If you’re like me, and even if you’re not, you probably thought that google commercial shown during the Super Bowl was really cool. I bet whoever came up with it had a good English teacher at some point. I imagine that, if it isn’t happening already, projects based on search stories will start appearing in English classrooms all over. I just wanted to make a note of it so I can remember to use it someday.
-Baggervais
It never snowed here in Gainesville. You had to head south to Orlando and thereabouts if you wanted to maybe see winter.
Or you could probably have gone to beautiful Chicken, AK, where it is 52 below right now.
Also, my roommates and I have been trying our best to make icicles during this cold snap:
-Baggervais
I would never sleep. Weather.com says it could start in 10 minutes! Read this if you’re staying up too.
Hopefully the next thing I report will speak of snow in the past tense.
-Baggervais
But here’s where it stands right now, just hours away:
-Baggervais
Here’s the latest forecast for this Friday:
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-Baggervais
I’ve been predicting snow this winter in Gainesville. My roommates won’t listen to me. I’ll be the only person ready for it, because I still have snowtires on my truck and a snow scraper in the back. Here’s this week’s forecast, from weather.com:
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Not sure why they think the sun will shine longer Tuesday than Wednesday. A couple weeks ago, they said the high one day in Chicken, Alaska was going to be 0, and the low would be 1.
-Baggervais
I’m at home with my mom for Christmas this year, and she had some dinner guests over the other night. One of them went to seminary for counseling (which my mom is also doing, little by little), and that fact steered the direction of much of the conversation. At one point the guy was talking about narcissism (I believe) as a disorder, and when asked what the symptoms are he mentioned “reference,” which is basically name dropping. I imagine that the worst person of all must be the one who keeps a blog and name drops on it, then. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this; the real purpose for this post is to tell you of my intimate associations with the band Jars of Clay.
Where should I begin? I guess I could start by saying that the worship leader at my church here in Orlando is friends with Jars. When the boys are in town, they usually take a little time to hang out with him. He went to Greenville College in Illinois at the same time as 3 of them, and was a part of the music scene there with them. He told me he even played keys in a pre-Jars band with their keyboardist and their lead guitarist, explaining that Jars’ keyboardist played sax instead for that band. Also, he co-wrote with Jars the song “Hand” on their “If I Left the Zoo” album, for which he received a plaque when the album went gold. Finally, he wrote the song “The Stone,” which Jars recorded for a City On a Hill project. Finally + 1, when I was in church back in October, he introduced a new song that some friends of his had asked him to try out to see how it would be received in a church setting. The words were projected on the front wall so we could all sing along, and the final frame had credits that revealed the friends to be none other than Jars. So, I got a sneak preview of a project they’re working on.
A second connection I have with the band is through my roommate Will. Will grew up in Oviedo (better known as Orlando) going to the same church that Dan, Jars’ lead singer, went to as a high schooler. Will says Dan used to sing in the youthgroup worship band there. Dan of course has moved on and tours constantly, but his mom is still at that church. Will’s mom and Dan’s mom are friends, and so Will is friends with Dan’s mom. Will has a copy of Jars’ rare demo project called “Frail,” released before the band was signed. Dan’s mom gave it to him. Also, Will attended Dan’s wedding reception, invited by Dan’s mom.
The last connection I will mention is that I am a proud alumnus of University High School, and Dan graduated from there the first year it was opened. One night a few years ago my dad and I went to the Orlando Magic’s Faith and Family Night, and Jars was the featured band playing “Flood” at halftime and doing a full show after the game. As we left afterward, we saw a UHS teacher who had gone there at the same time as Dan. We asked the teacher if he remembered him, and he said yes, and that he was a quiet guy. Yay for quiet people.
Four nights ago, a couple of my friends and I and my roommate Will headed up to UCF to catch a free Jars concert as part of an ongoing event called Light Up UCF. Dan’s mom was running the merch table, so Will introduced me to her. The opening band was Mike’s Chair, who are making a name for themselves and whose lead singer also went to Will’s church, and led youth group worship there, and taught Will to play guitar so he could help. There’s a good chance you’ve heard Mike’s Chair on the radio, especially their single “Can’t Take Away.” In between the bands, our evening’s host had people from the audience come up and sing Christmas songs as they pleased. Then Jars came on and reminded us why they make money doing it. After the show, Will and I ran off in search of the Jars guys so he could get his Frail demo signed. We found Dan back by the tour bus, and I got to meet him and catch up for all the lost time. I told him everything I’ve written in this post, minus most of it. I longed to, though, and I did talk to him about University High. Then he offered me an idol cast in his image, but I already had one. He signed it.
