Closing The Gap

 Why is something like this considered normal(opposed to disturbing, concerning, problematic, etc. anything but NORMAL)?

It is more than just the Economy; it is Critical Literacy( "a response to injustice and the production of illiteracy"(Tuck, 20011) as the answer to closing the gap:   The framework of critical literacy is to provide the door used to close The Gap. The ever-looming gap between the middle class Whites population and the Black, Latina/o and poor White population. A gap in everything from median net worth, academic achievement, incarceration rate (a Caucasian male born today has a one and twenty chance of spending time in jail while a black male born today has a one in four chance of spending time in jail (Moses, 2001) unemployment rate, teen pregnancy, to the drop out rate. The list goes on and on, and MUST be closed (but currently is widening). Many of today’s school practices, “Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as process of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence”(Freire, 1997), mirror the oppressive and institutional racist practices of society as a whole. Civil rights advocate, Robert Moses raises many questions about today’s educational system and advocates for, “the students at the bottom”. Asking, “How do young people at the bottom get into the mix” and, “Are we going to have a society where only a small group of people are prepared for the future, where there’s a huge knowledge gap” (Moses)? So how is critical literacy an answer to this question, and how is it a means to not only bridging the gap, but also closing the gap?

First we have to look at what is literacy and how we, as educators, view it? According to Gatto (2007),“Literacy is a practice, something that gets DONE, not skills to be learned for use at a later date…. literacy is “shorthand for social practices of reading and writing”(Street, 1995). My approach is to provide experiences and problems that engage students in expanding their existing literacy practices in order to construct and use new ones”(Gatto). It acts as a means for, “Targeted young people finding their voice” Moses suggest opposed to telling them what their voice is, how it should be, and what it sounds like. When we look at literacy critically it is much more than just reading and writing skills, it begins to be an agent for social change.

So, how do we use critical literacy to create change? First, we must change, “the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students”(Freire). Education has the potential to be the great equalizer used to, “Foster students’ identities as learners and their sense of agency as participants which, position the teacher as a co-collaborator in an inquiry classroom” (Allington, 2007). Helping the marginalized students work towards achieving, “Authentic liberation-the process of humanization”(Freire) in which,  “Liberation is a praxis; the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it”(Freire). This role reversal of teacher as student and student as teacher in combination with their reflection of themselves on the world is a fundamental principal in effective critical literacy.

We have to challenge the authority that exist within a system built on power over instead of power with, “Authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it”(Freire). We have to assess the, “dichotomy between human beings and the world” (Freire), and inspire a shift in thinking and actions of students and teachers from the roles that exist today, towards the new ones listed below:

(1)-Being for oneself not others (Freire). (2) Being with the world versus merely in the world (Freire).

(3) Being a spectator, versus a re-creator (Freire).

(4) Turning passive learners into active learners (Moses)

Critical literacy inspires students to change the world not adapt to it. The distinction is essential to forward progress. As Freire states,” Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change then into objects”(Freire). And I believe that no teacher should have the power to commit such acts of violence.

We have to confront these practices, and bring new breath into the system. We have to show administrators and educators alike that, “We believe our students to be literate before they enter classrooms. We have to use their experiences, interest, history, culture, language and literacy practices to develop to the literacy ”(Gatto). Instill, faith in our students, faith that they can feel, and know, “If you say you love your students, then you can be sure that they will test that protestation of affection”(Kohl, 2007). Let them test and prove that we are right, we care, and we care immensely. Show the power in creating, “Real conversation requiring that participants have ideas, that they articulate those ideas, and that they bring them to the group, decide how to address them, and then engage with one another”(Probst, 2007). Lets bring value to our students through respect in the classroom. Lets support Freire’s problem-posing education, “affirming men and women as being in the process of becoming- as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality”. Our mission as educators is to bread change and, “Scripted lessons mandating Tuesday’s writing be the same for each student in every school are guaranteeing mediocrity”(Rief, 2007). The world deserves more!

IMAGINE: A classroom where ALL students write everyday with meaning!

This is what Lynn Astarita Gatto has accomplished and is a model for authentic learning that engages all students.

In Gatto’s depiction of her elementary class 12 week vivarium project she took her students through the whole process of creating, designing, building, researching and completing a butterfly vivarium. Through this process she encompassed multiple content areas and covered all of her curriculum standards. The classes experience was truly inspiring, and what I always imagined school should be like. She created a classroom with real world application and meaning, which lead to a challenging and engaging environment.

Although I consider my classroom to be a lively and enriching environment I also felt a desire to reevaluating some of my teaching practices after reading, Gatto's article. I began asking questions like, "What control can I give over to the students"? "What can I let go of"? “What outcomes have I been forcing”? And yes, I do have an engaging vocational curriculum with  “integrated academics”, and we put on a huge fashion show which serves as a motivator with real life application- but something was missing. Something was different about Gatto’s classroom than mine, and I want to figure out exactly what it is – what I am missing? What the key is? So I tried to break down her steps and see where I could apply her process to mine: (I marked in red the lessons I learned from Gatto’s work, and her words and experiences in black).

