I’m really grateful for this assignment. I’ve never had a blog before, and I don’t think I would have read my own writing, after letting it sit for a couple of months, otherwise.  I’m so glad I did.  Also, I’d thought I would quit blogging after this semester, when it’s not “homework” anymore, but now I think I’ll keep it going!

I feel inspired by the thoughts I’ve had over time. I don’t mean it in a cocky way- the opposite, actually. Because when I’m writing, or discussing issues with other people who care about education, my adrenalin is pumping and I can feel passionate about the issues.  I feel that way when reading great articles on education, too.  But there are many moments in the day, week, month, when I’m not really “feeling it.”  I get down about the policies in place, or I just feel complacent because I know that at least my class is getting a decent education.  But now that I have a way to listen to myself when I’m energized, maybe I can start feeling that need to take action all the time.

I saw my call to action about writing a letter to Arnie Duncan.  If that doesn’t happen with our class this semester, then that may be my own project.  Either way, it should be done- our Secretary of Education should hear all of the stories and counter-stories of our nation’s educational system.  I recently read on Stephanie Jones’ blog that for a couple of generations, the people of our nation have thought that all is well in the USA, and there’s no need to fight for anything more.  I feel that many children grow up feeling that way, while in reality all children grow up in an unjust society, and educators need to always be working towards social justice.

There’s so much more to say and do.  I’m glad to have experienced a new outlet (blogging) in which to grow.

We had a minilesson about prefixes after that.

I just read the Palmer&Lynch article, “A bilingual education for a monolingual test?” and I’m thinking about how my school does bilingual education, in light of the information about the school district discussed by the article. The practices in the article’s “large urban school district in central Texas” with a “large and growing population of English language learners” (and discussed by researchers at UT Austin) just so happen to resemble practices at my school in Austin ISD. I wonder why…

Surprise surprise, the language of instruction chosen for a student is often based on the language of the student’s highest benchmark scores.  Aren’t most decisions that impact instruction based on getting kids to pass TAKS?  Why should language of instruction be any different?  I’m saying this, of course with frustration. As we’ve been discussing, TAKS plays too large a role in too many decisions.  If, in our district, “bilingual” means “Spanish,” or sometimes “English in a class where other kids learn in Spanish,” then obviously we don’t get it. And that’s whey the kids don’t get it.

I know a woman who teaches at another school in AISD in what’s technically a bilingual class.  Though it carries the same label as the schools discussed in the article, this teacher structures her class differently.  She teaches English and Spanish to all students.  Sometimes, a good read-aloud is only in English, and she encourages the Spanish-speaking students to listen carefully and pick up the language. And sometimes, a good read-aloud is only in Spanish, and she encourages the English-speaking students to listen carefully and pick up the language.  This teacher values both languages, and all of her students feel empowered as a result.  To me, her classroom is the definition of bilingual.

The article discusses teachers’ decision-making for a student’s language of instruction.  What I think is important to ask is, what theory are teachers’ decisions based on? I worry that many teachers don’t have any other ways of choosing a student’s language of instruction other than standardized testing. I’ve been meaning to strike up this conversation with teachers in my school.  What kinds of programs and training are available for bilingual teachers?

I went to a 3-day AISD “Innovation Station” training this summer that discussed this issue.  The biggest idea I took out of this training is that we are preparing our students for jobs that don’t yet exist.  So, it’s vitally important that we help our students to become literate in computers and such so they can be prepared for the world in which they will live.  So, one program we learned to use was called “Glogster,” a free online program which helps you design posters.  Teachers were discussing that this could be used in the classroom as a form of book report- students design a poster on Glogster that tells about their book.  I think it’s a pretty interesting idea- the notion that it could be as important to teach students to use technology to graphically represent ideas as it is to teach students to use words, written or oral, to portray ideas.

