RJ’s Blog

Over the course of this blog, I have discussed and commented on different ideas in education. At this point I am familiar enough with myself to have an idea of who I am as a teacher. The question is very complicated in nature. It incorporates my thoughts of literacy, motivation, purpose of schooling, and effective teaching. Further incorporated into this question are my experiences, whether they’re in a school as a tutor, my experiences as a student, or my experiences in life. Answering the question of who I am as a teacher gives an idea of where I stand on certain issues in education, as well as how I view myself in the classroom. In the end, it will help me to analyze myself as a future educator and to also show where I need to improve on my educational knowledge.

Literacy in the educational sense is a much more complicated idea than just the ability to read and write. Although this is the typical idea of what it means to be literate, my feelings on the subject go a bit further. To me, to be literate is the ability to think and act reflectively, not the ability to just read lines on a page. Being literate involves much more than knowing how to operate the language system, to be literate means to be able to use language (Lankshear 12). This is in line with Tozar’s idea of critical literacy. According to Tozar, critical literacy redefines literacy as the ability to understand and act against social relations of oppression (Tozar 260). This seems like a stretch from the typical views of what it means to be literate, and in fact it is. Critical literacy argues that the physical act of reading and writing are useless unless you can do something with it. This applies to a classroom setting by means of teaching students to be independent, empowered, thinkers and to take action in the face of adversity. Critical literacy seeks to fight the status quo. Critical literacy seeks to aid the disenfranchised. These types of skills could be very beneficial. If students have the ability to see faulty arguments and wrongdoings, it will help them make sense of the world. With these skills students could debate political issues, better understand history, and even help improve the world around them.

These are all things I could see myself incorporating into my classroom. Knowledge, especially historical knowledge, is a social construction. This means that the same event, even sometimes the most straightforward, can be viewed differently from different points of view. Teaching students how to perceive these other points of view would help a student learn to view the world and their lives critically. From this they can gain a deeper understanding of how knowledge gets produced, sustained, and legitimated (Tozer 261).

To successfully teach it’s important to understand my students. First, it’s important to understand the general attitudes of them. For high school, this often includes feelings of disillusionment with the world around them and even feelings of helplessness. However, not all students feel this; some are positive, some are involved in after school activities, and some actually enjoy school. The only general thought I have about students as a whole is that although they can be frustrating, there is no such thing as a lost cause or “bad” student. All students have the ability to improve themselves, some just a little more than others. What is important as an educator is to pay special attention to the apathetic student. Apathetic students are uninterested in or even alienated from school learning; they don’t find it meaningful or worthwhile (Brophy Socializing 307). I believe the best, and arguably most difficult, way to deal with these types of students is through working within a close relationship with the student. This method is useful because it can change the way the student views education. In time the student can come to see education as a way to empower and improve their self-actualization potential (Brophy Socializing 311). That being said, knowing my students will have many benefits to both my students and I. The best way to find out about my student’s knowledge and motivation is through physical observation, collaboration with other teachers, one on one contact with the student, knowledge of the community, and through discussion with the parents. This way I can attempt to understand the multi-faceted nature of adolescent students. I can alter my teaching to incorporate the knowledge of my students and thus avoid detachment from the students and the curriculum. I can do this by using language my students will understand, without, of course watering my language down too much. As a history teacher, I could also choose to focus on the history that most relates to my students. If I happen to have a large student population of Mexican-Americans, for example, I could focus on the relationships between Mexico and America. Doing this should increase the level of interest my students have for the curriculum and for the class.

In order to teach students successfully, effective teaching methods are necessary. I feel lectures that use lots of inquiry, discussion, and group work are very useful. They allow the students to become partners in education, as opposed to the teacher simply harping knowledge along. I think this is one of my weak points as an educator. I feel I am comfortable working with students at the individual level; however I have not received enough practice teaching students in large groups with a set curriculum. Some things educators need to avoid doing are poor teaching methods and skills, such as fragmentation, mystification, omission, and defensive simplification. These techniques seek to control students by discouraging questions. In this way class is meant to run smoothly but it does so at the expense of the students (McNeil 167).

To assess student progress, there are a number of ways I can do this. The most obvious is through regular testing. This is the way most often used, however it doesn’t always accurately describe learning. To better measure learning other things need to be taken into account, such as amount of classroom participation and the student’s attitudes towards the class. A student that merely tests well but takes no interest in the class is not improving to the best of his ability. Although grades are important to students, they don’t always effectively measure progress.

