Jacqueline’s Blog

     This was a difficult article for me to read at times.  I agree with many of the things that Ken Goodman talks about.  However, I think his tone is a bit radical. He comes across as a conspiracy theorist and I hope that his message isn’t lost due to his tone.  He refers to many programs that I worry about.  I know that Open Court and DIBELS can and do take some ideas to an extreme.  However, I do understand the concern that people from the other side of the argument express.  We implement Open Court and hear from our intermediate teachers about how our kids can’t decode.  I also hear from other teachers at different schools about how “thorough” the DIBELS assessment is.  However, I know that for me, neither of these programs are necessary.  Would I have said that ten years ago?  I’m not so sure.  Why do I express hesitation?  Let me explain.

     When I started teaching, I thought the world was out there for me to conquer.  I didn’t think there was any problem that I couldn’t handle.  However, when I actually got into a classroom, I was a little bit overwhelmed.  I knew that I could do an okay job teaching the curriculum.  And then after a few years, I would get better.  That’s where Open Court came in.  It provided a framework for me in one subject area.  Then, I could focus my efforts on learning the math curriculum and mastering it.  That Open Court framework was a relief to a new teacher who wanted reassurance that I was doing at least one thing right!  Now, I look at that same curriculum and think a little differently.  However, it provided a safety net for me.  However, in today’s schools, I’m not sure that new teachers have a few years to get their feet under them.  That’s where I understand the battle.  Which curriculum must be mastered first?  I don’t think that we need programs like Open Court or DIBELS IF teachers would go out and take more staff development classes that could help them teach phonics in a different way.  However, I’m not sure how many of the teachers would go out and do that.  And then I go back to the question of, if they haven’t taken any classes about phonemic awareness or phonics instruction, then how are they teaching phonics and what exactly are they teaching?  I think if we visit some classrooms, we will find that what teachers aren’t comfortable teaching, doesn’t get taught.  The one thing that I can say for our school is that the majority of teachers are very uncomfortable teaching phonics.  Therefore, I cannot assure anyone that phonics is being taught in EVERY classroom.  That’s where Open Court comes in.  It is the county’s quick fix to making sure that something is being taught.  Is it a good program?  Not really.  But, will we see this change?  I’m not sure we will.  I think we might see it change if the level of  from all teachers changes.  ALL teachers would need to be willing to take more classes about how to teach subject matter in general.  We are learning new things every day about how to better teach our kids.  Until we feel the obligation to stay on top of the current research and practices, I think we will continue to see these programs encouraged.  Sure, the publishers will continue to advertise them.  Why?  It has already been created!  They don’t have to change anything!  However, the publishers are also getting wiser to changes within education as well.  Rigby sells about 12 titles of books with 6 copies of each for about $300.  When you are trying to stock a guided reading book-room, those costs add up.  Even if they did et rid of programs like Open Court and DIBELS, I think you would find more publishing companies branching out into other areas like guided reading books.  They will always find a way to make a buck.  I hope that teachers will begin to take a more active role in curriculum design.  I would love to buy materials from someone who taught in a classroom like mine…  I know the materials would look a lot different!

This was an eye-opening chapter because there are times where this is exactly what I think I do.  I let the fear of what is difficult paralyze me.  I think back to the IRB proposal process in the fall.  Fear would paralyze me at each step of the process.  I would send in a draft and when I got it back, I waited a day or two to read comments and remarks.  I was too scared of what I might read.  Once I read the comments, I would wait another day or two to make the revisions out of fear about how long those revisions would take.  Looking back, I wasted a lot of time.  I should have just pushed through the hard parts like so many other people in the class did.  I think the reflections that the professors shared with me will help for the next group.  I was more fearful about the process than actually doing the task.  I know that it has been suggested that people do group projects.  I think this will help with the fear of the project.  I also think that Caitlin talked about being there when we are completing the IRB proposal online to answer any questions about wording.  I think this is a good idea since many have not been through a process like that.  It would be a less anxious process if we could ask questions as we were constructing the proposal online.

