I have to say I am jealous of Phil right now...he was able to hear Kelly Gallagher speak. I just finished re-reading Gallagher's text Readicide, and I was challenged by how far I have to go yet in my practice. I read this book several years ago and wanted to implement many of his practices, but I failed to follow through on many of them.
I appreciate Gallagher's focus on getting students to read. This is one of the major issues I have found with students. Instead of giving them a program, why not give them a book instead? I have found from my own experience how my vocabulary has shifted and expanded as a result of the reading I do. I read a variety of sources...from academic/scholarly work to young adult and children's literature to news articles. Not only has my vocabulary expanded, but I have become better at code-switching in each situation. This is an area Phil touched on in his post, and one I am fascinated by. Instead of teaching our students one way of writing something, why are we not helping them understand that the way they write is determined by the audience, subject, message, and genre. I can feel the excitement coursing through my veins.
I am excited to sit down with Phil and discuss his ideas!
In my quest to be more intentional this year, I am striving to design learning experiences for my students that will help them become better readers not non-readers. At the senior level this may be a challenge as I have to undo damage from previous years of schooling. I realize just how much better I need to be about modeling (which I have done quite a bit in the past) and finding that 50/50 balance for my students, both in the texts they read as well as the way I go about helping them read those texts.
I am feeling overwhelmed by the time limitations and all of my ideas, but as I have learned from Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, we make the road by walking. I will start walking in this direction and see where it leads.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Rhetoric and Emulation Workshop
This last week, I had the opportunity to receive some AP English literature training as well to hear Kelly Gallagher speak about improving students' reading and writing skills. I was blown away by the number of practices, ideas, and concepts that I've been exposed to before but that seemed so much more tangible, doable, and impactful the way they were explained. (Of course, maybe the biggest difference is that I've changed - not that the presenters have.) In combining all that I learned with what I already planned on doing next year, I've come up with the following overall plan:
Each week, I want to focus on what I'm currently calling a rhetoric and emulation workshop - a sort of combination of readers and writers workshop. I envision finding excellent mentor texts that we would do close readings of, which would involve looking at not only the literary devices but also the rhetorical strategies and rhetorical situation of the text. We would then use those texts as specific models we would strive to emulate in a kind of condoned plagiarism of format and overall concept.
I still have a lot to flesh out, but I'm excited to see where we can go!
I'd strongly encourage you to check out Gallagher's website and work: http://kellygallagher.org/.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Innovation in Academics
Recently, a college student who was observing some of my classes shared an article with me that has had a profound impact on my plans for next school year.
Educational Leadership's "No Penalties for Practice" tells the story of a struggling school that worked to create an assessment model in which each department identified a handful of competencies that students had to pass each quarter in order to get credit for a class. No longer were grades artificially inflated by busy work, extra credit, completion or participation points, or assignments on which students could easily cheat. Grades were based solely on students' performance on the summative competency tests.
Now, lest you fear that this sounds like a new manifestation of traditional high stakes testing, let me explain a few more key points to this system. First of all, the competencies aren't just multiple-choice tests. They can include writing projects, group projects, creative projects, and other types of assessment. The focus is on students demonstrating mastery on key core skills. In fact, the focus is so much on mastery that if students didn't score a 70% on the competency, an interesting sequence of events followed.
After not achieving mastery on a competency, students are given two weeks to work with the teacher to retake the competency. If students don't take care of the issue on their own in that time frame, teachers contact parents, administrators, coaches, and other adults involved, and the student is not allowed to participate in athletics or extra-curriculars until they achieve mastery in the competency.
Another interesting point is that since grades were based on the competencies and not on homework, student completion of homework initially went down. However, the system was constructed so that students could not retake a failed competency until they'd completed all of the homework associated with it. So, homework completion initially declined, but once students experienced the intense consequences of not taking care of competencies in a timely manner, homework completion surpassed what it had been in the previous system where homework counted as part of the grade.
I believe this system sounds rigorous, focused, and meaningful. It takes the principles of backward design and applies them perfectly to help teachers stay on track with what is most essential and with what students should know and be able to do. Additionally, I appreciate that this system facilitates students' metacognition by giving them the option to think, "Hey, I get this and don't think I need to do the homework," or, "This is rather confusing, so I'd better do the homework tonight." By putting the ball of practice into students' court, we're giving them more meaningful opportunities to reflect on their own knowledge, and if they don't know what they know and don't know, there's a system in place to help them figure that out.
There's much more to school than pure academics, but I think this model is a new key for me in unlocking the academic component.
