“I couldn’t wait to show you what I found out on the news.”

There was a problem with the water pipes in our school that necessitated early release.  The students were told that as soon as lunch was over, they’d be sent home.  The bell rang at 1:01 for the kids to go home.  I planned on using the extra time to get some work done, so I settled into my chair and got out my to-be-graded stack.  Just as I got comfortable, my door burst open and my Speech students, Heather*, an athlete, stood at the threshold.  She held out a printed out news article.  “I couldn’t wait to show you what I found out on the news.  Gaddafi is dead!  I’m so excited.  I knew you would be too, and I wanted to be the one to tell you.”  Anticipation and excitement shone in her eyes as she pushed the article toward me.  She said, “I was just surfing the internet, and I saw this headline, that Gaddafi was dead.  I thought, ‘That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about in Speech,’ and I had to know more.  So, I checked it out, and when I read it, I just knew I had to print it and show it to you right away.” 

In my Speech class, we are working on building students’ background knowledge to enable them to do extemporaneous speeches about world events.  So, each week, they are required to choose a big topic like environment, politics, or international issues.  Then, they find three reliable articles to share with the class.  We talk about the articles they bring in, and I try to fill in the gaps.  When one student brought in an article about Gaddafi being tracked in the desert a few weeks ago, I asked the class what they knew about what was happening in Libya.  They didn’t know anything about it.  The next day, I showed them a few articles from Time magazine about him and his opposition.  We went back to an article posted in February, at the beginning of the resistance, to find out what the complaints of the rebels were.  Then, we talked about how it would feel if we were asked to live in a regime like that.  Students were appalled by the accusations of the Arab Spring, and couldn’t understand how someone who treated his people so badly could continue to be in power for so long.  Of course, this led to discussions of the importance of being active citizens to make sure something like that doesn’t happen in the United States.

 Students are engaged in the current events collection and discussion, as is evidenced by Heather’s excitement.  When asked at the beginning of the year if she read the news, she told me she did not.  Now, she cares about finding out what is happening in the world.  The fact that she’s the one who brought me the news thrilled me.  Sometimes I’m not sure how much of an impact I’m making, and if they are going to take what they learn in class to apply it to their real lives.  Times like this give me hope. 

The two camps as I see it

There are two conflicting camps in education.  One camp believes that the route to success is by controlling and aligning as many factors as possible.  In this ideology, the problem in the current system is not the system itself, but lack of planning.  If teachers plan together so that one grade builds on the next, and all desired skills are gradually developed, then students will be able to achieve the performance goal.  In this model, the students are called on to prove what they’ve learned in a standardized test, administered at the end of the year.  Funding is then tied to the performance of the school, determined by a formula that also takes into consideration demographic information and attendance rates.  In this camp, the pervading belief is that if teachers were able to plan the perfect system, aligned both vertically and horizontally, then students will achieve the desired goals. 

Another camp believes that planning and assessing isn’t the crux of the problem.  Instead, we need a revolutionary change to take the current education system that was designed in the Industrial Age and update it.  This camp believes that, in order to have a healthy system, it must be adapted.  Changes are necessary at all levels of the organization, from the age-based system down to the standardized assessment.  In this viewpoint, human beings are at the center of the classroom, not just students.  This means that we have to look at them as individuals and make adjustments according to their needs.  Within this system, creativity is valued and divergent thinking encouraged.  People who fall in this ideological stance aren’t necessarily against standards, as they recognize the importance of having goals.  However, the usage of current standardized tests is what is questioned.  Instead of giving the tests at the end of the year when the teacher can’t take corrective action, this stance would rather have the tests earlier, so that results could be used to determine where the most attention should be given.

In both camps, teachers, administrators, and policy-makers believe they are making the best decisions for their students.  They use the information and experiences they have in order to shape their pedagogical beliefs.  Because everyone has a different set of experiences, in different contexts, with different people, and different goals, there is bound to be a different outcome. 