Believe that all students are literate and valuable to the classroom experience

Gatto constantly demonstrated her belief in her students, “I believe my students to be literate before they enter my classroom. I use their experiences, interest, history, culture, language and literacy practices to develop to the literacy ”(Gatto, p.88). She respects every child and involves everyone in the classroom,” Every child knew they had something important to contribute to the unit right from the start”(Gatto,p.79). There ideas were recorded and posted and then most importantly acted upon.

Consider every learning environment to be unique and always changing

“Considering the individual students, planning carefully, selecting appropriate materials and activities, and adjusting activities are all important aspects of what I do to establish a successful literacy program”(Gatto, p.77). Gatto explains how her word wall and vocabulary change year-to-year depending on her students needs. She never takes one-size fits all approach to education.

True integration- not add-ons,

Gatto explains, everything that she did in her class had meaning and was for demonstrating the practical social use of literacy, which entailed mixing literacy’s to work towards a common goal (just as we do in real life).“Literacy is a practice, something that gets done, not skills to be learned for use at a later date”(Gatto, p.78).

Leave the unknown-unknown-Let the students decide the outcome

Gatto only put the idea out there to the class. She never told them how they were going to do it. She made them responsible from kids generate questions, acting to answer them, designing and building a vision, and sharing it with the community. They class decided what they wanted and worked as a class to make that happen. Kids decide everything; “Every child had a part in the construction of the vivarium”(Gatto, p.81). It was a real community effort with incredible outcomes.

Students have to make the connection NOT be told by the teacher-very very important!!
Gatto always allowed the students to generate their own inquiry question, “Why are we reading a book that has nothing to do with butterflies if were going to study butterflies? She never answered the question; instead she posted it on the board and allowed each student to discover the answer on their own. This is when true learning happens.

Create rituals and routines

As much as Gatto allowed for freedom and gave much of the control of the classroom to the students, she also created simple rituals and routines in which the students knew what to expect everyday and how the classroom operated. There were many practices Gatto used to engage with the students daily: keeping a journal, post it note selections in readings, silent reading, word walls, personal student spelling book, use of multiple text, research to answer students own questions, (I can not get high school students to do this), etc., which intern all lead to KIDS WRITING DAILY.
 
Make real life connections

Gatto constantly was making the real life connections. She was always taking the students on trips to enrich their learning experience and to make the personal connection, which drives motivation to learn. She, Constantly, “contextualized the topic of the unit within our community and world events”(Gatto, p.83). She created lots of dialogue and have to come up with consensus (extremely important real life skill). She remained open and flexible- a true authentic learning environment- not scripted and never the same- always bringing real life examples into the class- Wonderfully done!

Multi-cultural/Humanistic Perspective

Gatto’s involved and valued all students and didn’t only use middle class white values (she even used books written in Spanish first) to drive her curriculum. She looked at her student’s differences as assets to the classroom experience and used her Spanish-speaking students experiences and language to enrich the learning environment. She was then able to make emotional connections, which lead to empowering change, (letters to Mexican government, questioning life, questioning media). Inspirational!

Let go of control- (biggest lesson for me)
“Letting go, getting out of the way, leaving them on their own so that they may assume the responsibility”(Probst, p.55). Gatto had such faith in letting the story unfold for itself. She had a vision of the project and was a guide for the students but by letting go of control she was able to let the lesson take on a journey of it’s own which lead to incredible valuable teachable moments (letters to the Mexican government, not trusting the media, morning the death of a local artist). As well as a successful vivarium being built and shared with the community.

Gatto’s classroom experience was incredibly inspirational. It is the way education/literacy should be; there was nothing stopping Gatto from creating social justice practices, engaging all of her students and pushing them to the highest limits. She demonstrated a real life example of Freire’s problem-posing model of education. Gatto was able to touch on everything that Freire prescribes to, “For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other”(Freire, p.52). This is the process I believe Gatto to have given to her students – a real gift, and what I will strive to continue to work

CREATING VOICE:

 

“You who are poor and oppressed; you need, you must, make change. You must fashion a struggle.Young people finding a voice instead of being spoken for are a crucial part of the process. Then and now those designated as serfs are expected to remain paralyzed, unable to take an action and unable to voice a demand- their lives depend on the good work and good will of others”(Moses, p 19).

So the question remains: How do we create VOICE in school, through literacy?

Some may answer with standardization and others may answer with variation. I am going to argue on the side of variation, as does one of my personal heroes, Malcolm Gladwell.