Last night I went to Summit Church on a friend’s (not Dan, another friend) invitation, and we ate dinner at Pei Wei afterward. Jars’ version of “Wonderful Christmastime” came on in the background, and all my Christmas wishes had come true.
-Baggervais
When writing lesson plans for English Proteach, it’s almost become a nuisance to have to include accommodations for ESOL and ESE students every time. As I design lessons, I tend to assume the students would have a standard level of English language proficiency if we’re studying something as rigorous as The Canterbury Tales. ESOL and ESE accommodations are tacked on as an afterthought to meet some Florida Educator Accomplished Practice or other. I figure that if I were in a classroom and not just dealing in the hypothetical, then I would know my students and what accommodations they may need.
There may be some truth behind that last statement, but the article about Paw alerts me to the fact that teachers are not always prepared to recognize the special needs of their students. There are so many cultural and cognitive elements to consider when trying to find the right place for special students. In Paw’s case, she came from a culture in which it is not acceptable for women to speak up. Thus, the development of her spoken English was delayed because she did not get to practice interacting with others. She was an avid reader and writer and was dedicated to doing well in school, but her classes did not suit her background. Her teachers should have given her more chances to be assessed by her writing than by her participation in discussions. Also, Paw and her fellow Laotian students were cognitively far enough along to be in regular classes, but they lacked the cultural knowledge to relate with the literature covered in those classes. Perhaps if Paw’s teachers would have integrated inquiry into the curriculum, she could have built understandings of literature based on questions she had and on her background knowledge. Instead, she was moved to the remedial class, where her needs were not met either.
In the remedial class, Paw and her classmates worked on spelling and vocabulary drills. This meant she would still not be using much spoken English. Also, while native speakers of English may have an instinctive understanding of inflected forms of words and morphemes, Paw did not. Hence, she could not decide when to use confine and when to use confinement on fill-in-the-blanks. Rather than learn the words, she needed to see and hear them used in context so that the correct usage could become fossilized. Not every English teacher, who usually knows the language as a native speaker, is trained to anticipate accommodations like that which ESOL students will have.
What I found most helpful to remember from Lindfors’ article is the idea that students from different linguistic backgrounds don’t just differ in knowledge and choice of words, but in “ways with words.” Her example is that in urban African American culture, adults do not tell kids to do things by indirect questions, but by direct commands. In the classroom, this can lead to confusion and misunderstanding when, say, a white, middle-class teacher tells an African American student, “Can you get started on the assignment?” When the student does not take this to be a command, the teacher can start to think he is being disobedient. If teachers are not aware of such differences in ways with words, they will effectively discriminate against cultures not their own. However, if teachers are open to the possibilities, they can use linguistic diversity in the classrooms as occasion to expose features of language and expand students’ communicative competencies.
-Baggervais
Based on “Time on our Side,” I’m ready to pronounce M.M. Krogness a teaching genius. It’s success stories like hers that get me excited about becoming a teacher. I know she was in a special situation, having two-period blocks so she could give her lessons the pace they required and develop, as she says, her students’ intellectual muscle and stamina. But really, block schedules aren’t that much of a rarity, though it may be unusual to have the same students every day for a whole year on a block schedule. I’ve wondered before how on earth I would keep my kids’ attention and fill up 90 minute blocks if I ever had to teach them someday, but now I think blocks could be a good thing.
Krogness talks a lot about strategies and activities she uses in her classes, and not so much about any specific knowledge she’s trying to teach. Her strategies are so vastly different from what I remember throughout my secondary school experience that it almost seems to me like she isn’t really teaching. Whereas my teachers would for the most part begin class by launching into a lecture or a section of the textbook, and we were usually pressed to get through some set content, Krogness takes the time to get her students ready for learning. She also works towards having her students discover knowledge for themselves rather than receiving it directly from the teacher. In the first week of our class it was said that “too much schooling teaches kids they need to be taught to learn anything.” Krogness, if I may speak on her behalf, would definitely agree with that.
