Teaching Empathy: A Cultural Value

Critical literacy seems to be the name of the game these days in the education program. While this term can be interpreted a number of ways I best see it as reading a text in order to learn about the power dynamics. Who has power, how is it shown, and how can its distribution be most equitably enacted is something that classrooms have been doing for a long time now as Social Narrative Writing: (Re)Constructing Kid Culture in the Writer’s Workshop by Lee Heffernan and Mitzi Lewison has shown. Most of the references made in the text were nearly twenty years old. As bell hooks reminds us in Narratives of Struggle and Teaching to Transgress that reading critically is important to creating a more equitable culture. 

Social Narrative Writing argues that students as young as 3^rd grade are able to see how their actions affect others. This is done through reexamining the writing the students do in class. Students are often asked to write creative stories or personal narratives. There were problems in each of these scenarios that caused the teacher much distress. Creative fiction assignment often came back as parodies and imitations of popular T.V. shows. Personal narratives repeated the same patterns of babysitting misadventures or common sport tropes. To make the writing process more meaningful, students were asked to create narratives where injustice was present. This was scaffold by anchor texts that examined various identities (race, gender, size, nationality, etc). Not only did students learn about other people and their struggles but created pieces of real fiction that incorporated identities that weren’t present in their writings of the past. 

School is a vehicle by which culture is taught. The adage “I learned everything I needed to know in kindergarten” isn’t far from the truth. The American culture attempts to value sharing, personal space, responsibility, among other simple tasks every 5 year old is practicing in school.  This extends on into middle-school, high-school, and out of academia. We are enculturated on how to think and behave and these expectations are often reinforced by teachers.* When we chose texts that are old, dead, white guys, we are telling everyone who falls outside of these identifiers that they, as writers, don’t matter. Student’s aren’t oblivious. Students want to see what they view in the mirror in the books they read and in the authors that write them. This is why representation in the media is important. To create assignments of critical writing, we are asking our students to represent each other in their writing.

As bell hooks says in “Narratives of Struggle” “…to address more intimately is not to exclude; rather, it alters the terms of inclusion.” We ask our students to bring more of the world and all it’s peoples into their writing, we are adding to the inclusion of those people into all facets of society. It makes us empathize, evaluate, and relate to each other on a deeper level then when we just read about injustice. It makes us accountable. When we are accountable, when we are asked to claim agency, we empower ourselves and others. It allows us the “freedom to explore and act.” (Heffernan 436)

What Did You Learn Today

This question is asked by parents, guardians, and teachers all across the world every day. When I tutor students at Huntington Learning Center it is one of the first questions I ask them every time they come into the center. The unfortunate reality is that this question is often answered with “nothing” or my favorite “I don’t know”. Perhaps part of these answers is because of apathy or they’re prioritizing their mental spaces with other daily events and desires. While it’s fair to be more concerned with things other than what happened in English class that morning when at 5:30 a student is asked “what did you learn today” it shouldn’t be a hard question to answer. This is why clear, formative assessment is important.

Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice by David J. Nicol and Debra Macfarlane-Dick outlines why formative assessments are necessary, why they increase a student’s “self-regulated learning”, and how to make teachers’ assessments better. The article goes back and forth describing the multiple theories on how to administer formative assessments and why it should be done. Personally, the amount of conflicting ideas in regards to formative assessment brought up in the article made the whole question of how to assess up to the individual teachers digression.

According to some researchers, formative assessment is useful for both teachers and students. Teachers can gage where their students are at in terms of learning goals. Students can know that what they are learning and that learning is a process. Nicol and Macfarline-Dick suggest that it beyond the learning goals of a classroom, formative assessments can be used to encourage “self-regulated learning. This is done through several key steps.

