worker) must really care about the reason that the school exists – the students.  Some of the schools in Shame of the Nation, the book I just finished reading with my book buddy, Charlotte, were terrible places for anyone to work or learn; in contrast, other schools, even though they lacked the resources that they truly needed to foster learning, the teachers, administrators and other workers at the schools somehow made sure that learning was taking place and that the students knew they were really cared for and that the environment was a pleasant one to be in day after day.  I can’t imagine a school like the one described in chapter 9 where racial tension exists between African American and Latino students.  Kimberly Min says that “the staff generalizes about African American and Latinos-the African American kids are (according to the staff) louder and more physical, whereas the Latinos are more obedient and reticent.”  At her school, the African Americans are seen as the aggressors while the Latinos are seen as the victims.  The racism she describes is terrible!  I admire her for trying to be a change agent. 

I really enjoyed Paul Gorski’s talk.  The thing that struck me most about him, is that he is very passionate about his cause…and his cause is poor people.  What cause could be better?  I am also impressed that he is speaking free of charge.  This tells me he is not doing this to make money.  I really would like to become more of an activist after I finish my EdS…when I have more time!!!  I know that I was put in the inner city to teach when I was younger for a reason, and I have never forgotten the children that I taught.  I will always have a soft spot in my heart for inner city children.  I guess my job now is to try and create empathy for those children in the upper middle class children I teach now.  Our school does service projects, but I am learning that this is not enough!  I wonder if it would help to find pen pals in another area of Atlanta where the children aren’t as fortunate as those that I teach?  I don’t really know what the answers are, but I definately am open to ideas, and I am going to keep searching until I find the right thing to do!

I don’t quite know what to think about Ruby Payne.  I had never heard her name until about six months ago, and now I hear about her all the time.  I wonder what her motives are?  The article by Anita Bohn says that she portrays poor people as “milking the system”.  I think it’s a shame to put all poor people in the same boat and say something like this.  When I hear people say something like this, I try to just remind them that no matter what the motives of the parents, children should not be accused of anything like this.  They have no control over what their parents do – good or bad.  We need to try and figure out solutions to the problems that poor children have.  We waste time and energy, and just make people angry when we try and start blaming.  I agree with Bohn that “the poor do not have realistic opportunities to escape from poverty”.  I do know that there aren’t any quick fixes.  Our nation has got to find some real solutions.  We as individuals have to start treating these poor children like they were our own.  Maybe teachers like me, who teach in affluent schools can start by trying to develop some empathy in our students, so that when they grow up, they won’t be so self-centered.

Blog Feb26

My favorite article from last week was Evaluating Children’s Books for Bias.  I thought it had some really helpful ideas that I hadn’t previously considered.  I had already thought about exclusion of groups and stereotypes.  I had also thought about standards of success being related to the white male.  I have recently become aware of the diversity among Asian Americans (in this class).  I will definitely consider this when I pick out books to read to my students.  I will also begin to consider inaccuracy in the depiction of cultures, especially when I thumb thorough books to look at the illustrations.  The author also included some sexist language that I hadn’t considered to be offensive in the past.  (forefathers rather than ancestors, humankind rather than mankind,  and synthetic rather than manmade)  I don’t agree with what has been termed “cultural thievery”.  (Where the author asks whether or not it’s ethical for mainstream writers to appropriate the literature of parallel cultures)  After all, we live in a free society, and we should be allowed to write about any culture that we choose to write about!  I believe that people are able to write from a perspective that they have never personally experienced.  If I were to spend many hours studying and talking with people of another culture, I might find it interesting to write a story from their perspective.  I also think it would be an excellent idea for children to write from the perspective of one from another culture.  What better way to try and teach students to be empathetic toward others than to try and write a story from another’s perspective!  Teachers could encourage their students to do research on another culture, and then write a story from that perspective. 

Oakes and Lipton Ch. 7 

The overriding theme of this chapter, on classroom management, is that children should be engaged in caring, respectful and democratic relationships.  I couldn’t agree more.  I do think that most teachers are by nature, caring people.  It only follows that if one is caring, one is also respectful.  The democratic part is where I think some teachers part ways with the thoughts of Oakes and Lipton.  As discussed in this chapter, school discipline at the turn of the century resembled the way those who worked in factories were managed.  These days, we have a hard time imagining such strict control.  When I first started teaching, in the late 80’s in Birmingham, corporal punishment was alive and well, but worse than that, intimidation and public humiliation abounded.  Students who misbehaved were sent down to the principal’s office for a spanking. (I was not a classroom teacher; so luckily, I had no part in this.)  I had a hard time dealing with witnessing teachers humiliate and intimidate students.  Had I not been so young and naïve, I hopefully would have tried to do something about this.  I’ve often thought about how discouraged those students who lived in poverty were before they even stepped foot into the school, and then to have the teachers beat them down even more…I hope and pray that this no longer goes on at the school where I taught.  Hopefully, those teachers have retired and some new teachers like Oakes and Lipton highlight in this chapter are now building those children up and helping them believe that they can do anything!  I love that Paley’s book, You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, was discussed in this chapter.  I read it and loved it!  The premise is, children are simply not allowed to turn a classmate away that wants to play with them.  Oakes and Lipton say that tolerating rejection is not a minor issue, and I agree!  One other point…I have noticed that over the years, since I’ve become a better teacher, I’ve had fewer discipline problems.  I do tend to agree that with effective teaching, classroom management becomes more of a non-issue.