I wish I had a crystal ball, to know what the important skills are to teach my 2nd graders!! I suppose the most important thing to teach is open-mindedness and critical thinking. Then they’ll be ready for anything! But what? Should I add computer skills to the list of MOST important skills?

In my first and only year of teaching 4th grade reading, after being forced to practice TAKS until late April, I was allowed to “play” a little. That is, I could teach my students, without being blamed for hurting our school’s chances at an “Exemplary” label.  I had come across an article in a kids’ magazine, something like Scholastic or Weekly Reader, about schools who use popular music to teach poetry.  We had already learned a little about some conventions in poetry such as rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, metaphor, and simile, and it seemed like a good idea to bridge this learning to the poetry that interests them.  I asked the children nonchalantly who their favorite artists were, and their favorite songs.   Then I found the songs (the only artist I can remember off the top of my head is Akon), printed them.  I was (and sadly, still am) pretty clueless about what the kids are listening to these days (how old am I?), but I wanted to choose a contemporary song that contained the elements we had discussed, that had a good message, and a catchy rhythm.  I chose Spearhead’s “To the East, to the West.” Our class analyzed the poem for rhyme, rhythm, etc., and then we listened to it.  The students were stunned that a poem could actually have a beat and sound enjoyable, and I was stunned at how stunned they were.   Next, I gave the students directions to analyze the poetic elements of the next poem I was about to hand them.  I gave them the lyrics of the songs they’d requested.  Again, they were floored.

I couldn’t help thinking, “How simple!” What a great way to motivate students.

And now, I can’t help thinking, “Why did I stop there?”  Having the students analyze not only the poetic elements, but the deeper meaning of the songs, would have truly made the experience worthwhile.  If only I had a time machine.

So, here’s where some of y’all can help me.  I now teach 2nd grade.  I know that one of my kiddos listens to Hot 93 (or is it 97?), but specifically, does anyone here know what the kids are listening to these days? And even more specifically, what’s good?  As Duncan-Andrade and Morrell pointed out, of “mainstream” literature, only a small proportion is considered “good literature,” and the same is true for hip-hop.  What’s good out there, that is also appropriate for 2nd grade?

I’m hoping that some of you have suggestions, but I’m realizing even as I type this that I should just ask the kids!

I was just remembering our class’s conversation about Readers’ Workshop a few weeks ago. In Readers’ Workshop, everyone has different likes, dislikes, strengths, needs, styles, methods, etc.  It seems like if it’s done right, no students are “good at” or “bad at” Readers’ Workshop.  It’s a great way to address everyone’s needs without coming from a deficit model in anyone’s case.

So, has anyone tried doing all of school like this? Having a sort of “learners’ workshop” where students are researching and experimenting and designing their own learning projects, and sharing their learning with their class?

What is Special Education?

From my understanding it exists because some students need  a special type of instruction, geared to their special needs. Hence, Special Education.

But then, students have “all kinds of minds” (check out the works of Mel Levine), so teachers in General Education differentiate their instruction. That’s supposed to meet the needs and interests of all students.

OK. So, when that doesn’t work for some individuals, we now have RTI.  Different kinds of instruction are tried on such individuals to see if they can learn in those different kinds of ways. The article in The Reading Teacher by Mesmer and Mesmer describes some of those ways.

[Before I continue, I just want to make clear that I think RTI is a fabulous concept, and I wish my school took it more seriously. The targeted approach that RTI schools take seems like it would help so many children, who struggle to learn, to be successful.]

Back to my question, then- what happens when the student who had been struggling to learn in a differentiated General Educational environment does not respond to the interventions attempted by the RTI team?  They are a candidate for SpEd, which means what, exactly? I think it means that a team develops an Individualized Education Plan that will help the student learn.

How is that different from RTI? Where is the line drawn between teaching methods that are part of RTI, and teaching methods that are part of SpEd? When there is not enough response to the interventions, then the student gets labeled SpEd, and in that system, other interventions are put in place to help the student be successful, I presume. Who chooses which interventions are considered part of RTI, and which interventions require a student to be labeled SpEd in order to be implemented?

