Shalaby: Troublemakers

 Reflection: 

    I found Shalaby's Introduction and Preface to Troublemakers to be intriguing and very insightful. Where most teachers think of the "troublemaker" kids as the problem, Shalaby looks at them as a warning cry to the problems within schools. I think her comparison of these troublemakers to canaries that were used in the mines to warn miners of carbon monoxide, was extremely interesting. Her perspective made me think a lot about the students that I work with in the Claiborne Pell Elementary School. 

    There are a few children in the classroom who act out or are constantly raising their hand to "answer a question" and then say something entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. The teacher tries her best to work with these children, sitting near them while the student teacher teaches them math, or writing them encouraging notes, but it is still not always enough. This past week, when I went into the school on Friday, the student who I have seen making the most "trouble" had his desk next to the student teacher, so his back was to the rest of the class. I'm not sure exactly what he did to get there, as I didn't ask, but he was still speaking out from his new position. 

    That being said, Shalaby explains that there are daily harms in schools that make these children act out, such as, "the requirement to sit still for hours on end, the frustration of boring, disconnected, and irrelevant academic tasks, shockingly little time for free play, and few opportunities to build meaningful relationships in community with other children and loving adults." When I reflected this to my classroom, I couldn't entirely justify this child's behaviors based on these harms. Yes, there are times when the children need to sit still and learn math, but that is only for one hour in the beginning of the day. Then, they either do writing, where they are free to move around the room and read their personal narratives to their friends, or they have their special. After that, they go to recess and lunch. I'm not entirely sure what happens after lunch, other than that the students are back in the classroom for an hour and a half at the end of the day. So, basically, the teacher has them for an hour or two in the morning, and an hour and a half in the afternoon, before they are dismissed for the day. She allows them to work with ea
ch other and collaborate whenever possible, so why is this child still acting out? 

    From what I can gather, there is a lot going on in his personal life. I've heard the teacher say that he stays at his dad's sometimes, and his dad allows him to stay home from school on Fridays. Maybe his home life is a factor of why he has a hard time in school. Here is an interesting article on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how they relate to education. Or maybe, it is what Shalaby says, and it's because he doesn't want to sit still at all, maybe he is bored, disconnected, and wants more free time. They were playing with playodough and I heard him say "I need more playodough time" when he was putting it away. 

    My question for the class is, do you think the troublemakers always act out for reasons that Shalaby says, or do you think there could sometimes be another reason, like some hardships in their personal lives? 

Finn: from "Literacy with an Attitude"

 Reflection: 

Finn's "Literacy with an Attitude" provided an insightful look into how schools in communities of varying wealth teach their students and how students are treated in schools. Despite knowing that it varied strongly prior to reading this article, based on what we have learned in class up to this point, I was still surprised to see just how everything varied. In the working-class, students were taught to follow directions which reflected the low-paying work they were expected to do in society, while middle-class students were learning to follow orders and do the mental work that keeps society running, and upper-class students were learning to create, and find rewards in work, and how to negotiate from a powerful position with those in power. Basically, these school systems were teaching students that they were only as smart as their parents' net income. 

At one point, Finn discussed how in the working class children were taught science. The copied instructions on how to do an experiment from the book, then they watched the teacher do the experiment while the students wrote and copied a list of things they found. This reminded me of when I was in school and learning science. It was always my least favorite subject, until high school when I had a great chemistry teacher. After reading this, I realized that the reason why I was so against science was because this is how I was taught for most of my childhood. 

Most of the time, when setting up for an experiment, we would get the prompt of what we were trying to test. Each of us would write our own hypothesis on what we thought the outcome would be. Then we would watch the teacher do the experiment, and as a class, we would answer questions related to the experiment. Then we would go home and write a report on our findings. I don't remember a single experiment that we did in learning this way, but I do remember when my favorite eighth grade science teacher brought in dry ice and left one at each group to play with (explicitly telling us why we can't touch it) as we learned about solids, liquids, and gasses. This was a fun experiment because we were engaged with the materials and we were allowed to have fun with the experiment. 

This greatly varied to the Gizmos that we would do from time to time. These were like experiments done on the computer in a simulation. Looking back, I can see how these are helpful to learning about certain things in science, but I always hated them. They weren't that engaging because you could only click on the buttons that the program allowed, and it always felt more like busy work. 

Although the Gizmo was a good example of certain aspects of science, we were never given enough time to finish the assignment, and it didn't show us anything new. I imagine this is how students in the working-class schools felt about all of their assignments. They were being told what they could learn and what they were capable of learning, much like the Gizmo. If I wanted to click a certain button, I wasn't allowed to unless other requirement had been met first. The program should have allowed me to click what I wanted so I could see the consequences of that action. 