For myself, I believe that a mix of the two approaches is probably closer to the truth.  However, I do lean more toward the socio-cultural constructivist viewpoint.  As I’ve stated in a previous post, I don’t plan out every question I’m going to ask, although I have a good idea of where I want to go.  Instead, I listen to what the students already know, and adapt to them.  If they need more instruction in one area than another, and I’ve planned differently, then I’m not opposed to dropping my goal for the day and returning to it another day.  Sometimes, this means I’ll do it in the same unit.  Sometimes, it means it will be shifted to another unit.  I couldn’t do this in a scripted curriculum.  However, I value the importance of meeting with other teachers, across content areas.  If we could figure out a way to make sure the History teacher and the English teacher are discussing WWII at the same time, the students will note connections between the two subjects.  If the Biology teacher is discussing Ecosystems, the English teacher could provide an article to supplement this instruction in order to teach a reading skill.  They are all interrelated, so there should be a collaborative plan.  But it shouldn’t stop there.  Teachers in the middle school and teachers in the high school need to plan together.  High school teachers can tell middle school teachers what skills they’d like to see more fully developed.  Middle school teachers could tell high school teachers what skills and texts students had already learned.  In this way, students would have a cohesive, logical, relevant curriculum to give them maximum connections.

But until we sit down and reconcile these differences, this won’t happen.  We’ll continue to teach the way we think it should be done, following the rules, and getting it done.  Is it enough?  I don’t think so.  We should expect more of ourselves just as we should expect more from our students. 

What I learned about Deaf Education

I am not an expert on Deaf Education.  In fact, I do not teach any deaf children, nor do I know any adults who are deaf.  However, I was so blown away by Serena Johnson's presentation on deaf education tonight in class, that I felt it important to share a few nuggets of information that she shared.

1)  Deaf people are usually not COMPLETELY deaf.  That is, they can still hear sounds, but they can't differentiate the sounds.  Watch the video below to hear what hearing loss sounds like.





2.  Apparently, the average graduating high school deaf person only has a reading level of fourth or fifth grade.  More research is necessary in this field.  This is a gap in education, because there is a small community of people affected by this issue. 

3.  Deaf education has historically followed the trends of hearing people's view of education.  However, this group has different needs, so, perhaps there needs to be an entire field dedicated to the research and development of reading education for people with hearing loss.

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos and TED Talks

Today, I asked students to watch a series of videos from TED to compare the presentation styles of four speakers.  I chose to include Adora Svitik, Jane McGonigal, Hasan Elahi, and Marcel Dicke because they were all different in content, but each used ethos, pathos, and logos brilliantly.  As models for understanding how a speaker builds a good speech using those three rhetorical elements, the speeches served to allow my students to apply their knowledge of the terms. 

Because Adora Svitik is so young, she is an inspiration for my students.  If they doubt their ability to make an excellent speech because of their age, that fear is assuaged by this little girl.  At the same time, her content mirrors what they already know- that their knowledge matters every bit as their teachers.  They liked her argument in her TED talk, "What Adults Can Learn From Kids," about how learning should be reciprocal.  At the same time, students were easily able to see how, as a child, she was a credible source for speaking about children.  Additionally, she showed her audience her book cover, which only emphasized that she was worth listening to.  She's not "just a kid".  She's a kid who has achieved great things, despite, or perhaps, because of her youth.  This is a clear example of building ethos.  By giving examples of adults who have made disasterous decisions, and paralleling them with impactful youth, Svitik appealed to the logical side.  She used logos to show that her point was not just because she was too young to get it, but instead, that her argument made sense.  Finally, she jokes with the audience, relaxing them. This is a form of pathos.  As an even more clear example, she includes a photo of a youngster who raised large amounts of money for charity. 



I love Jane McGonigal.  The first time I saw her, it was through her TED talk "Gaming Can Make a Better World".  Her ideas were absolutely ridiculous and brilliant at the same time.  Like any good speaker, she left me with questions and an interest to learn more.  Already intrigued by the idea of gaming as a means to help students learn, her assertion that games could help make the world better, took my interest a step further.  Building on my knowledge of James Paul Gee's work, McGonigal brought a whole new dimension to my understanding of the impact of games.  But, her ideas are also interesting enough, that it sparked a wonderful conversation with my students, that may become the subject of a discourse analysis in a future work.  Students were able to identify her occupation as building her ethos, the historical story about Herodotus as logos, and the photo of a thoroughly engaged boy as pathos.  But, students went beyond making connections about the use of these two devices.  With this one, they wanted to discuss the virtues and shortcomings of her presentation style.  They were interested in the content, and were able to make personal connections.  What made the conversation even more worthwhile was the equal representation of different sides.  In a class of six students, one was completely on board with McGonigal, one completely opposed.  Three were in the middle, but thought her ideas had merit, if not completely on point, and one was silent on the issue.  The mix of viewpoints led to good discussion.  Students were engaged in both the form and function of the speech and the topic.