Can anyone help clear this up for me?

On the first day of class, we told our stories of what led us to take this Issues and Trends class, and I spoke about my experience as a first-year teacher in a TAKS grade, being told to “drill and kill” instead of teach.  Here’s another part of the story, which I think is all too common among new teachers: Two weeks after school had started, in 2006, my principal told me to go to a training.  It was the second Saturday after the school year had begun, and I felt like I was doing alright so far- I was following Lucy Calkins’ First 20 Days of Reading, and our class had begun building community.  Exhausted, I dragged myself out of bed and into a cafeteria of teachers with a wide range of experience- from 2 weeks to 20+ years.  The training was called “SRA Corrective Reading.”  After little introduction and absolutely no context given as to the “when” and “why” and “who” of this program, the presenters launched right into the “what” and “how,” and I found myself choral-reading a script. We had clickers in our hands, shaped like friendly dolphins and orca whales, and we said things like “My turn. The word is ____. Your turn. What’s the word [click the clicker]? Wrong, my turn. the word was ____. Say the word [click the clicker].” Or something like that.  At school on Monday, I showed the books, which were two sets of about six books each, to the reading specialist at my school. He told me to hold onto them, but that there was no real use for them at that time (I was so relieved!).  Three years later, I still have the books, in their original shrink-wrapping, in my closet at school. I’m still not sure what they’re for, but they seem expensive.  As for my principal, who told me to attend the training, he never asked about it- how it was, what I learned, how I will use my new knowledge in the classroom.

But I think the strangest part of the experience for me was vibe in the lunchroom during the training.  While I was feeling like I had entered a twilight zone and, like Stevens, feeling pretty offended that they’re having me practice a script, most of the teachers in the room seemed content, like this was what they had expected to find when they walked into this training.  It blew my mind that they could know what they were signing up for, and still sign up for it! And they were working hard to get the script right! I still struggle with the implications of this- the huge amount of teachers who uncritically embraced  a scripted reading program.

In the end, I was left more confused than ever.

The thing about Reading First programs is that they leave little room for individual needs, and context.  This is true for both the teachers and the students.  As Stevens noted, she was at the Reading First leadership seminar, among many people with knowledge and expertise about reading, and being told that Reading First programs are the best way to teach reading.  How does that make any sense? The article by Gerstl-Pepin and Woodside-Jiron, “Tensions Between the ‘Science’ of Reading and a ‘Love of Learning,’” is one that I stumbled across a couple of years ago and it has stuck with me ever since.  It’s depressing.  A school (Laurel Ridge) had finally found a way to be successful, but it had to change to follow Reading First programs.  Importantly, Laurel Ridge had incorporated CARING into their school environment.  As the authors write, “a love of learning and a passion for reading are not easily quantifiable categories, yet, for a school like Laurel Ridge, they are central to everything they do to reach challenging children” (p.237).  A caring environment and a motivating curriculum in which children are eager and comfortable to learn are critical factors in a successful school.

So, who are the policymakers that we have to convince? Should we send our “counterstories” to Arne Duncan?  Plenty of good research can inform new policies. The policies need to change soon, before all good practices are phased out of public education.

As I was reading the NRP’s report, nothing stood out to me as missing. I skimmed the Alphabetics section, and I didn’t notice anything unusual.  But upon reading Allington’s (2005) articles, “Ideology is still trumping evidence,” and “Five missing pillars of scientific reading instruction,” I realized that I had mistakenly placed my own “common knowledge” between the lines of the NRP’s report, and gave them credit for making points that are sorely missing.  As a reading teacher, when I read reports about specific strategies, such as directly teaching phonemic awareness, or other programs out there including Scientific Spelling and Open Court (for fluency), I think about the these activities within the context of all we do as readers and writers.  As Allington points out, students should have choice in what they read, and teachers should help match their kids to the right texts.  Struggling readers should also have one-on-one time to read with a teacher or other expert tutor.  I have little doubt that good teachers, upon reading research studies of various models of instruction, consider and incorporate those ideas into what they already know works.

