Let's Get Started

I was really unsure how to begin this post.  I had about  a hundred thoughts and ideas floating around in my head over the course of the past several days.  Thanks to Tatiana for being first :)  

My thoughts differ from most of you, perhaps just a tiny bit in that I am pretty much catching up and trying to remember how life was a year ago (both in and out of UIC).  As most of you know (from our ED 330 introductions), I recently came back home from Kuwait (that's the tiny country south of Iraq), as I was deployed with the ARMY for eleven months.  It was a rather successful year for me.  I missed so much back home, but I learned a lot about the human spirit and people, generally speaking.  I also learned a lot more about myself than I could have ever known.  Best thing I could have learned: listen with an open mind and heart.  That's something that perhaps a lot of the books don't actually teach us, I think.  I mean, here we are, talking these kids' ears off, expecting them to listen and remember, and do everything we TALK to THEM about, and do we do it?  If we are to model things, I think that one of the very first things ought to be listening.  But that's just me.  I really think it helps, and trust me . . . I never used to do it.  

But I digress . . . we're talking about Smagorinsky's wise ideas on how to create instructional units, right?  (Side note: it's really hard for me to convey tone via the web, and just overall, I guess.  I might sound a bit cynical or sarcastic at times, when in reality I am not.  Most times.)  

So, I am going to break my thoughts on the text by sectioning off the reading (Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2).  (Side note:  I found a reading strategy that works by sectioning off essays and articles.  Pretty cool stuff.)  Ok, again, I digress.

Preface:

"If you learn how to plan in units, your teaching will have continuity and purpose for students," (xi).  I'm not sure if I am to explain whether or not I agree and why, but I will anyway.  Yes, I agree and here's why:  I am this Romantic human being and believe strongly that there is a purpose to/for things.  There has to be a bigger picture, so to speak.  So, in going back to last week's "Why teach English?" question that was introduced, I think "because English is probably one of the few subjects that allows teachers to have a human connection with kids."  It was for me, anyway.  If I am to have the connection with kids I want, then I owe it to them to plan units with purpose.  I don't just want to teach for the sake of teaching.  I want to teach for my kids' sake.  You know?

This idea of me wanting to plan units with purpose, as I realized from re-reading this awesome text for the second time around (I was first introduced to it by Sarah Donovan in 2011), is supported by Smagorinsky's metaphor of construction when he explains that "unit design should involve students in the production of things that matter to them, (xi).  I want my units to be in sync, I suppose, with the needs and expectations of my kids.  I want them to have the experience Smagorinsky describes, "so involving that you lose track of time," (xiv).

Chapter One:

So some of you have posted your thoughts about the "test sharing" incident.  The very first time I read that I thought, "hey! That's how things were when I was in high school!"  Reading this part over again, as a more, I want to say "worldly" person, I think, "you know, there's just something you're robbing kids out of."  Smagorinsky argues the assumptions that test-sharing implicates.  He goes as far as to compare this type of practice with the Procrustean bed analogy (5).  Whoa!  It's true, however, that the idea of "one size fits ALL" eventually "kills" what our kids can actually contribute.  I don't know about you, but I have spent a long time with people who all thought the same way, for the most part, about certain things.  It's such a sad way of thinking, I think.  Especially in the ARMY.  People often joke, "we do it the hard way because that's the ARMY way," even when there's a much efficient way to do something, but because it's not the way it's been done before, we just go ahead and do it "by the book."  It's exhausting.  

I am not a linear thinker, so I apologize, and I should have a while back, but going back to "Why teach English?"  Smagorinsky really nails it for me when he talks about narrative knowledge (13).  Kids, often times, "make sense of things by rendering them in story."  It's true.  If you ask most kids to tell you about the route they take to school, I bet that a vast majority of them won't simply tell you "I take bus A to intersection B and then I walk into the school."  No.  I think that they will give you a vivid account of that particular day's journey to such and such school.  Smagorinsky argues that narrative knowledge(s) is "rarely allowed as ways for students to express themselves," (13).  My thought here is, "how do I change that?"  More importantly, can I change that?

Further, the argument of the multiple intelligences is made and I think to today's ED 330 "cosmo" quiz on "what type of learner are you?"  I think, do we grown into different types of learners as the years go by, because up until two years ago, I had taken similar quizzes and I was always a visual learner.  Today, the quiz reflected that I am a kinesthetic learner.  I sit near doors.  Anyway, it's important to know the types of different learners we have so that we can differentiate certain lessons to kids with different needs and/or ways of learning.  So, if I teach my, I don't know, let's say "Billy Shakespeare," introductory lesson in a robotic type of way (what I mean by that is that it's that monotonous, plain and boring lecture lesson most of us has had way too often) what happens to the kids who have one of the other seven types of intelligences?  Do I just leave them to sink in the pool of my uttered nonsense and then have them fail a test at the end of the unit that, as Smagorinsky puts it, will miss "the point by ignoring the many ways of knowing"? (18).

Chapter two:

The scaffold!  Up until I left my beautiful country I really bought this notion of instructional scaffolding.  I realize now, however, that everyone learns differently and we are not "stationery" and we're constantly learning.  Searle's "who's building whose building" question makes a valid argument in that we need to think about the needs of the child we are teaching, not just what is mandated we teach him.    

We are introduced, then, to Anne Haas' "weaving metaphor," where "a common product emerges from overlapping, joint activity," (20).  Going back to the Shakespeare intro lesson, how can I put this to work?  Do I just simply talk for the entire period about Shakespeare and his work?  There is so much to talk about! (If you've taken the Topics in Shakespeare class, you know).  What about the kids who need something extra to grasp the purpose of the lesson (because there is a purpose to me teaching about the life, and works, of this "dead guy," remember?).  

To conclude . . . 

 . . . this first choppy post, I will say that I am ready to get back into teacher mode.  I am ready to learn about teaching, and ready to listen whole-heartedly to what you have to contribute in and out of class.  

(Smiley face)