It Turns Out Embracing Confusion Really works

            Today at work I got to watch an athlete of mine embrace confusion! I coach competitive gymnastics and as I learn more and more in education I try and apply it to my work. Today I was teaching a gymnast to use a different technique for twisting a forward salto. She has been working on front twisting for about a year, but she hasn’t been able to finish the twist so I gave her a different technique to try. Before going I warned her that it would feel weird and that she would probably get lost but to just keep pulling until she hit the ground. Her first attempt didn’t work, she started and got very lost and opened her twist to stop herself. I had her try again and reminded her to keep pulling until she felt the floor. She went for it and even though she had no idea where she was she didn’t stop and she ended up finishing the twist all the way around. As she repeated the skill a few more times she became comfortable with the technique and began to become aware of where she was in the air to land on her feet.

            Like the students I will be working with in schools, my gymnast was hesitant to try this, it was something she didn’t know and wasn’t sure what was going to happen. This wasn’t her first attempt at ever doing this twist, and like the students I will be working with who have been reading for years, she has worked through these on a basic level before. Her first try wasn’t successful, but she didn’t give up, she kept working at the skill and that is the most important thing I have learned from this experience. Sometimes when trying new things you might crash and burn, but if my students and I can pick ourselves up and try again we can succeed.

            I think students have been so conditioned that they have to do everything right that they would rather do nothing, than try and make a mistake. By teaching students that they can make mistakes and try again students will feel more comfortable taking risks and challenging themselves. Confusion is scary, but if students understand that even if they get lost along the way if they keep trying they will eventually be successful. By teaching students to work through their struggles and find their own way, after they leave my classroom they will hopefully be able to work through their own problems in their lives.

I Wonder How A Lion Feels When Hunted

Until lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.

-African Proverb

            This is perhaps my favorite history quote. I remember hearing it for the first time when I was in grade 10 history and it has stuck with me ever since. I know there are many quotes about history, but the idea that history is subjective not objective has always fascinated me. Prior to grade 10 history, social science classes had always been my least favorite class (my teaching major is social sciences). I remember hearing this quote and thinking ‘well duh, it’s a story about hunting of course it glorifies the hunter’ but something about that quote stuck in my head and I remember starting to learn about the Renaissance and the French and American Revolutions and it slowly clued in that the history I was being taught was only the story from the perspective of the hunter.

            As I progressed through my high school history classes I began to develop what Appleman calls a “postcolonial lens”. While I don’t remember my teachers ever taking specific class time to teach us about postcolonial theory, I will say that whoever introduced me to this quote started my love for history and my ability to question the objectivity of historical facts.

            Often times I find that students hate history because they assume it is a bunch of boring facts about a bunch of old, dead people. I think introducing students to the different theories and perspectives  they can use to approach history with may really help them change their minds. Basic questions about what caused the Lutheran Reformation or how Hitler defeated miss huge parts of history that is often more interesting and thought provoking.

             A Postcolonial view allows students to broaden their horizons and question what perspectives are provided in history classes and where the truth lies between each version of the truth. Ask a student to tell you about Hitler and you will get the basic synopsis of fall of Hitler, what that student likely hasn’t thought about was why so many German people believed he was good for Germany. By teaching students to use a postcolonial lens in examining their education they can learn to critically examine the world they live in today.

Even Teacher Candidates can Teach for Social Justice

            I recently attended a guest lecture titled “Teaching For Social Justice” by Deirdre Kelly, and I found that it related very well to Appleman’s discussion of Marxist literal theory in Critical Encounters. Appleman discusses the importance of teaching students about social class and privilege in high school classrooms. Appleman argues that there is an expanding awareness of the cultural power lies in the texts used in Canadian classrooms and that teachers must use this awareness to challenge the status quo.

            Appleman points out that many teachers and students are uncomfortable discussing social class, but counters this with the fact that the material taught to students always has a link to some form of political ideology. Teachers need to be aware of the reasons behind the information they are providing their students with and need to teach their students to see the hidden assumptions of power within their texts.

            Kelly’s lecture focused mainly on ‘stories from the front-lines of teaching’ about how teacher candidates were working to create change and challenging students to see how power is built in our society. Kelly used examples to illustrate how even though presenting this material to a school-board or to the students themselves may cause concern initially the benefits students gain through understanding these issues are vast. The most striking example was a demonstration of a sweatshop situation in an elementary classroom. Students were divided into groups where they took turns as the worker or as the employer/work enforcer. The goal was for students to learn about the division of power its effects. Initially the teacher advisor was concerned about the repercussions that this may have, but allowed the teacher candidate to carry out experiment anyway with great success.