Overall, I thought this reading was really insightful into how schools treat their students based on familial wealth. Reading about the working-class teachers talk about their students in derogatory ways before ever giving them a chance to improve their skills really bothered me. Has anyone seen an example of this in their schools?

Alfie Kohn: What to Look for in a Classroom & Classroom Tour Video

 Reflection: 

I found Kohn's article/chart to be really interesting. The things that he listed as "possible reasons to worry" really reminded me of when I was a student in school. I think that today, there are a lot more teachers that are trying to make their classrooms stand apart from the "traditional" classrooms. 

Growing up in schools, I can remember that the chairs and desks were mostly in rows and lines, there were either no posters or a lot of commercial posters and some students' works, I was usually bored, normally everyone was working on the same thing, and more. I was always interested in the decor of rooms. I remember all the posters and things that were hanging and the vast majority of the time, they were commercial posters or work done by "the best" students. One example of this that I can remember was in my art classroom. The teacher would display artworks but only a select few. I never thought anything of it when I was at school, but looking back, I can see how that could be insensitive. 

Kohn's article made me think about how different it is today than when I was growing up. The classroom that I am currently teaching in is decorated as much as it could be. There is student work all over the walls, even though the answers are sometimes wrong. The students sit in groups, as well, allowing them to interact with each other. They are always eager to engage and learn and they never complain about a task. The teacher is kind, respectful, and genuine. The students are extremely welcoming to all guests. The classroom that I am in has a teacher, a student teacher, another teacher, and myself so it is a very busy classroom, but the students were extremely welcoming to me right away. They also had a K9 come to visit the classroom recently and they were eager to hear about his duties. They were respectful to the police officer as he told them what the dog does and how to correctly pet him. There are also great classroom discussions and many group activities. I haven't seen too much of the school but from what I did see, I thought it was a great environment for students. 

Although there were some teachers growing up who had engaging classrooms, the older we got, the more classrooms were decidedly a space only for learning and not for creativity. I hope that as these 4th grade students I am working with get older, they will be able to enjoy creativity and engaging classrooms throughout their entire schooling. I think the changes are being made to make school a more welcoming environment and it brings me joy in knowing this.

I think these classroom design templates could be a good start for decorating classrooms at the beginning of the year and adding student work to the room throughout the year would really engage students. 

One thing I would like to focus on in class is how everyone else remembers their childhood classrooms. Were they inviting or kind of boring? How do you think that impacted your learning? 

Lisa Delpit: The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children

Connections:

    This reading by Lisa Delpit really highlighted the ways in which schools and culture interact and what should be done to fix the way we oppress any culture that isn't white. She ultimately explains that teachers must teach all students the explicit and implicit rules of power as a first step toward a more just society. As I was reading this article, I was able to make connections to other readings from this class. 

    First, I saw many connections to Allan Johnson's "Privilege, Power, and Difference," in this reading. Within the first few pages, I noticed how these black people that the author was using as examples, all felt the same underlying theme of being listened to but not heard. Their concerns were brushed off by their white colleagues. This invalidation of their concerns lead them to stop speaking out, making their white colleagues feel as though they must have assuaged their concerns. This is an act of oppression, and according to Johnson's article, white people hold the most power over society, making it nearly impossible for black people to rise up out of this oppression, which in the case of Delpit's article means making their voices heard. 

    Johnson also speaks about how white people create these rules in society which is why it is so hard for minority groups to rise out of oppression. Here, Delpit depicts the same thing in her "culture of power." She says that there are codes/rules for participating in power and these rules are a reflection of the beliefs/culture of those who already hold the power. Delpit explains that the culture of schools are based on the culture of the upper and middle classes because those are the people who are in power, the white people. Here is an article on the racial inequalities in education. 

    Also like Delpit, Johnson explains how white people don't like to hear about racism or be told that even if they aren't outwardly racist, they still participate in a society that gives them power. Likewise, Delpit explains that those with power are frequently less aware of it or are, at least, less willing to acknowledge its existence. As Delpit and Johnson would explain, this is a major part of the problem. 

    I was also able to connect this reading to Shannon Renkly and Katherine Bertolini's "Shifting the Paradigm..." as they mainly describe teaching students from an asset-based model -- teaching students based on their strengths and interests. Delpit suggests doing this as she says that students should be taught to their cultural strengths. She also provides the example of when someone she knows was working with "slow learners," and the teacher had the students analyze rap songs for underlying patterns. Once the students became experts in explaining the rules for creating a new rap song, the teacher then used these patterns to relate it to the structure of grammar and Shakespeare's plays. This is an example of asset-based learning. 

In class, I would be interested to know what everyone thinks about how culture and English should be taught in schools. I found the teacher and Joey's conversation eye-opening and would love to know what everyone thought about that.