Remarkable Revisions

The readings from Dunn, Gallagher, and Christenson and their focus on responding to student work from a growth ideology are greatly insightful. Dunn’s simile between writing students and driving students is effective, and I can tell from the way that I respond to feedback on writing pieces of my own. Naturally, as learners, it feels more natural for us to try and replicate good habits than destroy bad ones. Dunn makes the point that writers will often have to face unabashed criticism elsewhere, but I do not believe that serves as justification for purposely damaging a developing writer’s sense of self-efficacy.

I found the specific examples from Gallagher and Christenson helpful, mainly due to the situations that I did not even consider the need for nuanced assessment. Christenson brings up the issue of denouncing home language in student work, which I personally never considered being mindful of. However, I see how what can appear as a grammatical error in standard academic English can still make grammatical sense in the context of their home language or vernacular. I desire to be an educator who values student identity, and a student can very easily feel devalued or “wrong” because of ignorant corrections. Christenson uses the example of African American Vernacular English, but I can see this being relevant to emerging English learners as well.

I personally agree with Christenson’s approach to grading papers and revisions. However, I feel like there is a deep philosophical difference between her approach and what current American society wants out of the educational system. Yet again, the apparent conflict between learner-centered ideology and social efficiency ideology comes into play. Social efficiency ideology seems to be pushed for politically nowadays, without much thought being given to what is truly socially efficient in the first place.

Morrell's exploration of successful cyber-media campaigns, coupled with the need for increased critical media literacy, is especially relevant to our society today. As he states, we are currently in the midst of a communications renaissance. Teaching students how to properly approach online information, in order to inform themselves, is necessary. An increasing trend nowadays are faux-news stories which go viral on facebook, which people believe and share without further exploration. With an increased focus on internet literacy, online manipulation will decrease.

Teaching children how to effectively use the internet and social media in order to facilitate social activism was a great focus as well. Very often, people like to lament the woes of technological progress. Rather than focusing on the perceived negative effects, educators need to embrace this social shift and use it as an agent for good. Educating children on potential methods for online revolution is not only more proactive than attacking social media, but it gives the students life skills that they will need as adults.

The readings of Gallagher, Christensen, and Emdin all addressed one central theme: empowering students in the classroom to take agency over the learning environment. Both Christensen and Emdin specifically touch on teachers’ inclinations to feel restricted by required curriculum, and how “co-teaching” with students engages students on a level unattainable in a scholar-academic ideology. Emdin specifically uses his experiences in predominantly African-American classrooms as evidence that when done effectively, this method gives the learners some control over their education. Despite not being in a traditional educational environment, I have seen this hold true in my own experiences. As a camp counselor working at a summer camp that serves a predominantly indigenous population, it was often difficult for me to overcome my status as an outsider to engage effectively with my campers. I found that it was often effective for me to delegate certain responsibilities to our Leaders-in-Training, who were our teenage campers. Providing campers the opportunity to share their knowledge about boating, hiking, etc. with other campers not only strengthened their own confidence and autonomy, but engaged the younger campers far more than us counselors ever could.

Christensen makes a point about wanting her students to consider their classmates as fellow teachers, and I believe this lends itself to the topic at hand well. I believe that many teachers attempt this: whether it’s through Socratic seminars or peer-review for assignments. Both of these practices lack one of the main points that lead to effective student involvement: student choice. Gallagher’s focus on student choice as a cornerstone of effective teaching is one that I most definitely agree with, and one that isn’t implemented enough in current classrooms. Student choice is threatening to a teacher who has been dictated a mandatory curriculum, as they want to direct students as much as possible. 

Both Paul Gorski and Evie Blad address the need for a change in socioeconomic ideology concerning student achievement, and their ideas very much overlap each other. Both Gorski and Blad demonize the use of deficit ideology, the belief system which asserts that poverty is a result of laziness and/or other deficits in the individual.  The differences in the two articles come from the explorations of both grit ideology and growth mindset, two educational belief systems that attribute academic failure to the impoverished party. It is the exploration of these two ideologies that I found most interesting. The growth mindset referenced in Blad’s article very much seems like Gorski’s grit ideology, inferring the same beliefs while using positive language instead of negative. The term “growth” can be applied universally; it is the goal of all educators for their students to grow. It is language that people want to more readily accept than a seemingly negative term like “grit”. Despite the positive language, both ideologies do not address the systemic inconsistencies in our society that lead to poverty. The main point of both articles seem to be that without an ideological mindset that acknowledges the true nature of poverty, educators cannot effectively attempt to address the gaps that exist in their classroom. Deficit ideologies are always an attempt to justify the status quo, and thus take the responsibility for social inequalities away from those in power. Teachers can use their subscription to a deficit ideology to rationalize not attempting to coordinate with local social services, or otherwise attempt to alter their practice to address the reality of low-S.E.S. life.

Paul Thomas’ open letter to future English teachers is both to the point and full of heart. Speaking as an experienced English teacher, he addresses the bureaucratic and social stigmas that English teachers must both face and overcome in order to effectively do their jobs. The part of his publication that I found most interesting was the bullet about “deficit views of language and students”, and how language evolves over time. Having a lot of experience working in culturally varied areas with adolescents, I’ve always been interested by how slang becomes a word in common usage, followed by resistance from the students’ teachers. Thomas states “claims about ‘correctness’ are always more about power than either language development or literacy,”. I have not had a lot of struggles with use of proper language in my writing, but the fine line between slang and common language has always seemed blurry to me. When regional dialects come into play as well, the subjectivity of the situation really seems to surface.