            Being a teacher candidate facing the prospect of going into schools and teaching next year I have been daunted with the thought of applying the theories that I’ve been introduced to this year. Knowing that other teacher interns have had success in their attempts to bring similar theories into their praxis is encouraging for me. If they can do it, I know that I will be able to too.

Chaos Is Not The Best Place To Focus

            I am the kind of reader that can sit down with a book and look up from it 5 hours later. My friends are often driven nuts by the fact that they have to physically pry the book from my hands before I realize that they are even in the room. In Chapter 4 of Gallagher’s Deeper Readings he discusses how the ability for students to focus on a book can be very challenging and that if they are unable to focus they will not be able to grasp the concept of their reading, or possibly not even be able to make it past the first 5 words!

            Focusing on a book and tuning-out my surroundings has never been a challenge for me, but I finally had a taste of what it’s like for some readers this past weekend. For Thanksgiving my extended family all go up to our family cabin and spend the weekend together. This year there were 16 people and three dogs up at the cabin. Since the weather this year wasn’t exactly ideal we all spent the majority of our time inside and practically on top of each other. As I was sitting in front of the fireplace reading about ‘focusing the reader’ I realized that I was a textbook case of a reader being in the wrong time and place to adequately focus. I was in the middle of a 700-foot open floor plan cabin with 18 other bodies loudly running around while counting down until supper time. At that point I gave up trying to read and went to play football with my cousins.

            Later that weekend while in the car on the way home I returned to Gallagher’s book and actually read the chapter. While reading I reflected on the fact that had I continued to try and ‘tune-out’ my surroundings before Thanksgiving supper I probably wouldn’t have really taken in anything that Gallagher said. I would have been reading on autopilot, looking at the words without actually being able to focus on the meaning and implications of the chapter. Being completely unable to concentrate gave me a better understanding of what difficulties some of my future students will have with focusing. 

So I Guess you can judge a book by its Cover

            I was always told that you can’t judge a book by its cover…but as it turns out you judge every book by its cover, or at least that’s what the READ teacher is telling the grade 9 students at Aden Bowen.

            The READ teacher’s job is to help students improve their reading abilities. She has a her own classes where she works with students who need extra help learning to read, as well as doing workshops in different ELA classrooms to help students become masters at reading. She was doing a workshop in two of the English classes I was observing and when she was explaining the lesson plan to me, I mentioned that I was reading a textbook about reading strategies that had several similar teaching methods. As it turns out, this is because the book she used to develop her strategies is Gallagher’s Deeper Readings (Yes, I realize how lucky I am).

            To introduce the new novel study The Body of Christopher Creed, the students looked at three different print covers and were asked what stood out in each, and what the covers hinted at. Students looked at the covers and identified shapes, colors, font type and the overall picture. With each point the students made they had to write down a question and a prediction about what the message cover was trying to tell them. 

            The READ teacher followed Gallagher’s idea that students need context before they start reading to become engaged in the book and fully understand it. By focusing the students on theorizing what the covers could possibly mean, the students began to form a basic idea of what the book was about before they’d even held the book in their hands. By the time the students had been given the book, they were already interested in what was going to happen.

            I think this is a very good strategy for students to learn, because if students are able to look at a book and make a solid prediction to what the book is about, when they go to choose books on their own they are more likely to be able to pick books they enjoy. The students were very interested in being involved in this activity. Students were keen to give their predictions because they could guess anything and they weren’t wrong.

            Once they were given the novel, the students were instructed to follow along while the teacher read the novel out loud and that they would again be filling in a predictions and questions chart. The READ teacher explained that the author has dropped hints throughout the first chapter to catch the reader and that they are to look for those and write them down when they come across something that strikes them as odd. She started the students off by pointing out the odd comments for the first few pages before they had to find them on their own. By helping the students out for the first few pages, she was modeling reading behavior for the students and showing them how to question the text.

            The following day the students posted their questions and predictions on a bulletin board and will be revisiting them closer to the end to see if they were right. Now when reading the novel, the students will be looking for clues to their questions and to see which of their predictions were right. 

            By having the students invested in the different possible outcomes, the students are now asking several questions about what is going to happen. Students want to know if they were right about the book cover, who the characters are and what is going on in their lives. After having watched their class and listened to the first chapter, I too want to know what happened to Christopher Creed.