Promoting technology in a suitable manner in the classrooms, but are there consequences?

When I read the article by Mark Bauerlein, “Decline of a Literate Culture,” it shows the statistic of our nation’s literary reading dropping almost twenty percent in young adults over the short span of two decades. And I felt that I instantly knew the answer as to why, which is a marked increase in technology – computers, cell phones, gaming consoles, and the internet.  All of these things have become more prevalent and more convenient to use as we move forward.  So when I read Tracy Tarasiuk’s article about moving the English class towards a more technological standpoint in order to be up-to-date, I began to understand that although the Internet is one of our ambivalences, insofar that it consumes much of our students time which may account for them not getting homework/projects done; but it can also serve as a great “medium,” like Tarasiuk explains, in getting our students to learn/connect to literature.  The part I respect most about Tarasiuk is that she was willing to take a chance with something she was uneasy at first about, but she was willing to let her students speak to her, in the sense that she observed what their hobbies were and asked what interested them.  So although we may sometimes feel that we are compromising a bit too much for our students because of what had worked for us learning in school should also work for the next generation, which isn’t necessarily true.  Tarasiuk knew how to differentiate her teaching strategies and made it effective, and I think that can only be done successfully if we’re willing to listen to our students and identify what works for THEM, and that involves supplying the right stimulus to have learning occur.

In addition to adapting her teaching strategies, she also found a way for each student to voice their opinion in a way that mattered, such as the wikis where each definition of a word had to incorporate some element of a student’s own interpretation.  So I think this collectivist approach the author takes is really useful, and could be effective in our classroom setting as well.  Furthermore, by knowing how much her students emphasized in putting quality work on the internet (YouTube videos, etc.) that if they work they published would be viewable by a large audience, then the effort put in their work would be more developed.   Overall, she knew how to make the classroom a fun and interactive place where learning was mediated by technology that the students were well acquainted with.  And from this article, we witness again how much it pays off if we’re willing to understand what interests our students and devise a learning approach that works for them (Wilhelm dwelled on this a lot), even if it does seem unorthodox to how we may have come up and been taught in the classroom.

However, it seems to me there is always going to be a pressure for us to keep on top of our students with the use of technology in our classrooms.  It’s just scary for some us to think how domineering all of its use really can be.  I had already been in a classroom that was taught by a professor on a TV screen, teaching to three different locations live.  It’s convenient, of course, but is the direction we’re heading in going to make our jobs obsolete someday, where thousands if not more can be taught by televisions and the like?  It’s easy to make connections to Feed and 1984 where technology had directed the peoples’ lives without the need of any human interaction, and unfortunately, it was for the worse.  Whether it was a capitalist or communist society the aforementioned books presented, it seemed irrelevant because technology was the main culprit for dictating/censoring the people.  What are your thoughts? 

Censorship could be leading us to a sterile society.

                Ok, so censorship is obviously bad from what our preconceived knowledge tells us, plus from our readings this week.  An ironic thing I found is the book we had read, Feed, is a likely candidate for being controversial (due to offensive language, drug discussion, and sexual themes) and thus being censored in the classroom, when one of the largest themes surrounding the book is the detrimental effects of censorship- but a disgruntled parent or a fearful school board member would look past the big picture of the book and only focus on the minute details that support their personal ideology or social standing. 

                Do you think Feed gives us insight of how our society is slowly transitioning into a state of censored citizens, contented with trivial activities as a way to occupy ourselves from larger issues surrounding us?  How much did technology and marketing divert the characters of the novel that they never looked outward to see the deterioration of their state?  Through the instilment of fear and diversion the head haunchos, those that ran all the ads and regulated the “feeds,” were the ones profiting off everyone else.  They accomplished their goal – which was to censor and push their products so that the average joe was a mindless occupant that cared for nothing but the latest fad, device or “hip” party upcoming.  They played the part for their destructive ideology so well.  What was the use of education?  Their feed could give them any facts they wanted to know right then and there.  So what was the use of the teacher, right?  A teacher would’ve been a counterintuitive model to the working of their society.  No, the good morale and knowledge of language and history that a teacher can provide would not jive with the ignorance these people relish in.  For instance, the Watts Riot in the 60’s widely known for police brutality and racism is shed light upon in the novel, because if someone can replicate a top and call it the “Watts Riot Top” and market it to a bunch of white suburban teenagers for a quick buck, they’ll do it.  Ignorance is bliss, though, right?  Not really. 

