It was about a year ago that I really got oldies stations, and I liked it! I was 29 and I heard a song on the radio from when I was in high school. I was around students and I enthusiastically said 'oh my gosh, I love this song, this came out when I was in high school!!' They all looked at me as if I was was being super goofy, and then shrugged it off as I enjoyed listening to the rest of the song!
To me, this song brought back the memories and feelings of when I was in high school! It brought back the spirit of the whole experience and it was great!! It was like I felt young again!! All of a sudden, it hit me - this is why my parents like the oldies station so much!! It is based on my experiences in life, and where I was when it came out, that that song had a totally different impact and effect on me, a totally different meaning than on my students who are so much younger. Can I get them to understand and catch the same spirit and get into the song? How can they enjoy it as much as me? Their experience with the song is much different than mine, which creates a gap between their enjoyment of the song and mine. The same is true in education. We are all coming into every experience with our own identities, and as teachers, it is our duty to take this into consideration and do the best we can to make our students literate in every content, so that they can enjoy and get as much as possible out of their experience! Disciplinary literacy is one key to bridge the gaps that steal from students succeeding! How do we build that bridge and help our students cross it?
While all the materials we read this week were all helpful in finding answers to this question, I felt I connected most with Buehl's insights. Context is a big part of the bridge that we must keep in mind as we teach. Without it, it is a challenge for students to find meaning. Just as the song meant so much more to me because I had a context to enjoy it, when students can connect to a content, when it is given in a context, they can not only enjoy it much more, but take more from it! It is not uncommon in education to hear of the need to give students a context in which to learn. However, as I read the materials, I find the meaning of 'context' seems to have more clarity and become more defined. Buehl speaks about the need to connect what we teach with students' everyday realities. How do we do it? We think about it often, but how do we do it?! "Disciplinary literacy needs to be predicated on sharing, connecting, and expanding knowledge rather than on exposing ignorance" (Buehl, 91). I believe the concept of not looking at students deficits, but rather, at what they do know and have, is the key to building the bridge we must build to help them grow. If we look at what they don't know, we can't find a context to bring them into the material. If we start looking at what students do know, we have found an important step to that bridge, but how do we get to that point? Buehl points out that even to do this, we must first know our students. Relationship, therefore, takes a center stage in education. If we don't know our students, how can we help them find a context in which to learn? One thing common in all the materials is the need to consider student identities, so we can give them a context in which to learn. Our schools so often seem like big machines, where the individual is overlooked. If we put more emphasis on relationship, and less on standards, I believe we would start to see better results and the gap for teachers in balancing what they need to do to teach their content, and considering disciplinary literacy, would lessen.
As someone who started out as mainly a social studies teacher and ended up teaching all the content areas, I identify very much with another point that Buehl brings up in bridging the gap for students - relevance. The 'So what' question comes up so often as we try to teach and put things into context for students, but as Buehl points out, it can be especially problematic in history. I was thinking about why I wanted to be a history teacher. I'd always had a love of it, and thinking about it now, I look at how my Grandparents are very patriotic and my Grandpa has always had a lot of history books around. I see how that passed on to his children, and then to me and my sister. I love history because I grew up with it, so my love of it tends to make it interesting. Where as, one of my students has grown up with a Dad who is crazy about sports. He has the same passion for sports as I do for history. But how do I make history relevant to him? I can try to connect it through bringing in sports history. But how do you bring relevance to all students? Buehl points to one means to do so, at least in a history context, and that is 'to identify essential questions that target transcendent themes and ideas of human experience and interactions' (Buehl, 96). That is one strategy I have tried to use, and with some success. I think it brings history into a current context by asking a question that is also relevant to the students current identities. Looking more specifically this week at the specific contents has helped me, as a student and a teacher apply the idea of disciplinary context to my own life, because the example of teaching this topic in social studies gives me a context and connection, it makes this topic even more relevant to me! In a way, I'm noticing disciplinary literacy in action in our own class! I am drawn to Buehl's text based on my own experience and a shared love of history, so when he shares his stories about teaching history and his perspective, I very much relate to it in this shared identity.
As I was reading the materials, I also starting making a connection to another class I am in right now. In looking at disciplinary literacy, we are taking into account identities, mine being primarily as a teacher and history lover. This week, as I was connecting to the historical sections of the text, I started thinking about a video I watched in my other class about the historical context of education. Wilson refers to technology, and its affect on education. The video I watched took a look at our educational system, and how its identity is related to history. The current way we educate is rooted in the Industrial Revolution identity, where production is what mattered. The system is about producing results and we educate our students in batches - by age, not so much by interest. When we do this, we fail to take into account the context of modern society - technology and all. We are stuck in an out-dated system, which doesn't allow us to address the individual students and their identities.
The video is about so much more, but it seemed especially relevant :) to me looking at the historical context!!
Changing Education Paradigms:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
As we start looking even more into what disciplinary literacy is, I start seeing the importance of educating students as individuals. In fact, all of the classes I have taken in my Masters' program seem to point towards respecting and taking into account students individual identities. However, it seems like our educational system is moving towards a machine mentality with such a focus on standards and teaching to the test. We are learning all these great things, but how are we going to apply them in the current system? How do we change the system, not just in talk, but in action?
I love your analogy about the song that came on the radio. It is so true, I think about a favorite song that came out when I was in high school or college, and students these days haven't heard it, and may not enjoy it (or appreciate it) the same way that I do. Just like a teacher of Mathematics may appreciate the subject, not everyone would share the same view. I had the same question about bridging the gap, and enjoyed your perspective on it.
ReplyDeleteTrisha,
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of your classes lean toward identity and relationships with students because it is how we can begin to assess our students. How can you begin to teach your students when you do not know what they know? It would be like a shot in the dark. To make connections with our students we will have to do our homework and be current with the technologies and things that are cool for our students. Just like your anecdote, those connections to outside the classroom will make their learning that much more meaningful.
You also ask a great question. I do not know how a change would pan out exactly, but I have a place to maybe start. I think it will take a band of teachers to revise their curriculum. Of course some teachers may need convincing, so be prepared with research suggesting the benefit to teaching specific literacy skills in their discipline. Then as a band of teachers, you can collaborate to make changes within the different disciplines. Also as a band of teachers supporting teaching literacy in their disciplines your school will have consistency.
I completely agree, that sentence about finding more about what students know, not what they don't stood out for me this week too. It won't help us bridge that gap to know what students are lacking, but rather, knowing what they do understand so we can help build on that knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI agree, building relationships should be more important, but I wonder how to do that in those older grades. We, as primary teachers have the same students all day long for 180 days. How do you build that relationship when you have 6 classes of 35 kids (an estimate). If you can find a way, I applaud you.
As you discussed your own past experiences with history and it relevance, I began to think about Buehl's discussion about the nine types of students who enter school. Students who enter school with prior knowledge already have an advantage over those students who do not have those same experiences. As I was reading your blog, I thought about how lucky you were to have those enriching experiences. Your teachers were able to build upon your knowledge and interests, making history something that you enjoyed even more. It is easy to see how difficult it can be for students that do not have those experiences outside of school.
ReplyDeleteAs we all know, our schema is vital to building new knowledge. We all discuss how important it is to build this for students who do not have a large bank to withdraw from. I find this to be easier in the elementary grades. In our readings from last week, it was mentioned repeatedly that content area teachers have little time to teach the strategies and the content. It seems that it would be difficult to try to build background knowledge for all the students, which brings me to your point about building relationships. Do you ever do surveys or pre-assessments to help guide the amount of pre-teaching you need to do on a topic?