To wrap her article up, Krogness writes, “I certainly didn’t fulfill all of my goals with all of my students, but I knew one thing: I had planted seeds. When all is said and done, teachers have to be content with planting seeds, trusting that—in time—they will germinate.” This line comes shortly after she has told the story of Big Jawan, who all in the same class period went from refusing to write poetry to gushing more than he was asked to. While his verse had some admirable qualities, I don’t think it predicted a promising career as a man of letters for him. I think, though, that a big success for teachers sometimes is just warming students’ attitudes towards schoolish things. Big Jawan may choose a vocation that never requires him to read anything but a car manual, but maybe his literacy interests will have been pricked enough make him a lifelong appreciator of the language arts. He may in turn have kids to whom he passes on an interest in the language arts, thereby helping them to have the best chances of success in school and life that they could have.
To make a summary of what I see as a hierarchy of goals for teachers, I would say getting students to view schoolish things favorably comes first, followed by teaching them skills, and then ending with guiding them towards explicit knowledge. I think that if students come to like learning, they will then become lifelong learners who use skills learned in school (like habits of mind, interpreting literature, writing, etc…) to continue learning explicit knowledge for themselves.
Briefly, concerning Christensen’s article, I took Intro to Linguistics and World English while in undergrad. These courses familiarized me with the relativity of language, and how a standard variety is not standard based on superiority, but thanks to a series of coincidences. So, I was not caught off guard by anything in that article, and do not feel provoked to a response.
-Baggervais
This article is the first in which I have run into the term “inquiry” as it pertains to pedagogy. I didn’t know what the term meant before reading, and even now I couldn’t give you a precise definition for it. I have developed some notion of it, though. From what I understand, it is a teaching and learning approach that encourages students to form questions as they read, speak, listen, and write. It spawns from the theory that learning is a social and communicative phenomenon, and so it structures the classroom to be more dialogic than transmissive from teacher to student.
As this article introduced me to inquiry, I began to wonder how it could be used in the teaching of writing. Writing did not at first seem to support classroom discussion and dialogue. However, I had too narrow a view of inquiry. Allowing students to brainstorm the features of genre and the implications of purpose and audience before learning how to write in a given genre—exactly what we have done in class—constitutes a form of inquiry. Also, inquiry could take the form of allowing students to explore their questions about pieces of literature as they write critical responses rather than feigning hard and fast interpretations of a text. If inquiry is the approach taken to teaching literature, it can also be the approach taken to writing about literature. We are not leading students to acquire predetermined knowledge, but we are enabling them to be independent, divergent thinkers who can render readings to literature even without the supervision of a teacher.
The benefits of an inquiry-based classroom are manifold. To start with, it fosters the practice and development of the four communicative competencies so often cited in standards for the language arts: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Furthermore, it activates students’ prior knowledge, which is also a common standard. As has been said in class, questions do not show an absence of knowledge, but they arise from knowledge. The students’ questions come from what they already know, and are specific to how they want to further that knowledge. This brings up another benefit: inquiry taps into student interests. As it says in the article, “Many teachers know that students who have choices and can follow the stirrings of their own intellectual hearts become intrinsically motivated to learn.” And not only can we allow students to ask about what they want to know, but we can also give them the choice in what they will read and write for the class. Again, it has been said in class that making choices about reading and writing is a skill to be learned, and teachers get in the way of this by always dictating what students will read or write about. Finally, it is of particular importance that inquiry be a part of the writing curriculum because it allows ESOL and special needs students a chance to demonstrate skills that they may not feel comfortable enough to use in speech. For example, in some cultures it is seen as impolite or attention-seeking to speak up in class, and students from these cultures can use writing as a chance to engage in discussion that they otherwise would be left out of.
At the time of writing this response, I feel that my first semester in English Proteach has gone a long way to equip me with activities that are centered around inquiry, making it not some nebulous teaching theory but a realistic way of helping students become agents of their own learning.
-Baggervais