                One of the most astounding aspects of the novel I found was, which correlates to a large percentage of our society today, is how the consumer views everything on a product basis, even people.  Many people I believe could care less about the events unfolding in Libya right now, except for when they starting bombing the oil lines over there that we see an increase in our gas prices – yeah then we’ll start caring!  “Hey guys, cut the crap over there so speculators don’t have a reason to raise our gas prices!”  Only when issues hit near home will people generally start caring. When the Narrator is viewing Violet on her deathbed, he mentions “it was like being in the room with her if she was wood . . . [and] I had thought it would feel like a tragedy, but it didn’t feel like anything at all.” Don’t you think this is in large how a lot of our society is today?  Apathetic, like Wink, from one of the earlier articles we read, would describe it.  It’s becoming widespread that people view others as they would their consumer goods, a disposable and replaceable device.  So what if Violet died?  He would have a new girlfriend shortly to easily take her spot.  So what if his “up-car” got destroyed?  He would have Daddy buy him a new one.  That’s the overall mood taken on.  In addition to this apathetic point of view on humanity, people are also too much inclined to be a passive participant in a lot of areas.  It’s safer and easier to follow the status quo for fear of capitulating our social standing or possible monetary losses.  Think about it.  Wouldn’t it be playing it safe if we listen to the Principal to not attempt to teach a particular book for fear of parents’ outcry?  In doing so comes the possibility of us jeopardizing our job (like Marlowe being forced to resign).  Would it have been worth it to put all our investments in our education if we take the risk of losing the career choice we pursued initially, all because we had an active voice standing up for the students right to learn?  If not, a censored teacher plus a censored lesson plan for his/her students equals an overall huge deficit in their education. 

Just like our writing, active voice should be employed more than passive voice.

What is the biggest thing the authors from the articles we read want us as future teachers to do and instruct?  -  To have a voice.  Although it’s not that easy to accomplish, as we probably know.  I think there is a big conflict, like we read in Karen Wink’s article with teaching in a Military school, when the men and women are told to cooperate as a group and abide by order – as they have done from boot camp onwards.  And then in a classroom setting, Professor Wink wants her students to have an active voice rather than being passive.  Going off Pavlov’s theories, these students were conditioned to be the recipients of orders from months on end, and now they are told to have an individual voice – can you imagine the conflict occurring in these students’ minds? 

Like Wink referenced to in her article, these students don’t want to speak up for fear of compromising the group – whatever that may be, I don’t know.  But if we apply this to a broader scale, people’s social stigma can easily influence how we are going to act in certain situations, whether they are active or passive.  For example: You witness police brutality of an innocent man, and the cops know you saw the incident and they say, “If you report any of this, you better get used to living the rest of your life in a wheelchair.”  So what would you do?  Speak up and risk your physical well-being even though injustice will stand uncontested?  I use an extreme example because these situations do arise, obviously.  “’First, they came for the Jews / and I did not speak out / because I was not a Jew. . . . Then they came for me / and there was no one left / to speak out for me,’” and here we discover why being a passive participant can have implications, too (85).  Would we rather die having a voice possibly making an influence, or die for the same reason, anyway, without one?  Change will never occur if these systems aren’t challenged.  Back to Wink’s classroom when the one student, Derek, spoke out on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” essay about promoting individualism when he was taught to perform collectively for the past however many months.  Derek was simply “generalizing” that because he obeyed orders in boot camp and held the belief the group dictates the response given, then, he could not have an individual voice of his own, now.  A lot of people apply this concept today based off past experiences.  Since I did so-and-so and was passive then, I may as well continue that pattern now because I got by that way before.   Hopefully we can encourage students to realize they have a voice of their own and that it matters, without having the fear of compromising their social standing in whatever little “clique” they are in at the time.