Educational Leadership's "No Penalties for Practice" tells the story of a struggling school that worked to create an assessment model in which each department identified a handful of competencies that students had to pass each quarter in order to get credit for a class. No longer were grades artificially inflated by busy work, extra credit, completion or participation points, or assignments on which students could easily cheat. Grades were based solely on students' performance on the summative competency tests.
Now, lest you fear that this sounds like a new manifestation of traditional high stakes testing, let me explain a few more key points to this system. First of all, the competencies aren't just multiple-choice tests. They can include writing projects, group projects, creative projects, and other types of assessment. The focus is on students demonstrating mastery on key core skills. In fact, the focus is so much on mastery that if students didn't score a 70% on the competency, an interesting sequence of events followed.
After not achieving mastery on a competency, students are given two weeks to work with the teacher to retake the competency. If students don't take care of the issue on their own in that time frame, teachers contact parents, administrators, coaches, and other adults involved, and the student is not allowed to participate in athletics or extra-curriculars until they achieve mastery in the competency.
Another interesting point is that since grades were based on the competencies and not on homework, student completion of homework initially went down. However, the system was constructed so that students could not retake a failed competency until they'd completed all of the homework associated with it. So, homework completion initially declined, but once students experienced the intense consequences of not taking care of competencies in a timely manner, homework completion surpassed what it had been in the previous system where homework counted as part of the grade.
I believe this system sounds rigorous, focused, and meaningful. It takes the principles of backward design and applies them perfectly to help teachers stay on track with what is most essential and with what students should know and be able to do. Additionally, I appreciate that this system facilitates students' metacognition by giving them the option to think, "Hey, I get this and don't think I need to do the homework," or, "This is rather confusing, so I'd better do the homework tonight." By putting the ball of practice into students' court, we're giving them more meaningful opportunities to reflect on their own knowledge, and if they don't know what they know and don't know, there's a system in place to help them figure that out.
There's much more to school than pure academics, but I think this model is a new key for me in unlocking the academic component.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Kristi's Summer Syllabus 2013
In an attempt to hold myself accountable for continuous learning, I am posting my Summer Syllabus and will be updating weekly on my progress.
I do want to add one caveat...I may not get to some of these books until July. I will be teaching Summer School Session 1 and am taking a Young Adult Literature class for my Master's degree during the month of June. I will post about my learning experiences throughout the week, though.
Read the following books:
1. Readicide by Kelly Gallagher
2. What's the Big Idea?: Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking by Jim
Burke*
3. Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Dr. Tony
Wagner
*Reading this book and designing question-driven units is part of my school improvement goal for next year.
Prepare the following:
1. Refine the English 12 CP Quarterly Assessments. Thanks to my English 12 CP team, this task should not be too monumental.
2. Prepare the major readings and assessments for Quarter 1. I would like to do this for all four quarters, but as I am taking two summer class and teaching a session of summer school, I need to make sure I have obtainable goals.
I look forward to learning this summer! May the creative juices flow.
Until,
Kristi Manduka
I do want to add one caveat...I may not get to some of these books until July. I will be teaching Summer School Session 1 and am taking a Young Adult Literature class for my Master's degree during the month of June. I will post about my learning experiences throughout the week, though.
Read the following books:
1. Readicide by Kelly Gallagher
2. What's the Big Idea?: Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking by Jim
Burke*
3. Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Dr. Tony
Wagner
*Reading this book and designing question-driven units is part of my school improvement goal for next year.
Prepare the following:
1. Refine the English 12 CP Quarterly Assessments. Thanks to my English 12 CP team, this task should not be too monumental.
2. Prepare the major readings and assessments for Quarter 1. I would like to do this for all four quarters, but as I am taking two summer class and teaching a session of summer school, I need to make sure I have obtainable goals.
I look forward to learning this summer! May the creative juices flow.
Until,
Kristi Manduka
"Experiments with Truth"
"Education is before, is during, and is after. It's a process, a permanent process. It has to do with the human experience and curiosity" (Horton and Freire 159).
The battle to define education and how it is carried out has always been a weighty and heated one. Many theories have been developed and implemented. Yet, many fall prey to the basic human instinct: "Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities" (Dewey 17). The theories fail to work together, to find a balance, in order to help students learn. Furthermore, many fall prey to the idea that students are empty vessels waiting to be filled, and the teacher will fill that emptiness with knowledge. We cannot forget that students are creative, curious human beings who desire to learn. The fault lies in a system that has perpetuated the myth that students need to be told what they should know and none of their experiences make valuable sites of knowledge-making.