The next idea that Freire talks about is how to approach reading for studying purposes.  One thing he talks about is being careful not to proclaim that we understand any knowledge without putting the knowledge to the test.  I wonder about how many teachers do that with some of the instructional strategies that are taught.  I find that in the area of balanced literacy.  Many people understand the premise of guided reading, and have that under control.  But, when you ask them about another part like the difference between shared writing and interactive writing, many get confused.  I think this could be because people get so secure in the guided reading portion that they don’t go on to experiment and try the other portions of the balanced literacy approach.  Then, after a few years pass, they can tell you basically what it is, but not much more.  I think if we can continue to encourage people to try and improve an area of instruction that they feel is weak, we may be able to get on a more common playing field with our colleagues.  When we take on the role as learners within a group, we can move our understandings forward and feel more comfortable in putting that new learning to the test.  When we can put this learning to the test, we can better understand the concepts and provide feedback to colleagues about pitfalls that might occur during the initial implementation.  I think this should improve the integrity of instruction as a whole and lift the progress of our students.

I thought Freire’s comments about imagination during reading are so true.  I can’t tell you how many times, I have found my thoughts wondering and had to go back and reread to really take in the text. He also takes about an open-mindedness that needs to occur to “co-author” the text.  I wonder how many of us miss out on good reading because one phrase or idea has turned us off. There were times initially in the program where I allowed that to happen after reading a text.  Now, I think I am alot more comfortable in my questioning and can express that in class. Towards the end of the chapter, my mind wondered towards the children.  How many of our children have teachers that don’t teach them how to truly interact with a text.  I think that is how our children gain a misunderstanding that reading is word calling.  When we as teachers fail to facilitate the interaction that must take place with a text, we teach the wrong concept of reading.  I think that is what happens when we focus too much on phonics.  Reading is about making meaning of text.  I think we have to start shouting that important idea from the roof top.   We also have to speak up if we see a pattern of that occurring within our schools.

     This was a hard article to read, because I feel that I have been in this woman’s position before.  And the struggle comes when you are trying to balance the need to speak out for the children and the possibility that you might push too far and lose a job that you really feel is most beneficial to those children.  As I said in class the other night, I have had an experience with an administration like this, and because it is beginning to happen more and more frequently, it is very scary.  I will take a minute to give the background on this situation and when I felt the need to speak up.  I feel this will happen to more and more people and if people think about what they will do ahead of time, they will be better prepared to speak out when it does.

       I teach at a large school.  A few years ago, after Columbine, the school district thought some of the elementary schools were too large.  So, to make the schools more personal, they came up with a school within a school model.  Two schools under one roof.  Two sets of administration and office staff, however, the student ratios in classes would remain the same.  There would be a primary K-2 school and an intermediate 3-5 school.  When the administration was hired, they immediately needed to hire additional personnel.  They asked me and another teacher to sit in on interviews and provide feedback.  We both provided feedback on the candidates which included the wife of our area assistant superintendent.  We both felt like other candidates were stronger, not to mention, we thought it was a violation of ethics laws to have a spouse hired in the direct line of your supervision.   However, the wife of the area assistant superintendent was hired.  Why did they even have us sitting in on the interviews?  Later, I found out that I was to act as a pawn to carry our the administrations’ agenda. 

They also hired a PhD. with a specialization in reading.  The school year started and they wanted me to list 11 students that would be pulled out for reading.  This teacher kept them the whole time and I never received feedback about the progress of the students.  I expressed concern that this teachers was suppose to act in a suuplemental instructional manner, not to be the sole instructor of their reading.  The administration believe that she was the only one that needed to teach them reading.  I didn’t need to “worry about it.” I was very upset. My first administrator had taught me that I was ultimately responsible for my kids. Now, someone else teaches my kids and they will still be on my class role? I needed to be able to talk with the kids and parents about what improvements needed to be made in their performance. If I didn’t instruct them in reading, how could I do that?  Then, when I completed their report cards for the first nine weeks, the party began.  I was approached by the “Reading Specialist” and administration to change how I had marked my students on their report card.  I had marked most of the students that she was serving as on grade level based on county guidelines. I didn’t change the grading on the report cards.  That was an ethics violation!  However, the response given to me was that we couldn’t justify the Ph.D. teaching those kids if they were on grade level.  I expressed concern about this situation anytime someone asked.  One time, the district superintendent came to a faculty meeting to talk to us about our concerns.  As the teachers spoke out, the “Reading Specialist” was on the floor of the meeting taking notes on who said what. I spoke out and felt like I was punished because of it. Needless to say, the principal was removed in January.

