Literacy Lecture

Last night I went to a lecture. Here is the description: 

The Language of Schooling and Academic Success

    Louise Wilkenson     
Distinguished Professor of Education, Psychology, and Communication Sciences at Syracuse University
7:30 p.m. Science Center 109

Students in the United States must develop proficiency in English that 
is sufficient to meet the increasingly complex academic discourse 
requirements of American schooling.  Students' school achievement 
depends upon their being proficient in academic language, which is the 
language of classroom instruction and of textbooks.  This presentation 
will describe the sociocultural and linguistic components that define 
academic language proficiency, including the academic discourse 
requirements of schooling. Implications for teaching students whose 
first language is not English, as well as effective classroom teaching 
in general will be addressed.

The speaker basically argued that English Language Learners are often able to learn English well enough for social interaction and to Read for Pronunciation... so they can read out loud something to you, but NOT for Comprehension, so they wouldn't be able to tell you what they read or understand it. She says that this will have drastic consequences against their academic success and so individualized action should be taken to help them. 

She cited the concept of different tiers of words. 

Tier 1: common general words: baby, daddy, etc.

Tier 2: more academic, words

Tier 3: esoteric contexutualized words

She submitted that elementary teachers need to explicitly teach these tier 2 words as early as possible.

While Dr. Wilkenson and her colleagues clearly have good intentions and are working towards something that they think will be beneficial to the communities they have described---English Language Learners (those students for whom English is not their first language)---it definitely reeked of cultural defitism. There is something WRONG with these students that NEEDS to be fixed. And we, the wise educational researchers know exactly how to FIX them. We will fix them, integrate them into the system,  mainstream them, and take away their differences. It is the subtractive schooling that Valenzuela writes about (citation will come). Take away from them all the strengths they have: their native language, home culture, identity; create a deficit for them, identify them as in trouble; and figure out how to subtract their otherness in order to make them just like everyone else.

Look, of course she is right that somebody who cannot perform in writing the way that somebody from a literate, middle or upper middle class family would is going to have trouble in school and be punished academically for it. But that to my mind identifies a problem WITHIN SCHOOLS, not within the student. Are we going to change the student to fit the institution or can we change the institution to recognize the strengths of the student? 

I am attending the following lecture tomorrow and will report!

Thursday, February 19th  
The Black Struggle for Education: Civil Rights, Community Activism, and 
Parental Choice.
4:30 p.m. Science Center 101

Moderator: Cheryl Jones-Walker, Visiting Assistant Professor of Black Studies and Educational Studies

Panelists:  Professor Dionne Danns, Education, Leadership and Policy Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington; Isaac Ewell, Director of the Gates Small Schools Project, and a board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options; and Professor David Stovall, Education 

For the Love of the Art

I was browsing the experience.com education website and read their most recent article:

Will you love teaching ?

The article asks teachers what they love about the job and then lists their responses:

1. The Students

2. Responsibility

3. Creative Work

4. Summers Off 

5.Other Faculty

6. Variety

While I certainly agree with "the students," "creative work," and "other faculty," I thought of some other reasons why I want to get into the field. 

Social Justice 

This can be viewed from two lenses. 1- Highly qualified and critical teachers are not being employed in large numbers in poor communities of color. Attempting to correct this disparity on an individual level is one motivation. 

Then there is also the idea of trying to help students develop critical lenses with which to analyze and critique society in a way that leads to an understanding of institutional injustices and curricular forms of oppression. Furthermore, a radical teacher might be able to work with students on activist projects towards justice and liberation. 

Teaching What You Love

I can't get away from this. I love books. I love reading. I love the stories. The conflicts. The characters. The writer's vision. There is a sense in which a good teacher should want to teach because they truly love the work of the domain they are teaching. 

Public Service 

I have to admit, I also am on the public service kick. As a teacher you are employed by the state to hopefully help transition youth into critical and actualized members of society, who are productive members of your community. 

I would love it if you all would write in what it is attracts you about education!

Love and Solidarity, 

Marc Engel 

Some organizations I think are cool!

These are awesome people on the ground trying to make praxis: turning theory into reality!