Students also must begin to see that they have a part to play in this process of learning. I am not asking for the students to be writing the curriculum (although why not allow them some say). Students and teachers need to remember that it is in the struggle where learning takes place. In grappling with issues and attempting to make meaning or working out some sort of meaning is where we begin to find answers; sometimes acknowledging that answers are not going to be clear-cut or final but works in process. The student must be the one who is responsible for his or her own education. The student must see that he or she is in control of his or her education. A teacher must work to inspire the student to willingly take on the struggle that is his or her education.
The classroom must become a balancing act. Instead of denigrating philosophies of education, teachers must study them and take from them the elements that are true and work best and fuse them together in order to find the balance in order to inspire students to learn. The relationship of the teacher to the student must be that of mentor, not giver of knowledge. Students should be taken to places they normally would not go, but teachers must also learn to incorporate the students' experiences into the learning. As bell hooks writes, "...who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin" (13).
This blog is dedicated to personal journey of understanding education and what it means to be a teacher within a system that is struggling. A system that sees students (and teachers) as numbers, facts, and figures. I realize I am not the only one out there trying to make some changes for the betterment of our students and our society. Education is personal. As Paulo Freire writes, "Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love" (89). Some may read this and say "What? Love? That is not scientific, formal, or professional. We must have facts, numbers, and statistics that can be quantified." Yet, the more I read and listen to the world around me, the more I realize that this love, this humanizing force, this vulnerable act is where education happens. Education is personal.
I could write pages, in fact I have, on this topic, but I want to leave with one final statement to close this first post on my journey. For those who want change, hopefully my own journey and reflections, my "experiments with truth" will help feed your own desire to promote change within a system desperate for it. "For apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other" (Freire 72).
Kristi Manduka
Works Cited
Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone, 1997. Print.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1993. Print.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge,
1994. Print.
Horton, Myles and Paulo Freire. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and
Social Change. Philadelphia: Temple University, 1990. Print.
The battle to define education and how it is carried out has always been a weighty and heated one. Many theories have been developed and implemented. Yet, many fall prey to the basic human instinct: "Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities" (Dewey 17). The theories fail to work together, to find a balance, in order to help students learn. Furthermore, many fall prey to the idea that students are empty vessels waiting to be filled, and the teacher will fill that emptiness with knowledge. We cannot forget that students are creative, curious human beings who desire to learn. The fault lies in a system that has perpetuated the myth that students need to be told what they should know and none of their experiences make valuable sites of knowledge-making.
Students also must begin to see that they have a part to play in this process of learning. I am not asking for the students to be writing the curriculum (although why not allow them some say). Students and teachers need to remember that it is in the struggle where learning takes place. In grappling with issues and attempting to make meaning or working out some sort of meaning is where we begin to find answers; sometimes acknowledging that answers are not going to be clear-cut or final but works in process. The student must be the one who is responsible for his or her own education. The student must see that he or she is in control of his or her education. A teacher must work to inspire the student to willingly take on the struggle that is his or her education.
The classroom must become a balancing act. Instead of denigrating philosophies of education, teachers must study them and take from them the elements that are true and work best and fuse them together in order to find the balance in order to inspire students to learn. The relationship of the teacher to the student must be that of mentor, not giver of knowledge. Students should be taken to places they normally would not go, but teachers must also learn to incorporate the students' experiences into the learning. As bell hooks writes, "...who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin" (13).
This blog is dedicated to personal journey of understanding education and what it means to be a teacher within a system that is struggling. A system that sees students (and teachers) as numbers, facts, and figures. I realize I am not the only one out there trying to make some changes for the betterment of our students and our society. Education is personal. As Paulo Freire writes, "Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love" (89). Some may read this and say "What? Love? That is not scientific, formal, or professional. We must have facts, numbers, and statistics that can be quantified." Yet, the more I read and listen to the world around me, the more I realize that this love, this humanizing force, this vulnerable act is where education happens. Education is personal.
I could write pages, in fact I have, on this topic, but I want to leave with one final statement to close this first post on my journey. For those who want change, hopefully my own journey and reflections, my "experiments with truth" will help feed your own desire to promote change within a system desperate for it. "For apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other" (Freire 72).
Kristi Manduka
Works Cited
Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone, 1997. Print.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1993. Print.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge,
1994. Print.
Horton, Myles and Paulo Freire. We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and
Social Change. Philadelphia: Temple University, 1990. Print.
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