Next, I let students choose two more videos they were interested in seeing.  The students had a choice which one out of the list to watch.  So, there was enough choice that the students could feel like they had some control.  I've watched a number of TED talks, most of these talks are school-appropriate.  If anyone else wants to use this approach, I'd suggest considering the needs and views of your students and your school before opening it up.  The videos they selected were from Hasan Elahi, who spoke about his art/database/personal reporting system; and Marcel Dicke, who spoke about why people should eat insects.  Students discussed ethos, pathos, and logos in each video, and then also added a discussion about the attire speakers wore. 






Using TED talks, my students were able to analyze the form and function of a good speech across a variety of topics. I first made decisions about the videos they'd look at, finding videos that I knew were good examples of the use of ethos, pathos, and logos. Then, I released some control to the students. After all, if I was giving them a video about how kids and teachers should have a reciprocal learning relationship, this was really my only possible course of action. Otherwise, it would seem that I was not practicing what I preached. In this instance, this method worked well. Students were able to understand the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos. They were able to apply their knowledge across multiple presentations. They noticed other elements of effective speeches that we had discussed earlier in the semester. Overall, it was a successful lesson.

Football as a metaphor for reading research

Buried under research articles, it can sometimes feel like it is pointless to try and sort everything out.  One researcher says one thing, and another says the complete opposite.  It can positively leave the researcher light-headed trying to evaluate, judge, and analyze everything.  If nobody agrees, can anything truly be right?  Or is everyone wrong?

In truth, nobody has it completely right, but there’s an element of truth to much research.

Life isn’t black and white.  The right answer for one group of people won’t necessarily work for another.  People are ever-changing, constantly-evolving creatures.  We change when the world around us changes, which it does daily.  Every time we take in new information, we evaluate it, sort it, and store or apply it.  It changes us, and the system around us.  In Human Systems Dynamics, this idea of the constantly changing system is complex adaptive systems (Eoyang 1999).  Human beings are complex adaptive systems on many levels.

And because we are complex, ever-changing, continually adapting, there cannot be a single solution.  Yet, every time we research a strand, we come closer to understanding the whole.  We start to recognize patterns.  We begin to put the system together as a whole.

In a recent lecture at University of North Texas, Dr. Kathleen Mohr pointed out that reading research is like a football game.  We can all go to the same football game and see different things.  For example, some people go to see the quarterback, and they focus on how well he throws.  That is the most important thing in the game to them.  Perhaps a scout may be there to watch the defense, because he needs to fill a few positions on his college team.  A mother might go to the game to see her son play the trumpet in the band.  Another parent may attend to support their cheerleader daughter.  Others may say they don’t pay much attention to the game itself, they are there for the social aspect.  All these people are at the same football game, but they come up with different experiences.  Although the spectator’s focus varies, they don’t discount the importance of all the other things happening.  It just wouldn’t be a game without all those elements working together.  But, someone needs to focus on the individual part to make the experience as a whole enjoyable.  So it is with reading research.

My interest is primarily in adolescent motivation.  I suspect, based on experience and reading, that motivation is greatly impacted by student choice.  I believe in the necessity of giving students pieces of reading that apply toward real-life.  My research will center on some combination of current events, gaming, technology, popular culture, and reading motivation.  But, I don’t discount the work of others who are looking into code-based systems.  Nor do I ignore the work of those people investigating ethnicity and its impact on reading instruction.  Reading comprehension work is not my primary interest, but it is just as important.  All these pieces work together to create an individual’s reading experience.   

Eoyang, G., & Berkus, T. (1999). Evaluating performance in a CAS. Evaluating performance in a complex adaptive system in managing complexity in organizations. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.  Obtained online 24 Oct 2011 at http://www.hsdinstitute.org/learn-more/library/articles/Evaluating-Performance-in-a-CAS.pdf.