Just last week, a paraprofessional approached me at school.  She was in need of one staff development credit.  The  county told her that a staff development class was taught while the previous administration was there.  She was signed up for the class, but didn’t receive final credit.  I told her to talk to the instructor and see why…she then told me that I was listed on the paperwork as the instructor.  What????  I didn’t teach any staff development that year.  Why would someone have put my name on that class?  Who else was listed?  The wife of the area assistant superintendent, the “Reading Specialist”, and me.  That’s when I learned that I was just a pawn in carrying out the agenda.

I think about what would have happened had they not taken out that principal.  As much as I had already spoken out, I knew that I would have to leave the school.  I couldn’t continue to argue with  someone who didn’t share the same values as mine.  I was violating my own integrity to continue to participate in activities that I didn’t agree with and was illegal to even ask me to do.  Not everone had a bad experience with that administration.  They don’t understand how I got on her “bad list”.  However, if that situation had happened to any one of those other teachers, I don’t think they would have gone along with it either. 

I value that fact that this woman spoke out.  She did the right thing.  But, when teachers leave in great numbers, sometimes that gets the county’s attention as well.  Maybe there will be more impact after she is gone.  Now, she has the ability to speak out.  I’m sure the county won’t like the publicity that will come along with her story.  She can go back to that type of school after the county level administration changes.  It will… 

     I really liked this chapter.  I thought many of the characteristics that he talks about that teachers should learn to have are also qualities that people in our society should have.  Humility is a key one for me.  It is one that I am always striving for.  I liked his quote in the book: No one knows it all; no one is ignorant of everything.  I see this with people in my family who have come from different life experiences.  Many times, I would comment about a situation and the response that I would get from them is something like ”you don’t know”.  I have always tried to maintain the philosophy that someone always has some kind of knowledge or skill that they can offer to the world.  I hate to see when people think they know it all or that someone else doesn’t know what they are talking about, because I think they miss out on a good life-learning experience.  I wrote out in the margins that you can be certain that there will be times in your life of uncertainty.  Once you realize that, I think most people live their lives with a little more peace.  They know the uncertain times will come, but they also know that with humility, it can be a great learning experience.

   The other area that I found profound in this chapter was lovingness.  When Freire talks about armed love, I do think of teachers. I fight so that children will believe in themselves. I fight so that children will aspire to any occupation in the world.  I fight so that the children of today will be as passionate as I am to pass on that armed love to someone else.  If there are a handful of children that go on to make a big impact on this world, then I have done my job.  However, there are many times that other people in this world will fight against you.  They will fight to bring children down to a level of self-doubt and disbelief.  You, as a teacher, have to fight harder and louder than those who will delight in the fall of success.  If you are successful of that when you are teaching that child, hopefully, they won’t ever forget!  Then, twenty years down the road, when the world seems like it is closing in, they will remember the teacher who fought for them, who believed in them, and the former student will push on towards the goal!

     As I read this chapter, I think back to college and my Educational Psychology class.  It always disturbed me that we couldn’t agree on a road map for educating our children. I wonder if other countries ponder back and forth about how to teach their children.  Then as I started teaching, I realized that there would be times that I wouldn’t agree about something with other teachers that I work with.  I guess that I was lucky because the first principal that I worked for was a true Instructional Leader.  She knew how to help the faculty collaborate and grow stronger in our instructional practice. She didn’t allow any teacher to pass on the resonsibility of educating ANY children to anyone else. Special Ed? ESOL? Non-engaged parents? It didn’t matter. It was my job to educate my students.  And she knew that what might work for one child, might not be a strength in learning for another.  She allowed us the freedon to use a variety of strategies.  But, she also held us accountable for those strategies as well.  At the end of each semester, she wanted us to write down which five children were showing excellent progress and what we were doing with them.  She also wanted to know which five students were still struggling and what strategies had we tried with those.  That helped me see that some of these students did learn differently. I appreciated how she held us accountable for the education of our children and still gave us a bit of freedom about how we did it. Little did I know that those kind of instructional leaders are few and far between.  I have been teaching nine years since that time, and I haven’t had a good instructional leader since.