I thought about how we could apply a lot of what was detailed in these articles, and I was especially fond of Raquel Cook’s idea of having a bunch of posters on the walls that can get students thinking.  When our words drop on deaf ears, these posters will always be where the students can see them day-to-day and sit there and contemplate their meanings.  Cook also made herself available as a great facilitator of knowledge as well.  Rather than telling her students what they should believe, she would provide impartial material such as photographs or stories that the students could then ponder over and develop their own interpretations.  Was the American media feeding us lies about the events that occurred? - “’I don’t know . . . I wasn’t there,’” Mrs. Cook would state (20).  I like this way of teaching, because we are never imposing information on our students, but instead letting them construe their own meaning from the text or photographs.  Also, her promotion of having an active voice, like Wink argued for, is important because this knowledge is too important to keep silenced and must be transmitted to others, or else they fall in the same trap of inaccuracies, contradictions, and stereotypes like some of Cook’s students were exposed to before taking her class. 

The Book Thief and Literature Circles

            Wow, let me begin by saying The Book Thief was truly a gem.  I’ll rank it among one of the best books I’ve ever read – 550 pages flew by without evening feeling like it.  Anyhow,  I thought one of the themes that dealt with the power of words was most appropriate for a time period such as World War II.  To illustrate this point, lets look at one of Max’s lines from the book he created for Liesel, and the part regarding Hitler: “Yes, the Führer decided that he would rule the world with words. ‘I will never fire a gun,’ he devised, ‘I will not have to’” (445).  When I read this I couldn’t help but think of Louise Althusser who spoke so much about the rule ideology has over someone, and I also remember thinking of a linguist who once said “Language speaks us” – and when I searched the person that coined that phrase, ironically it was Martin Heidegger who had associations with the Nazi regime. 

Max spoke of two primary word shakers, both of whom had the ability to influence a lot of people within the book, each shaping the frame of mind people forever – one who promoted love for all mankind, and the other who wished only for a blue-eyed and blonde-haired race of mankind.  Another important detail about the novel, I thought, was how we see the perspective of people from a different angle.  Normally many people make connotations with people based on the country they’re from, just like many would assume all the German people loved Hitler and his agenda.  Not true.  Propaganda and other tactics employed created that image to the rest of the world.  And we normally would think every Nazi was inherently evil, when in reality, they were interpellated as one, with no choice than to suffer consequences if they chose not to.  And how was this all set in motion, again?  Because of that one man’s use of words, the one that knew he would never have to fire a gun or use physical violence to exert his control.

            Now to shift gears to Literature Circles, I think they’re a great idea if used correctly.  I observed several classrooms where the formation of the classroom was in a circle, but the teacher still acted as an instructor for the most part and the children had no control over the material they would read.  But still, it seemed more effective than anything I had to partake in in High School.  I also liked how the author was more in favor of group discussions to promote learning rather than objective tests.  Because like the author mentioned, literature shouldn’t be just black or white, and instead, it should be open-ended with multiple interpretations to allow for the growth of the student.  I also think he devised a way to create an almost bullet-proof approach to teach literature, where striking a right balance is fundamental.  He also emphasizes the importance of the teacher be a facilitator rather than the instructor.  Similar to why the Socratic Method is so popular, the student formulates his own meaning while being guided along.  I also thought the teacher observation and student evaluations were the best way to assess a student’s learning, because with literature you’ll know if someone actually read the material or not – no need for objective testing here.  And from my personal experience, in college I benefitted the most in classes where we would be in a literature circle fashion discussing the texts and hearing other people’s voices that can help develop our own understand. 