Oakes and Lipton, Chapter 4

I love the quote on p. 125 by progressive math teacher, Zeba Palomino, where she says that “mathematics is a beautiful cycle of connections; it is not a linear study of fragmented pieces.”  When teachers simply take out an hour or so per day to teach math in a fragmented way, students have no idea for what purpose they are learning.  In my opinion, in Palomino’e quote where the word “mathematics” is, one could substitute any subject.  In other words, science is a “beautiful cycle of connections”, as is social studies, reading, writing, etc. Traditionalists try to convince the public that educators need to teach in a manner that is “back to the basics”.  If they succeed in their quest, we’ll have students that learn in a shallow manner and never understand the connections between all of the subjects and how they apply to real life situations.  We, as progressive educators, must show the links between topics and subjects, instead of teaching a topic for a certain period of time and then moving on to something else.  In addition, students that are taught in a traditional fashion miss out on truly understanding social and political issues.  I love the idea presented on page 145 of teaching students to view history from the perspective of those at the bottom of the social ladder.  What better way to develop empathy in our children?  On page 146, Oakes and Lipton write that critical multiculturalists think that “schools have an important activist role in challenging and improving society” and that “an objective pursuit of social justice does not require one to be dispassionate, passive, or neutral”.  I couldn’t agree more.  Maybe I’m a dreamer, but what a better world we would have if we all stopped being so selfish and started thinking about and putting others ahead of ourselves!

Pedagogy of the Absurd

This article reminded me once again that many educators, myself included, need to speak up for what we know to be the best teaching practices for our students.  We can’t let politicians, lobbyists, and text book companies dictate to us what and how we need to teach our students!  Goodman says that the conservative campaign had a simple message:  “Tests show children are failing to learn to read.  That’s because naïve and basically incompetent teachers have been duped into using whole language rather than phonics, which has been demonstrated by research to be one sure way to teach reading.”  This makes me, as a teacher, feel terrible.  To me, it says that teachers are just plain ignorant, and know nothing about teaching!  How dare these conservatives treat us like a group of second class citizens that don’t know how to do our jobs.  We, as teachers, say over and over again that if attorneys or doctors were treated this way, they wouldn’t stand for it, and in addition, the public would be outraged.  How sad that the current era, in which we are teaching, may in the future be known as the “pedagogy of the absurd”.  Goodman says that eventually, parents and the public will recognize that the absurdities are hurting our children.  He also says that too many good educators have been silenced and are leaving the profession.  How can we let this happen?  We’ve really got to do something!!

Freire – Second Letter (Don’t Let the Fear of What Is Difficult Paralyze You)

This article really hit home with me.  I actually just recently put a note to myself on my refrigerator that says “God honors faith.  The enemy attacks with fear.”  I have never in my life put a note to myself up anywhere, so when I read the title to Freire’s Second Letter, I felt like I should really pay attention to the message in the letter, since I had just been reflecting on fear.  In Freire’s letter, fear is defined as a “feeling of unrest before the notion of real or imaginary danger”.  Freire also says, that fear is concrete whether or not it is real or imaginary.  He says that we shouldn’t allow fear to paralyze us, cause us to quit or face a challenging situation without a fight.  We all have fears, and we must find a way to overcome these fears.  Freire speaks of the fear of not being able to understand a text and goes through the steps one should take in order to overcome this fear.  No matter what our fears are, we can reflect upon them and instead of being immobilized, we can meet these fears head on and fight to overcome them.  When speaking of difficult texts, Freire points out that through listening to points of view other than our own, we can “enrich the production of text comprehension”.  We can in fact do this with our students as well as with our grad school cohorts!  I found one additional interesting point that Freire makes about helping young readers and writers.  He says that good writers are in the habit of “leaving certain information suspended so the readers could exercise their imagination”.   I wondered, as I read this if this is the reason why we are almost always disappointed in a film if we have first read the book.  That is, we feel that our own imaginations are (most of the time) far superior to someone else’s.

Elizabeth Jaeger’s “Silencing Teachers in an Era of Scripted Reading”

In my opinion this article was disturbing because no one in authority was willing to listen to this intelligent teacher who obviously is very aware of current research and who also cares deeply for her students.  I was reminded of the difficult situation I was put in this year as I read this article.  I am, for the first time, in an EIP classroom this year.  This means that I have a full time EIP teacher in my classroom all day long.  The other teacher in my class has not been in school for many years, and is unaware of what the current research says about scripted programs.  She believes our Open Court phonics program to be an excellent way to teach children.  I, on the other hand, do not like the program at all.  I feel that it tries to teach skills in isolation, and that for students, little learning will occur.  I was very vocal about my opinion at the beginning of the year.  I told her that current research suggests that this type of teaching is outdated and ineffective.  I also actually told her that I thought Open Court would be a waste of time.  She, however, refused to back down, saying that this is what our county mandates.  I felt that I had no choice, but to let her teach Open Court.  I had to bite my tongue and let her do things the ways she felt she should.  To me, the time she spent every day doing Open Court was a total waste of valuable time, but I felt that my hands were tied.  In the past, when I have been the only teacher, I made a decision not to use Open Court.  We are so lucky in our particular school, that our administrators don’t breathe down our backs and force us to teach from certain curriculum.  I really felt for the teacher who wrote the article since her administrators forced her to use Open Court.  I really began to wonder about the schools on the other side of my county…are teachers forced into using curriculum that they know to be ineffective?