1.      Clarify what good performance is

2.      Facilitate self-assessment

3.      Deliver high quality feedback information

4.      Encourage teacher and peer dialogue

5.      Encourage positive motivation and self-esteem

6.      Provide opportunities to close the gap

7.      Use feedback to improve teaching

These of course are all important components of every teacher’s job. Modeling what is good and being a representation of empowerment and high self-esteem set good examples for students. Encourage positive motivation and self-worth can be done through what kinds of language you use as a teacher. Using feedback you give students, be it written or verbal, will help clarify what you are looking for. These elements should be a part of formative assessment. You need to know your teaching/message is getting across. If not, how will you know they are leaning? How would you construct your summative assessment if you know you’re students are getting the message.

Role-play Becoming Real Becoming Necessary

           I’ve written about argumentation in a previousblog-post but based on the reading Learning Argument Practices Through Online Role-Play: Towards a Rhetoric of Significance and Transformation by Richard Beach and Candance Doerr-Stevens I’ve felt compelled to write on the subject again. The basic premise of the article was to examine how students are learning to argue based on their interactions in virtual spaces. These virtual spaces include traditional online news media websites and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Not only are they exposed to local, state, national, and international events and issues but they are able to see the immediate responses from the experiences these events/issues directly. Never in the whole of history has this been possible. Students today with access to the internet are able to learn and patriate in the conversation on just about any event or issue happening in the world today.

            In the not so distant past, student who are asked in classes to write an argumentative essay or speech have had to do so on topics that are seemingly meaningless. Beach and Doerr don’t go into specific topics here but conclude by saying these standard papers/ presentations have been “ little more than “knowledge telling”(Bereiter&Scardamali, 1984)” I can attest to this by my own high school experiences with research being shaky at best and the products being a manipulation of the information I found. Bereiter&Scardamli wrote in the mid 1980’s and I was experiencing the same thing in the mid 2000’s. There was little change in that 30 years for high school research. Now, students I’ve observed and read about are able to engage with research in a meaningful and intellectual and impactful way.

            Students who use the internet need to converse with others using “netiquette” a.k.a. being coherent and polite. I’ve heard it more than once that Facebook is the place where good conversation goes to die. It is similarly true for Tumblr and YouTube. Don’t read the comments gets said many content creators on every corner of the web. Yet, the comment section is where the dialogue his happening. Good, thoughtful, and productive conversation can happen. Beach and Doerr agree with Randi Dickson. They and many other educators say that debate and argumentation needs to be a space for constructive learning for all involved. Beach and Doerr go a step farther and say “students also [need] to respect their adversaries as potential sources for useful ideas and solutions.” (Beach, 2009)

            Student now are able to engage with meaningful events in their lives and dive in deeply. They can spark and renew conversations on multimedia formats. With proper instruction and organization they can then take this research and formulate persuasive essays based on their “role-play” i.e. engagement in these real and virtual spaces. This practice within the classroom setting is preparing student for real world debate and full partition in our democracies. These are real world skills than are meaningful and necessary. They are empowering. They are formative and substantive. Teachers need to make the terms of engagement and in virtual space needs to be the same as if it were face-to-face. Make your spaces positive and constructive. Make them meaningful.

Fears, Anxities, and the Goast of Classroom Future

I've been accumulating a great deal of anxiety this week. It's partially due to the fact that I have several late assignments. Most of the general anxiousness I feel comes form being utterly inundated by the academic institutions desire to educate me on how to be a good and even great teacher. I'm also aware their are state standards to implement. Then there are the more local forces of school boards and administration. Most importantly, there are my students. They are who I serve. They are who the administration work with. They are who school-boards and national committees are concerned with.* The university cares for our students and teachers and hope that shoving theory and written practice into teacher-candidates skulls will in some small way prepare them for full-time teaching.

At the center off all of this should be the student(s). Yet, I am at the center of my universe right now. I'm learning and being fed all the things which will someday produce successful students. The flood waters are high and they spin around me. Drowning me. All of these forces wish to invade my body and mind and I can't think well because of it. I know I'm in so deep right now it's hard to see a realistic path of success.