An important dimension of schooling is teaching students how to think critically. This, according to Burboles, is done through examining the assumptions, commitments, and logic of daily life (Burboles & Berk 46). I would invite students to question the evidence in their readings and to see if they can offer alternate explanations to class themes. This helps incorporate a higher level thinking order compared to simply remembering facts verbatim. My theories of critical literacy are closely related to Burboles’s theory of critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy seeks to question assertions and arguments under the pretext of who is saying what and for what reason. As opposed to critical thinking, critical pedagogy has a collective action as a means to change. Burboles puts it best when he says that the task of critical pedagogy is to bring members of an oppressed group to a critical consciousness of their situation. In a classroom, especially an urban one, this can be done by showing how certain peoples have been oppressed and arousing enough feelings in students to make them want to cause change. The danger involved in this is to teach a curriculum that is not one sided or biased, but instead one that lets students decide their own opinions. This could be done by examining arguments from both sides of an issue and letting the student decide which they agree on, thus to keep my influence to a minimum. It’s very important to me to make sure that whatever convictions I may have that they stay unsaid and instead allow students to express their opinions and allow discussions that hear all points of an issue.

Group work is also important to good learning environments. Group work helps academically stronger students by allowing them to practice their knowledge while at the same time helping others. Slower students gain from group work because other students can act as mentors to them. The fear of talking in large crowds should be smaller when in these groups, which can help foster better participation. Cooperative groups are very effective in the classroom, as a group, students can talk and deliberate about classroom themes. In these, tasks are divided by individuals and the students must coordinate individual efforts to produce a final group project (Weinstein 229). This would help students to learn to trust and depend on each other. Complete cooperation is a more advanced version of this where students not only share a common goal, but also share in the division of labor (Weinstein 228). An example of this might be dividing a classroom into groups and have each group offers their collective views on a certain political issue, class theme, or other argumentative stance. The goals of both of these classroom tactics are to teach students how to collaborate on a single task, reconcile differences, compromise, and reach a consensus (Weinstein 230).

As teachers, we face many challenges. When doing research on differing opinions in education, it’s important to understand that many things we will read are someone’s opinion. That is to say, we shouldn’t take everything we read to be educational fact. The ultimate challenge for teachers as researchers is to become familiar and knowledgeable of educational theory to be able to say what we agree with and what we don’t.

A big help in researching is collaboration between educators. Through this, different teachers can offer advice and opinion on different theories. Blogging has emerged as a great resource for teachers to be able to mass distribute their ideas very easily. Blogging also makes it so that a teacher can review and rethink their ideas so as to improve on their beliefs.

The biggest reason for introspection in my beliefs is to become the best teacher that I can. To be a good teacher one must be in tune with their beliefs, motives, and values. Effective teachers can impart knowledge, empower, and motivate their students. Good teachers can literally change the world. It starts, though, with knowledge of who one is and who one wants to be. The best teachers in this world are the ones who are the most accepting to change. Teachers who can change their opinions and deal effectively with whatever situation they are put in are the ones who can most effectively educate. Knowledge itself is good, but applying that knowledge to the classroom is the ultimate challenge, complete with the ultimate rewards.

Brophy, J. (2004). Socializing uninterested or alienated students. In Motivating students to learn (2^nd ed., pp. 307-334). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Weinstein, C.S. (1996/2003). Exerpt from Enhancing Student Motivation. In Secondary Classroom Management: Lessons from research and practice (2^nd ed. pp. 174-176). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Tozer, S. E., & Willis, A. I. (1995). Liberty and literacy today: Contemporary perspectives. In S. E. Tozer, P. C. Violas & G. B. Senese (Eds.), School and society: Historical and contemporary perspectives (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). From ‘reading’ to the ‘new literacy studies’ In New literacies (pp. 3-22). New York: Open University Press.

McNeil, L. M. (1986). Defensive teaching and classroom control. In Contradictions of control (pp. 157-190). Boston: Routledge.

Burbules, N.C., & Berk, R. (1999). Critical thinking and critical pedagogy: Relations, differences and limits. In Popkewitz, T.S. & L. Fendler (Eds.) Critical theories in education: Changing terrains of knowledge and politics (pp. 46-65). New York: Routledge.