Entry 2 of 4:

Motivation

 On the subject of motivation, specifically ways in which teachers can help students feel motivated to read, a number of recurring themes came out in the readings*.  Although each reading focused on a different aspect of literacy, there were several commonalities among them, which should provide teachers with some insights about what we can do in our teaching to encourage any student to read.

            First off, students need access to a variety of interesting texts.  Many students' experiences with textbooks and other sources are so boring or not relatable that they believe all reading must be the same.  Teachers should take responsibility for helping students find texts that are interesting and that are at the appropriate reading level.  Because students' interests are as varied as can be, it is important for them to have access to a wide range of genres and topics.

            Next, the students' sociocultural environments play huge roles in students' feelings towards reading.  Students who come from families where reading and discussion are commonplace are more likely to read more.  Students whose friends are more likely to be readers are more likely to engage in conversation about what they're reading.  When reading is a community activity, it will attract people who are not necessarily attracted to the solitary act of reading.  Students who have positive social reasons for reading will feel more motivated to find something they want to read.

 

            Finally, we should consider the recurring yet elusive issue of self-efficacy, which is related to the distinction between dependent and independent learners.  Independent learners are those who have a stronger sense self-efficacy; they are able to learn by reading, and they don't need as much guidance from their teachers although they might be more likely to interact with us more proactively.  Dependent learners, on the other hand, with feelings of low self-efficacy, tend to feel like they "just don't get it" and might despair of ever being "smart enough" to understand.  They don't feel comfortable finding information on their own, and when they read they might have trouble connecting words with ideas.  All too often dependent learners do not seek additional assistance, perhaps because they're shy or embarrassed about their abilities or perhaps because they're so accustomed to not making progress that they see no point in asking.  In my experience, the general attitude about students with low self-efficacy is that they are incapable of doing better or that they are simply unwilling to make the effort.  The former interpretation is probably not appropriate for anyone who is serious about a teaching career, whereas the latter ties in directly with motivation.

            The challenge for us as teachers is to figure out how to motivate students who are not "naturally" motivated (as our independent learners often seem to be).  Thinking about doing this might make a hard job seem even harder.  However, for those of us interested in reaching all of our students and in creating a more equitable society, coming up with ways to channel each student's sense of fun and curiosity is a difficulty worth embracing.

 

*  Or anyway, so I was told during our "jigsaw" exercise.  For non-academic readers,  "jigsaw" means that I read one article only, then I get together with four other students, each of whom had read a different article, and we all discuss the summaries with one another.  The goal is to make it easier on everyone by reducing the amount of reading any one person must do while at the same time learning the important info from all of the assigned texts.  Jigsaws work very well, assuming two conditions: 1) participants have actually read and understood their pieces, and 2) participants are actually effective at identifying and communicating the important points from their pieces.  If, however, anyone in the group decides to invent a summary (if they do this out of laziness or malice, it is neither clear nor important - the fact is that it does happen), or if anyone speaks inaccurately or incoherently, then everyone else in the group is at a disadvantage for whatever activities will follow.  I would be interested to hear if anyone has any suggestions for helping to ensure that all participants pull their weight in jigsaw activities.

Entry 1 of 4:

A Literary History

As I read about literacy projects in India and the problems people face when they don't have access to the training required to become literate, I'm reminded of My Privilege.  I reckon the best of all my privileges - even above being white and male and American - is being literate.  Which honestly I take for granted.  This has been a problem in my teaching practice, I'm sure - but now is not the time to get into that.  I'll just generalize and say that teachers need to be able to relate to their students' learning needs, and it's important to remember that not everyone has access to the kind of learning environment that leads to highly effective literacy skills.  I did - big, giant Privilege right here.

I'm not braggin', or at least not meanin' to.  If you've read this far, chances are good that you also are highly literate - and therefore Highly Privileged - congratulations!  But enough about you, this is a blog....

I've always been lucky when it comes to reading.  Lucky in the first place to have highly literate parents who took the time to sit and read with my brothers and me*.  There were always books all over the house, fiction and non-, plus a steady diet of Newsweek for the adults and World for the kids.  We hit the library at least once a month, which was rarely enough that all of us would want to stock up.

I'm also lucky to have been born with some kind of natural ability to acquire information verbally.  I was able to read One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by the age of three.  Good old Dr. Seuss, he helped a lot (my favorite, On Beyond Zebra, might have something to do with an ongoing attraction to surrealism).  And I think it's worth mentioning that I spent a lot of time grooving on (pre-Elmo) Sesame Street and Electric Co. (among whatever other crap was on).