Promoting Multiculturalism

I’ll begin by stating I agree with about everything Christensen and Hade had to offer in their writings.  We have a problem concerning race, class and gender that is “supposedly” being recognized in our classrooms and society, but never really materializes.  Using Christensen’s example of The Lion King, although we most likely follow the story with how it was intended to be perceived, we are still consumers of its underlying shades of gender roles that govern where a man and woman should reside.  To broaden this, we think we are doing enough to serve those from different cultural backgrounds in our society than what we are use to, but we are merely raising awareness of it without doing anything. 

An example of how we try to understand these different cultures is what Hade called a tourist’s view on trying to understand a different ethnicity’s perspective.  He provided us with examples from books that are written from a white person’s perspective trying to depict how the African Americans live, but this can often lead to perpetuating a stereotype of one ethnicity.  The African Americans expected to read this literature in the classroom could not identify with this view entirely because it never originated from them.  I have a feeling many white people would be upset if someone from another cultural background was trying to write their history, too.  That’s why I believe it’s essential to have the perspective of one from that background explain the culture in their book.  Can you imagine how it would be if we read The House on Mango Street if it was from an outsider trying to look in on their culture and create meaning from a standpoint that they know nothing about?  It just wouldn’t work; it would be unauthentic and contrived.

 Harper Lee offered us an insight in how the general populace during his time period viewed Tom Robinson.  When he was shot for trying to escape, people just brushed it off as that is how the mentality of an African American really is, no brains and cannot be patient for an appeal.  However, what if we were hearing it from Tom Robinson?  He would probably say something along the lines of being falsely accused of trying to rape a white woman that came onto him, and this all happened because I was just trying to offer a helping hand for my neighbor.  And when they didn’t believe his testimony, and the jury all found him guilty, he knew he had no other options.  He probably felt it was his duty to escape rather than waste away in prison and leave behind a wife and children. 

What if we continually did this on a larger scale, exposing these instances in our society?  We would break the barriers of stereotypes and racism if we were being more involved with stories that deal with the hardships people from different cultures face when they come to the states for a better life.  We read Esperanza’s view of how living in a small Latino community wasn’t the most optimal place for growing up, but the point was to strive for a better life so disparity and low education didn’t have to thrive in a place like that.  Rather, they would move beyond what they thought possible, like the four trees growing out of the cement, and become something other than a general stereotype that people like to pin on Latinos.  Yet, her duty was to not sever the ties with her past, but to enrich them with the inspiration to move beyond and do better.

Talking about going beyond the boundaries of what we are only expected to achieve, Christensen uses the example of how tracking does more harm than good.  Like Hade’s example of culture determining the value of signs and their place in our society, well tracking is basically doing that in our schools.  Our children are having the mindset that by being pitted in a low-level achieving class, the teacher won’t expect much out of the students, and vice versa.  Therefore, we are already designating our children in a class to which they did not choose.  The school will say, “Your reading and writing skills are less than adequate, so you will go into this class.” And this in turn gives our students the idea that they are confined to a place where they will forever be throughout their High School career.  I believe Christensen had the right goal in mind when he taught English in an untracked class; we gained insight as to why the low-level achievers rarely did much, as they were often intimidated for fear of making  a mistake due to an unwritten  “body of rules” that govern how language should be communicated.  Therefore, by compromising their creativity in writing, they only wrote in safe sentences, and when they spoke, they feared their culture’s influence on their language would get them reprimanded and corrected.  Back to Christensen’s mixed classroom now (low-level students with advanced) we learned a lot how the students were able to change their perspectives and be more open and understanding to students from a different background.  The students saw they weren’t stupid, they just didn’t do well for fear of social stigma – possibly due to the color of their skin, religion, gender, and they oblige to the fallacy that society represents, that they cannot possibly do as good or ever perform on a level of a white student from a middle class family.  Also, before I wrap this up because I have been going on for a long time now, we saw how interested the students were when they were presented with material from backgrounds similar to the one’s they came from, not just learning about our history’s (dead) white people. 