The problem is that the policy-makers read such reviews out of context.  I was saddened to read in Allington’s article that some schools have banned independent reading because it is “unscientific.” Teachers should know better.  Teachers need more of a voice, especially the experienced, expert teachers, in policy decisions.  Teacher research has the potential to bridge the gap between good teaching and policy, but the nature of that research would probably disqualify it from the meta-analyses, which call for “more scientific” studies that demand a control group vs. experimental group, and quantitative methods.

I’m looking for loopholes here, beyond just teaching what I want behind closed doors.  Really, what can we do?

I’ll admit, I’ve been putting off writing my thoughts on this article. It’s just that, after having this conversation on a regular basis throughout my 3 years of teaching, what else is there to say? Accountability, good. High stakes, bad. The TAKS (and, before that, TAAS) are  wrapped up in dollars and politics, and do more harm than good for our schools and students.  I’d really rather not get into the specifics of how the TAKS adversely affects the kiddos, but let me just say that today I had 22 seven- and eight- year-olds sit most of the day and take a standardized writing test designed by our district to mimic the TAKS.  And, for the first time in my experience, nobody cried, so in comparison to other years, I considered today a success.  We’re administering the Math “Benchmark” tomorrow, taking yet another day of learning away and adding a day of stress, frustration, and boredom.

I wrote the words “yuck” and “gross” in the margins of the article.  Here’s one place I did that: “The judge who presided over the TAAS lawsuit was not persuaded that these problems invalidate the TAAS.  He concluded that the TAAS does have discriminatory consequences for black and Hispanic students but is not illegal because it is educationally necessary” (p.484).  I am interested in learning if studies have found the TAKS to have similar problems, and if again someone thought that was okay.

The survey reported by this article further points to the disconnect between research and policy that I wrote about in my previous blog.  This research clearly indicated that teachers reported negative ratings of the TAAS for a number of important reasons, yet eight years later we continue to test our kiddos with increasing frequency. Here’s a quote from the article the speaks to the spread of policies and practices with blatant disregard to the research (I wrote “disturbing” in the margin next to this part): “…many state policy makers regard the TAAS as successful and want to expand the use of TAAS results for teacher evaluation and student promotion” (p.490). What?!

The article ended with a call to teachers to speak up and speak out against high-stakes standardized testing.  Again, this was written 8 years ago.  What happened? What else can we do?

Woodside-Jiron’s article, “Language, Power, and Participation,” clarified for me some things I’ve been wondering about these relationships, and I am looking forward to reading more articles on this topic.  For a long time, I have been aware that reading materials in schools, many of which relate to NCLB, are created and chosen based on profit and power.  I have never seen a basal reader that reflects good reading research (I say “good reading research” because there is plenty of bad research that supports programs that are promoted by NCLB).  California’s role in choosing the nation’s textbooks, discussed in this article, is a striking example of policy influencing practice while removing the variable of research.

On August 30th, the NY Times printed an article about a way of facilitating Readers’ Workshop  in which the students choose any book they’d like to read.  I have read a number of research articles making this same claim: that when students choose their book, they are more motivated to read and consider themselves to be readers.  These studies also have boasted high standardized test results for students in these programs.  So, why hasn’t Readers’ Workshop with students’ choices catching on faster? I believe it’s because nobody makes money off of students choosing their own books.  No one publisher can reap the profits of this system, so no one is promoting it and encouraging its acceptance.

It’s counterproductive.  If school boards cared about the education of the children, they would heed the research.  Instead, they are being influenced by other parties, and as a result our schools are suffering.

So, until we can fix all this, I am going to continue to teach with my door closed, teaching with methods I can be proud to use.  And, unfortunately, I’ll often have to open my door and teach how “they” tell me to.