By fifth grade I was a fairly omnivorous fiction reader, getting into science fiction, mystery series aimed at adolescents of my father's generation like the Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, fantasy classics like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit, and just about anything else that came within reach.  I preferred reading over just about any other pastime.  Fifth grade was also when I started playing the clarinet, which could well have had a positive effect on developing deeper literacy skills.

High school proved to be a source of further enrichment.  I started studying Spanish and participating in forensics (extemporaneous speaking, student congress, student UN, and debate).  Giving speeches under pressure was not much fun, but all of the research, oratory, and social skills required by political discourse and persuasive speaking have been invaluable.  Punk rock and protest music provided the perfect soundtrack, especially when juxtaposed against the frivolous New Wave drivel that had taken over.  The deeper we sunk into the Reagan era, the more I wanted to read about Beats and social justice and civil disobedience.  But there was still time for science fiction and Stephen King, which come to think of it aren't necessarily incompatible with antiestablishment sentiments.  In tenth grade I took a one-semester class revolving around real events as the basis for good literature, and this revelation changed the lens through which I determined what was worth reading.  Senior year's AP English forced another change by introducing the annoying and ever-problematic concept of distinguishing high art from low art.  My twelfth grade physics teacher offered me an alternative assessment, which was to read and summarize a couple Scientific American articles; reading something that far over my head pissed me off so much that I determined to continue practicing so that I could one day understand.  At the same time my girlfriend at the time was introducing me to the art of transgression: film and poetry and fiction that I would probably never have met on my own.

At Northwestern U, I majored in journalism but particularly in the first couple years studied mostly anthropology, English lit, and Spanish.  I wasn't usually interested in studying whatever I was supposed to be.  I got a work-study job at the multimillion-volume library in the massive Africana section, so when I wasn't in class or laying about I was usually reading whatever the hell I felt like.  The second half of uni was mostly journalism training, which meant tons of reading, writing, and editing.  When people talk about reading to become a better writing and writing to become a better reader, this was the type of situation they have in mind.  All of that exposure to different types of writing and to different perspectives made a lasting impression.

Let me wrap this up with a little name-dropping, a short non-exhaustive list of authors I consider to be the most influential in my world view, authors whom I continue to read and sometimes reread: Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, William Faulkner, Margaret Atwood, Douglas Adams, Kazuo Ishiguro, Haruki Murakami, Ernest Hemingway.

* If right now you're muttering to yourself, "Shouldn't that be 'I' instead of 'me'?", an outside observer with keen lipreading skills might start to suspect that the aforementioned highly literate, highly privileged designation was perhaps highly premature.  Save yourself the torment: fetch the Strunk & White.  Literacy, like intelligence, is nuanced and more accurately thought of as a complex and ever-changing continuum rather than a singularity.  It also depends on the observer's perspective.  For instance, some readers might find these musings interesting and worthwhile, while others more closely synced with the author's viewpoint might believe that the blog is a forum optimally designed for ranting.

Entry 0.  More than halfway through the Summer 2013 semester, and it's hard not to look forward to being finished with the cert (next Friday, baby!).  Especially after downloading the couple dozen-plus readings for this next class, Content Area Literacy.  The instructor comes highly recommended by last year's students, and clearly there's a lot to learn what with the class resources being all Wikied up and the assignments all blogified and such.  I'm guessing this is going to be a big departure from the other blogs I've started and abandoned, there being little room in this one for observations on traveling or kitchen projects ... but I might be willing to try.

On the bummer side, the one time I land a class with a professor who's also a practicing math teacher, it's all about texts and reading.  While I'm absolutely sure I will learn a ton, it's frustrating not to be able to work on refining math teaching skills more directly.  I'll tell you for sure that this program is challenging my powers of reasoning as I attempt to adapt to the math classroom all the information intended for ELA (English Language Arts) teachers.

On a bummer side note, despite the fact that every class in the program so far has stressed the importance of differentiating instruction and materials in accordance with the specific needs of each student, that doesn't end up happening for us.  In every class with the exception of Internship II, every student gets exactly the same instruction.  Apparently this is something that we, the teachers-in-training, are supposed to do even if our instructors don't.  No offense intended to any of the fine professors I've had the privilege of studying with, but doesn't it seem maybe a little ironic?