Lastly, as Christensen described, a lot of times these students from different cultural backgrounds are put in low-level classes that are often paired with a bad teacher, and nothing really productive arises from their time being in there.  Christensen said it was our duty to see the strengths in students, and not their deficits when they enter a classroom.  That’s why he thought every student can coexist in a classroom coming from different cultural or academic backgrounds: because we all have potential.  Some students will just need to be taught from a different angle than that of another student.  We need to adjust our teaching styles to accommodate all students, and certainly not try to teach something that bears little significance on our students.  In the scenario that we have a classroom full of Latino and African Americans, why on earth would we expect them to be interested in six weeks’ worth of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson?  We need to diversify our classrooms along with the material we teach.  Not only would we broaden our horizons on learning about different perspectives from people of different cultural backgrounds, but allowing students the right to learn about history that is relevant to them, too.  Remember, as Christensen asserted, “The capacity was evident; the will and belief that he could succeed were not,” meaning it is our job to adapt strategies that assist every child in our classrooms so they can understand the relevance of having an education for their future.

Graphic Novels: alternative ways to better reading comprehension.

Before I started reading American Born Chinese, I was skeptical as to how much it could make an impact on learning for better reading comprehension skills.  I think I was a little biased in that respect because I never read a graphic novel or comic book before.  But let me say this, I was surprised how much fun I had reading American Born Chinese!  I opened the book and didn’t put it down until I was finished – I was that engaged!  I thought that even though the book was not covered head-to-toe with text, the pictures were able to convey meaning that was probably more effective than what text alone could have provided.  For instance, I thought the play-by-play truth-unveiling of Danny really being Jin Wang all along spoke volumes.  In addition to that, when the Monkey King thought he escaped the “reach” of his creator, Tze-Yo-Tzuh, and reached the five pillars of gold only to realize they were the fingers of Tze-Yo-Tzuh himself, it communicated more meaning through the visual depictions than I think could be transmitted through language – I’m not sure about that, but I found it highly effective.a

Afterwards, when reading Wilhelm, I discovered just how important these graphic novels and such could function in the classroom, especially when faced with the dilemma like Wilhelm had dealt with.  For ESL students and DL’ers, these devices could function as a way to bridge the gap between their struggle and where they ought to be.  Obviously for Kae, the foreign student, she could derive greater knowledge from the pictures alone than she could the semantics of the sentence.  However, this is not to say the text was obsolete in her ability to gain knowledge, but rather, the pictures served as a medium for grasping the language better.  Wilhelm could attest to this as well, where language failed him in his German speaking graphic novels, he could fill in the gaps with the use of pictures. 

As we could see, all the effort of acquiring graphic novels to give to our students would not be done in vain.  The article “Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School,” cites several benefits of their use.  The way students can look at a picture and have their own interpreted meaning started getting these students to write better because it allowed them to put forth their own opinion on what happens between the “gutter,” or after the a picture ends on a vague note that allows for several interpretations, thus allowing for the students to think outside of what they see/read concretely.  This method was especially useful for Wilhelm’s students Tommy and Walter, who just needed the tools to build the foundation for reading.  They couldn’t visualize anything when reading, allowing for a very dull, uninspired reading of anything.  But when the students had pictures to complement the reading, the pictures allowed for Tommy, Walter, and Kae to begin visualizing what they read, and therefore begin thinking abstractly by what was not provided in the reading.  Whether through the use of Symbolic Reading Interpretations or Graphic novels, the ability to imagine and see something through our own configuration proves essential.