       As I look at how we as a nation have swung back and forth on a pendulum, I wonder how many of those times, were teachers or administrators passing the responsibility of educating children on to someone else.  That’s kind of how I felt when I read about all the different eras where the focus was on skills instruction and not on the process or teaching children how to think.  I think that during those times, people feel like it is okay just to give the “basics” because their parents can give them the extra.  The reality of it is that they don’t.  And if one of these kids that I’m teaching is a teacher for my child, I don’t just want them teaching them the basics.  I want them thinking like Benjamin Franklin.  I want them to impart on my child the exposure to think through any situation and come up with possible ways of solving them.  I recently heard a teacher telling another colleague that we should be doing timed math tests.  She said, they worked for me so why shouldn’t they work for our kids today.  I understand where she is coming from in that the kids get plenty of repeated practice in an area that is important for further instruction.  However, I wonder, if those same kids were given math problem solving, would they be successful?  I’m not so sure.  Not if all we are doing is giving them the rote practice.  We have to teach them how to think.  I don’t know what challenges the children will face in the future.  If I don’t teach them how to think and reason through the process of problem-solving, I may prevent them from faces those challenges prepared.  I read a lot of ideas and philosophies in this chapter that I still hear today.  It is scary to think that the philosophy that a teacher has may determine the success of that child’s educational future…

As I read this article, I was thinking about some of the things that the author shared.  One thing I thought was interesting was how her father felt like the Asian Americans would not have been put in internment camps if they had been able to speak up better.  I have thought about that part of history alot.  I think it was a dark time in our country’s history.  I wish the Asian-Americans would have been able to speak up.  But, then again, I wonder, would it have made any difference?  I fast foward to today and the same questioning of loyalty that seems to be occurring at times to Muslim-Americans.  It comes from a sense of mistrust.  But, this mistrust comes from a lack of understanding.  And for most Americans, this doesn’t motivate us to learn more about an unfamiliar culture.  It causes us to jump to more conclusions.  I wish her father would have been correct, but as I look at how our country handles some things today, I wonder…

 However, after reading tis article, I admire this culture as well.  One of the reasons that Asian-Americans have diffiulty speaking up is in an effort to try and solve problems for themselves.  I think this is an admirable quality.  I also wonder if this tenacity also causes the gap in academic achievement between American schools and some schools on the continent of Asia.  Do these students learn at a young age about a drive that they must exhibit which maintains an attitude of persistence?  How can we take a positive character trait like this independence and begin to teach it in our culture?

    In reading this article, I was reminded of people in my life in my past that this article helped me identify with.  I went to school with a girl who was of Phillipino decent.  In high school, I remember how much it use to offend her when someone called her Asian.  There is a part of the article that talks about how 4 billion people from 50 countries could be considered Asian, including people from diverse cultures such as Turkey, Japan, India, the Phillipines, and Indonesia which in my mind explains her frustration nicely.  When I stop to think about those cultures, they do vary widely.  I can see why people might be offended by being grouped with such a large area.  Each one of those countries has a unique culture and identity.  When you put them all in a group together, you undermine the individuality that comes from each country.  If we traveled to those countries and spent some time experiencing their culture and talking with the people, I think that people might start to clarify the identities in their minds. 

I think many people in the past have just grouped all of these countries together due to a lack of knowledge and understanding.  But, in this day and time,  with all the technological advances that we have available, we should be closing this gap of understanding. We can visit some of these countries through virtual tours on the internet.  We can conduct a unit of study.  I think that as an educational community explores these cultures in more depth, we will begin to see the large differences among these cultures.  I also think that this may help with some of the trends that we are seeing in students who are performing poorly in school.  We have failed to validate this population’s identity.  Some of these kids may be growing up not feeling value towards their own culture.  By exploring more cultures in the educational context, we can affirm students who may come from one of these cultures.  This may provide the encouragement the students need to dream big.

I also agree that the main issue that may be of consequence to academic achievement is one of class issue.  However, in my mind, this issue may not be as easy to solve.  In my county, I teach in an area where the students can be transient and needing federal assistance for food.  I am also noticing that it is our schools that are beginning to fall behind in areas like teachnology.  I am not sure what we can do to try and level the playing field for these kids.   I think the playing field will need to be leveled in some way for our children to continue to compete with other kids their age.  I haven’t exactly come up with a great idea yet.  But, I have a feeling that after I complete this degree, I will begin trying my hand at writing grants in an effort to raise the “institutional resources” needed for our students to achieve.