TAIR Conference- Connecting with Reading

TAIR Conference 2011- Guyer High School, Denton, TX. 

Each year, the University of North Texas Reading Department puts on conference in Denton, TX to connect teacher practitioners with pre-service teachers.  Hundreds of undergraduates show up to learn from seasoned professional teachers, and the practicing teachers hone their conference presentation skills.  This year, we were honored to have the author George Ella Lyon as our keynote speaker. 

To those of us who teach the “I Am From” poem, Lyon’s presence was a thrill.  She read aloud from a few of her books, sharing her prose with the passion of a performer.  It makes such a difference when the reader feels the intention behind the text, and it was good to see how her reading showcased that very important aspect of reading for entertainment.  At the end of her presentation, Lyon sang a song that she had written that could function just as easily as a poem as it did lyrics to a song.  I urged her to record the song and place it on her website, so I’m hopeful that this will happen.

After breaking from the keynote, we moved to session one.  My own presentation didn’t have any participants show up, so I abandoned my empty room in favor of taking advantage of learning from my peers.  Although it was disappointing to not present something I worked hard to compile, I was pleased to have the opportunity to learn something new.  So, I will hold on to my presentation in hopes of presenting it again another year.  Perhaps I need to work on the title to entice teacher educators to hear me.

I went to Dr. Carol Revelle’s presentation on using a gallery walk to tackle the tough issue of the Holocaust.  She and her partner, a National Writing Project TC from Arizona, began by doing a read-aloud of the book “Erika’s Story” by Ruth Vander Zee.  In this children’s book, a mother is on her way to a concentration camp, and she chooses to throw her infant child from the side of the train in hopes that the baby would be taken in by one of the townsfolk that were gathered, watching the death trap speed ahead.  We were asked to consider whether we’d be able to make that difficult choice.  After sharing our writing, we were directed to walk around and consider various poems and pictures that had been mounted on butcher paper on the walls. Each of us armed with a marker, we annotated our impressions, questions, and connections. Then, we came together to share our thoughts again.  Finally, we saw a wordle that had been constructed using the text of the poems that we’d just seen on the walls.  We wrote a response to the wordle as a way to close out our session.

Not only was this lesson powerful thematically, dealing with how children were impacted by the Holocaust, but it was also an excellent model for interactive learning.  An alternate suggestion for using this model to teach other topics would be to collect poems and pictures from a time period and invite students to consider what was going on in the Elizabethan period, as an introduction to Shakespeare; or perhaps to collect poems and paintings centered around a theme, like “The Blues”.  The activation of prior knowledge through using a picture book and writing prompt, followed by movement and consideration to allow students to create their own meaning, and closed by a final writing reflection of the whole allows students to get the most from a class period. 

Next, I went to a session about Slam Poetry by Kip Nettles.  Kip began by showcasing his passion for poetry through sharing his own composition.  His recitation clearly showed pre-service teacher how important it is to share a little bit about oneself in order to make connections with the students.  He’s right about that.  Believing what you are selling is a huge part of encouraging students to think about how important the content is.  If a teacher doesn’t see the value of what they are teaching, the students won’t either.  However, when the teacher allows entry into the soul, it connects with the children.  After sharing his own writing, Kip showed three You Tube videos about Slam poetry that he said he’d use with his students.  They were gritty and used language that a teacher should consider carefully before using.  However, that is part of what Slam poetry is about.  It’s not always pretty or appropriate.  But it is powerful.  He also showed a video from an elementary school that had incorporated slam poetry into a performance.  This type of poetry is flexible through the grade levels.

Leaving his session, I felt inspired to bring more poetry into my classroom.  I wished I had written personal poems that were as powerful as his were.  I also wished I could have recorded his reading of his final poem, about the loss of his guitar-playing after a stroke.  Emotions can bleed through poetry.

Pre-service and teacher practitioners should take advantage of opportunities to learn from each other.  It is amazing what peers can bring to the table, given the chance.  Going to local conferences like the TAIR conference give the lifelong learner a way to connect with others, both socially and ideologically. 

Shown below are two of the Slam Poetry videos shared by Kip:

What is Thought and Language About Anyway?

I decided to make a quick one minute video summary of what Vygotsky's book "Thought and Language" is all about.  Here's my interpretation.  Hope it is useful.