My undergraduates are in the beginning phases of their student teaching experience. They will be in the classroom for at least ten weeks. Many of them are meeting new students and attempting to build community within the classroom. Building community is something that must be done throughout the semester or year. A first-day lesson can set the foundation by opening up conversation about literature and students. To model this kind of lesson in methods, we usually read an excerpt from The Things They Carried and have students share meaningful objects with the class. This lesson is typically successful because it fosters conversation about literature which we then relate to the lives of students. Thanks to Lynn Masterson at Texas State University who taught me this! Here is what we do: 1. Read excerpt from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I’ve included a quote from that excerpt: The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives,heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy,cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits,Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. 2. Ask students: What do you think of what we just read? What does it say about the connection between what we carry and what is meaningful to us? What would you carry? 3. Ask students to choose three things from their pocket, bag, or backpack that represent something about them. 4. Organize students in pairs and ask them to tell each other about the three things. The person talking should explain the object and what it represents about them. The person listening should take notes and be ready to share with the entire class. 5. The presenter should practice to make sure that they are appropriately describing the relationship between the object and the person. 6. Once the pairs are done sharing, students share with the entire class. To be clear, one pair talks about the other pair and specifically highlights the relationship between the objects and the person. While they talk, I take notes to help me remember something about the student. It’s a great way to build relationships from the start. Feel free to use this idea in your classroom.
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I saw this image in my Facebook feed the other day. Kid President is great because he offers some positivity to my feed which has currently been about the death of David Bowie or Donald Trump. I couldn’t help but wonder, however, if what Kid President was saying is always true, especially in situations when we are engaging in critical conversations. What I mean is that my students often hesitate to talk about things that they perceive might be interpreted as unkind or impolite. I understand that the above quote is promoting verbal kindness - and I agree with that 100%. What I’m thinking about is how educators might help our students disagree, share perspectives, and actively listen to each other that promotes kindness while at the same time opens space for people to be uncomfortable - a process that often indicates learning. These are the kinds of questions that prompted a current project that I’m working on with Melissa Schieble. For the past five years, we have explored how discourse analysis can be used as a tool in teacher education. Our students record classroom interactions, transcribe short segments, and engage in reflection that asks them questions about how they position themselves as teachers, how they position students as readers and writers, and how they think identity markers (e.g., race, class, gender, sexual orientation) shaped how they teach. These are tough questions and over the years we have become better at modeling conversations through our own analysis, practicing analysis through example transcripts, and engaging in multiple small and large group discussions. Overall, we have found this tool to be extremely helpful for bridging theory and practice because it asks students to think about how they are enacting practices through daily interactions. This project has made us curious about how current teachers might use discourse analysis to foster critical conversations in their secondary ELA classrooms. By critical conversations, we mean classroom discussions that attempt to foster dialogue about sociopolitical issues, disrupt commonplace notions, invite multiple perspectives, and promote change within the local or national community. From work in our own classrooms, we understand how difficult it can be to foster discussions that engage students in rich dialogue. Specifically, we understand that fostering critical conversations entails both the content (what is being talked about) and the process (how people talk to each other). To explore this, Melissa and I plan to recruit teachers this semester for a project that asks them to audio record and transcribe three classroom interactions. We will also meet in small and large groups to discuss reflections and future goals and engage in a few interviews about the process. Stay tuned for more information about this topic. I’ll blog with an update after our first meeting. Over my holiday break, a friend recommended that I listen to Magic Lessons by Elizabeth Gilbert. This podcast is based on a book (Big Magic) about pushing past the fear that blocks people from creativity. Although Ms. Gilbert focuses on musicians, painters, and writers, I see creativity much broader. For example, teachers use creativity when they plan lessons, academics think creatively when they conduct research, and even runners get creative when constructing a training plan. This podcast was a great recommendation and I listened to all of them in less than two weeks! The last podcast resonated with me the most because of one phrase: the arrogance of belonging. Elizabeth Gilbert argues that in order to create, people must believe they are entitled to do so. She says:
Creative entitlement doesn’t mean behaving like a princess, or acting as though the world owes you anything whatsoever. No, creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and believing that — merely by being here, merely by existing — you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own. Elizabeth was inspired by the poet David Whyte who argues that “without the arrogance of belonging — you will never be able take any creative risks whatsoever. Without it, you will never push yourself out of the suffocating insulation of personal safety, and into the frontiers of the beautiful and the unexpected.” As an educator working with young writers in a summer camp, I was particularly inspired by this concept. For five years, I have collected and analyzed data from our young writers. Recently, I have been working on an article about how young writers use talk to think together about writing. This is particularly useful for teachers who use writing groups and peer conferences to help students learn more about writing. In the manuscript, I analyze transcripts that illustrate young writers learning together through talk that is exploratory, reflective, and content-oriented. I also explore transcripts that highlight talk that is either unresponsive or disputational. Although I don’t tackle creative entitlement in the article, I noticed that the young writers who talked in ways that helped each other improve a piece of writing, think differently about writing in general, and/or offer multiple ways of writing came to the conversation believing that they belonged in this community of writers. In addition, the language that they used with each other confirmed that belonging in each other (validation, constructive feedback). In the conversations where campers were unresponsive or argumentative, the campers did not appear to believe they belonged and they treated each other this way as well (pointing out irrelevant mistakes, moving on before someone is finished, not giving constructive feedback). This is particularly interesting to me when thinking about how educators can foster spaces for youth to situate themselves as writers. Maybe this is something to add to the manuscript draft that I'm working on or maybe this is a new lens that I can use to explore the data. Regardless, I think this is a refreshing way to think about fostering creativity in ourselves and others. |
AuthorProfessor in English Education at UNC Greensboro Archives
June 2016
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