Ed Liberation

New York Collective of Radical Educators

USSA

These organizations are a great resource for those working as teachers but wanting to do more to implement their radical values. Sometimes it can be hard to get past the nitty gritty of working all day just to keep your kids under control, make lesson plans, and stay on top of everything not to mention, figuring out how you are going to overthrow the system! These organizations do lots of events, dialogs, campaigns, and organizing to keep you in touch with youth, and to keep you in the movement!

Love and Solidarity, 

Marc Engel

Opportunities? for Aspiring Teachers

Hello faithful readers...it turns out during this week I've been a less than faithful leader. Swarthmore college turned up the heat on me with presentations on Fyodor Dostoevsky and Shakespearean plays. Wow, there is so much going on out there in education right now I don't even know where to start. But I think I'll begin with what is going on in my life, education wise. College students all across the country right now are trying to finalize their summer plans, and so am I. We education majors often look to organizations that could give us some hands on teaching experience before doing the real thing. Probably the one most well known summer teaching opportunity is

Breakthrough Collaborative: http://www.breakthroughcollaborative.org/

The students Breakthrough recruits are mostly students of color from low-income communities. The program uses a multi-year process and youth teachers to give these students guidance and instruction to keep them on track for college.

some other summer teaching programs that people do are CTY- Center for Talented Youth
http://cty.jhu.edu/

The catch? Well, you only get a 1000 dollar "living expenses" stipend for the 6 week program. I don't know about you, but for 1000 dollars don't go very far for rent, food, transportation, etc... The other thing is that it is only a 6-week program. So for folks looking to take care of a sizable chunk of their summer, this doesn't help either. The other downside is that the application is relatively involved and competitive. One has to write up lesson plans, activities, come up with three references, do several interviews. And who at top colleges has time to do all of that?

While we are on the topic of applications, there are a few other programs I would like to discuss with you all. Several college grads at my school decide last second that education might be a good career path to them. They haven't done any of the coursework to get a license to teach. Enter Teach for America and the various teachers' fellows programs. Teach for American offers basically a Peace Corps model teaching experience for graduating college students or adult career changers; you get a crash course (and I think its important to emphasize the abbreviated nature of this crash course) in education during the summer, some short student teaching experience, and then you are in the classroom to start teaching. The advantages are that you only have a 2-year commitment, you get your certification to teach and a Master's degree practically for free (big plus, for people like me it could cost anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 to get a master's), and a guaranteed salary. Programs like Philadelphia Teachers Fellows, Washington DC Teacher's fellows, and the biggest most sought after one: New York City Teacher's fellows, all have similar systems and perks.

Okay, sounds great right? Here are my problems with these programs.

1. They don't look for EDUCATION students! I know, it sounds crazy. But honestly, these programs will disqualify you if you've studied education too much. Because they want a blank slate, where they can pump you full of their philosophy and their style, and get you to teach according to their goals. Furthermore, and this does make some sense, they are looking to attract people who weren't going to go into education. The downside, is that it reserves the rewards away from the people who have always been committed to making a difference in education.

2. Very, very little training. Schools that TFA and teachers fellows put teachers in are the hardest, most difficult places to teach in. They are riddled with problems, don't have a high level of institutional support, and have great and deserving, but very tough kids. Sending idealistic college students, who (statistically) most likely came from a white, middle or upper middle class background, into these classrooms with little training or support doesn't seem to help anyone. Neither the teachers, nor the Students.

3. Doesn't encourage lifelong teachers. TFA's 2-year commitment seems to encourage people to do the program for 2 years, then go to med school, or whatever other prestigious career they had in mind. There isn't an emphasis on selecting, training, encouraging, and building a corps of dedicated teachers who want to stay in the system for life.

And of course, these programs do little to address the institutional and structural problems facing our nation's schools. After all, TFA's website boldly states that educational inequality is our nation's greatest injustice....so what is TFA doing about inequal funding policy?

Finally, and after this I will get off of my soapbox, these programs are fully complicit with the corporatist, standardized testing, frenzy that has been killing our schools since the 90s. Rather than working on alternative ways to assess student learning so that they can actually learn something rather than how to take a test, these programs pump more teachers into the field who's number 1 goal is a number on a test. We have to understand that this entire movement, while it may have SUPPORTERS from a diverse group people, the KEY INTERESTS in the movement are those businesses that stand to profit the most: the testing industry, and the privatized education industry.


So choose wisely fellow teachers and stay true to your critical principles!

Love and Solidarity,
Marc Engel