Beach + Smago

So far, our methods texts (Smagorinsky and Beach) have been important to me in that they’re the last methods texts I’ll be reading before student teaching, and I’m trying to take as much away from them before next semester. When I say, “take away,” I mean, think about what I like and don’t like. Before when I read methods texts, I always considered everything a possibility or a good idea in some respects. Now, especially since we’re developing our philosophies and have learned so much about the realities of teaching in our classes, conversations, and observations, I find myself challenging and questioning these methods and philosophies. Not to be cynical, but also not to accept everything with arms wide open. Though a lot of it is worth a shot, in reading, I’m focusing on the stuff that I think will work best or more realistically.

For this reason, though, I’m really liking the Beach text. Common Core gives me anxiety because I feel like I know nothing about it and even less on how to implement it, but Beach remedies that for me. It gives me hope that they aren’t the same kind of restricting standards we’ve talked about in other conversations. One of the bigger issues I had with the standards was the push for nonfiction and the push out of fiction. Beach reads between the lines of the standards, so, instead of reading them as they are, he interprets them in ways that keep the integrity of a good English classroom where we can teach the important and valuable stuff plus what we really think our students need. I sighed in relief when I saw chapter 5, and Beach’s ways of reading and writing fiction, especially the poetry section, since poetry is one of those things that I feel will take some time to get used to teaching. Though the section is short, it helps me think about how I can not only align Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, to the CCSS but with technology as well (another conversation we’ve been hitting on this semester). So cool!

My one concern when it comes to Beach is that his suggestions and methods sound a little bit like a teacher who has full control of the curriculum, which some of us know is not typically the case. If we’re talking about fiction texts again, what can we do if our department doesn’t order any novels for a unit because they’re not explicitly mentioned in the CCSS? Or worse, our department is told that we’re not to use novels in the classroom? I have not seen this implemented, yet, but I think some of you may have… If you have, how does this even work? How are the teachers responding?

So, that’s my own two cents on Beach. To be completely truthful about Smagorinsky, I like reading it, but right now, it’s just another methods text, and I’m starting to feel a bit methods texted out. There is a lot of good stuff that Smagorinsky brings up, and though he’s being drowned by the many other methods texts I’ve read in the past few years, his ideas and visions for the classroom/units/lessons are preparing me for student teaching with practical approaches and methods. For example: his chapter on responding to student work really put things into perspective for me: we’re simply not going to be able to respond in as thorough as possible detail to each individual student’s work. It’s simply impossible. I have a feeling Smagorinsky’s suggestions for alternatives (in this case, giving students rubrics as a guideline or doing peer response) give us a lot to experiment and test out while we’re student teaching.