Teaching Grammar and Writing: A Beginning Teacher's Dilemma follows one teachers journey from fresh out of the program through her first year of teaching. I resonated so very much with Brandy because I truly desire my classroom to be a student-focused, student-centered place where learn happens because I can guild and facilitate and lead students to greater knowledge and skill. I fear that my own classroom will be a lot like Brandy's in the first year. I fear that my students won't be motivated and have an real reisitance to the education system. I want to be there for them in their stuggles but I also have to and want to teach them something about reading and writing.

I saw that both of my desires were possible when I met them where they were at (go figure) through Brandy's experience. Brandy found the student really responded well to the Grammar Programs. I had a similar experience with technology and teaching during Intercession. When we played a music video that related to a story we told, the students were enraptured by the screen and were silently watching for the whole time. It was magic. In the upcoming months I need to continually think of ways to expertly incorporate multimedia into my students learning. That's where they are at. That's where I need to be.


*Actually they're concerned with the students outcomes/what the students can produce and not really with the students themselves. 

Coming to terms with Dabate

I’m a pretty open and accepting kind of guy. Who am I to tell you that you are wrong?* I don’t know everything and I’m certainly not going to tell you that your way of viewing the world is wrong.* I’ve tried very hard over years to rid myself of seeing the world from one point of view and have attempted to “stand in others shoes” as it is. And this is a practice that I think is utterly integral when doing much of the work that needs to be done to form a more just and healthy society. 

So why would I want to debate anything? I know what is fair, just, and right in terms of human, civil, and ecological rights. All other comments can do as they please. I’ve never been one for arguments or debates. I’m more into the style of listening and learning and then sharing. Queue the Kumbaya and bring out the guitars. But in all seriousness this is how I was raised and educated. We listen to each other and in doing so learn about the vastness of our world.

When reading Developing “Real-World Intelligence”: Teaching Argumentative Writing through Debate by Randi Dickson I’ve come to understand the importance of debate. I never had to debate in high-school (not sure how I managed that one) but now in light of the reading I really see it, as Randi puts it a “real-world skill.” “Argumentation and debate are crucial to participation in democracy.” This statement launched me into why his is so important. Our student body is becoming increasingly diverse and with this comes racial and social inequalities. We need these citizens to be able to stand up for their rights –with solidarity from already established communities. The only way this is possible is being about to stand up in front of committees and hearings and other such legal bodies and be able to defend oneself. To argue is to have power; it is to claim agency. As Leah pointed out in class “writing is power”. To speak is to have power and to know how to argue/debate is wield the power effectively.

Dickson’s lesson where the students research and debate on a topic is fairly basic for a high-school English class. What I particularly liked was the follow through. “I ask them to write another journal enter in which they state whether their opinion has changed on the subject and what made them change their mind to what solidified their view.” (Dickson 2004, 38). This kind reflection is exceptionally powerful. It’s one thing to reflect upon a view that has changed but it’s “why” or “what” that is the key. If students can hone into these two reasons why and what made them shift in perspective or hold fast to their current beliefs then they become exceptional debaters. They are able to take this knowledge and skill into future classes and into many other “real world” spaces.

Debate isn’t just for winning. Maybe this is true in the “real-world” but in the classroom and by extension the “real-world” we need to promote more than a completive, winner-takes-all mentality. This is why I really enjoyed the final part to Dickson’s article entitled “Broader Goals”. Dickson “never declares a winner” yet he places the “emphasis on understanding an issue more fully.” (Dickson 2004, 39) I really love how he ends the article. “[it’s] about making considered decision about complex subjects…” The world is rapidly changing and unfolding with tools such as the internet becoming increasingly accessible. This allows for more diversity of thought in our public conversations. For our students to leave our classrooms prepared to meet this increasingly diverse common space equipped with tools in which to expertly dissect thought and relay their own seems not only necessary but to not do so would be counter to our 21^st century education system.

*That is of course unless your are spouting some hate speech, or disenfranchising people or being discriminatory, or attempting to espouse revisionist history… cause then I’m going to debate you on the spot and shut you down.