Like Wilhelm and the authors of the other article, Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, we should be expected to reach out to our students and find a way that can serve them efficiently.  If our students aren’t grasping a particular passage or overall theme in a story, we need to reconsider how we are presenting the material.  I think by affording students the opportunity to read graphic novels, we can start to bridge the gap between what is presented by the text and what that transitions to in our mind by the visualizing it.  Thereafter, we can take on a larger project, like a completely text-filled novel, since the students are already becoming accustomed to transferring the textual data in the story to symbolic representations in the mind.  And lastly, as always, we should know our students on personal basis that allows for us to identify their strengths and weaknesses to better access how we should approach presenting the material.  What if Wilhelm had not been observant and had not observed Walter reading Calvin and Hobbes? He probably never would have predicted that he learns best by having pictures provided with the words.  And if it came down to how we presented the material to a child which could make all the difference whether he/she came out of the class with something, I think we would be crushed to know only a slight tweak in our teaching could have been what saved that student.

Response to _YGBB_

In Jeffrey D. Wilhelm's book, You Gotta Be The Book, he pursued what differentiates the non-reader from the avid reader, and what is derived from the text by each side.  Making it a mission after a seventh grade classroom filled with disabled learners who already held the notion that they "can't read" and "reading is stupid," Wilhelm makes an effort for each student to garner knowledge from the book.  Wilhelm, for one, suggested that students are already disinterested in reading because they went through school all their lives just to read for homework and to give answers to the teacher.  Knowing this, and that ninety percent of classrooms are lecture based from the teacher where little interaction and stimulation occurs between the students with the material, he ventured to find a student-centered classroom that would allow students to appreciate reading and enter the world of its knowledge-divulging capability.  Interestingly, Wilhelm held the conception that many students will relate to what they read and find interest in that.  Therefore, rather than pushing a student towards something that doesn't interest him/her, he allowed for them to express their interest in the subject matter- and as long as they are reading and extracting knowledge from the sources they read, then he succeeded.  Such was the example with the rebellious, "goth chick" (as Wilhelm puts it) who was reading Marilyn Manson; he was able to help her express her interest through Manson's work and ultimately put together a presentation that marked her progress in the reading class.  Moreover, when Wilhelm decided to conduct his teacher-researcher based project, he was focusing on three interested readers, mainly, that could help him in the future how to allow students to make that leap into the world of reading.  His research showed him that many of these students, in order to be fond of reading, must first have a vision or goal when preparing to read a book.  His students always held a stance on what their role was going to be in that novel, thus allowing for another world to be created through the process- whether it was themselves as a character in the novel, an observer, or playing a role of jumping from one person's perspective to the next.  But the ultimate goal remained the same, which is to build upon something that was not there before, and continually find new perspectives and refine the reader's outlook that was not at that stage before the completion of the novel.  Therefore, it was important to constantly be thinking and taking in information that the text supplied that could benefit the reader outside the classroom as well.  To paraphrase what Wilhelm said, he mentioned that: "Literature must speak to life, and life must speak to literature," thereby creating a more developed reader each time by affording him/her the ability to constantly rework the perspectives and ideologies presented in the text.  And if a student was unable to identify him or herself in the story or even make assocations with real-life experiences, then they never could become a part of the book to obtain meaning from it.  And to supplement a "reluctant" reader or one who didn't quite understand the jist of the story, he allowed each student to produce an image (using material from magazines) to convey a particular event in the story, and used that depict what they thought the meaning of a certain scene was, thus allowing for each student to give an idea of their own interpretation of the work, and to learn how others "read" a novel which could assist one of the less-knowledgable readers.  Wilhelm heavily insisted on students more or less allowing them to teach themselves because it was they who would be making associations with the past and formulating new ideas when reading; and to quote Wilhelm, "When students read individually, they can exercise their individual taste and response . . ." (96).  And when a student was stuck, Wilhelm used scaffolding as a way to allow a student to "get it."  By doing so, he allowed for the reader to recognize the problem or inconsistency on their own, either an instance of irony or a gap in the story, and then he would push them into the zone of proximity and allow for them to have the epiphany of an "Ah-ha!" moment.  And lastly, what I summarized is what I found to be the most important concepts to be had from Wilhelm's book thus far in engaging a reader and getting the most use out of a book.