We need critical literacy, meaningful, rigorous, curriculum for ALL, not for the privileged, not for the selected few, not in the AP class, but in every aspect of the day for every student. Simply stated through findings in Allington’s research, “kids differ. All students, not just the academically talented, need high-quality instruction all day, every school day”(287). I mean this doesn’t sound ground breaking, you would think it was a fundamental aspect of teacher education, so why is it so hard to understand and implement?

ABC’s- Actions, Beliefs, and Conditions: The problem is that it is much easier said than done, and like the title of the book, putting Promise into Practice is not always as easy as one may hope for it to be. Sometimes, the best intended teachers just miss the ball, others miss the whole court, and others spend countless hours always reevaluating how to catch the ball better, but with little success. And often, it is because they are looking for the WRONG ball. It is about the context, and turning promise into practice is a challenge. There is no “one size fits all” answer, but there are conditions, actions, and beliefs, to finding meaning and creating meaningful critical literacy for all students.

1. CREATE FLOW – “Csikszentmihalyi argues that we are most fully engaged and happy when we are in the flow, in other words, when we are experiencing something so intensely that nothing else seems to matter”(Wilhelm and Smith, p.231).

2. BREAK THE MYTH –No one is born naturally gifted at writing, math, science or art. Just like sports everyone has to practice. “We learn to write by writing…We do not learning anything without practice”(Rief, p. 191). Practice, practice, practice!

3. INFRINGE FEAR- Allow for some freedom (evaluation change) – We can’t always be judged on what we do wrong (Rief). Evaluations should highlight strengths (NOT JUST WEEKNESS’), “To develop a new identity, you must not only believe that you can be successful at exercising the competence required but also experience initial success”(Wilhelm and Smith, p.241).

4. FIND VALUE – You have to create a real audience, “We won’t work hard unless we know are practice is going to be used in a real game… We want to know our words made someone feel, think, or learn. This is writing with Voice”(Rief, p.191, 201).

5. INSPIRE - Use inquiry questions, questions that all students can grapple and bring to their interest field, “Situational interest will work to promote the engagement of all students, regardless of the multifarious individual interest”(Wilhelm and Smith, p.233).

 “When writers are engaged in the process of writing something that matters to them, for which they have their own purposes, that writing often surprises, delights, and empowers them, encouraging a stronger commitment to the crafting of their writing”(Rief, p.192) Not Visa-Versa!!!

Practice Hurdles: All of these things require commitment; it’s not easy to make changes, and there are always hurtles along the way, but with enough ingenuity I know we can all get over all the hurdles with enough practice (as Rief suggest).

1. MAKE REAL LIFE CONNECTIONS – Missing your audience- Context is everything! Don’t forget that our students are not in High School when we were – there is a generation gap. Our audience is not there audience.

2. CHALLENGE STAGNATION- Take a look in the mirror. It is hard to move sometimes, it take’s a commitment, self -evaluation, honesty and often support from others. Challenge yourself to change.

3. PUT YOURSELF IN YOUR STUDENTS SHOES-For example-I had a revolution this summer by looking at myself as a writer: I was forgetting the visual- “I never thought about drawing as thinking, where drawing didn’t count, and spelling didn’t count”(Rief, p. 202). I am a visual learner and love thinking through images so why am I not doing this for my students?

4. REMOVE SCRIPTED LESSONS – Don’t forget about the teachable moments and to challenge your old lessons. Yes you have the tried and true, but remember, “Scripted lessons mandating Tuesday’s writing be the same for each student in every school are guaranteeing mediocrity”(Rief, p. 204). We don’t want to make students into robots.

We want to create a shift from passive learners to active learners (Moses).

Make the Shift: There are subtle changes we can make in our pedagogical beliefs that can lead to great changes in student achievement and output.

APPLY THE 5 M’s -promoting competence: “Model, Mentor, Monitor, and provide Multiple Modalities and Measures. It is a simple shift, like Wilhelm and Smith suggest, “develop the skills a historian needs rather than providing her with historical information”(Wilhelm, Smith p.239)?

QUESTION COMPETANCE & ENGAGEMENT- “The correlation between competence and engagement… are so close that it is unclear in which direction the casual error goes”(Wilhelm, Smith, p. 242). Shift your thinking from competence first to engagement first and see where that can lead you – unknown territory is always fun!!

DENIE MEDIOCRATY-We see study after study that advocating for changes and proving what works in school, but resistance to change feels overwhelming. Just as permission to fail(Ladson-Billings) is a problem, I see a number of students suffering from Acceptance of Mediocrity- often leading to girls who “do” school with no emotional connection, and boys who are “bored” beyond belief. It is not just poor and minority youth at risk (although the consequence is much greater), it is the whole country at risk now. We have to challenge the status quo, “You cannot move this country unless you have consensus. The country is to big, too huge, too diverse, too confused”(Moses, p. 21). We must send the message and find consensus, and students must demand more. It is not about improved test scores, it is a clear message of inclusion- it is for everyone. As I started with Robert Moses’ words I will also end with them, “To make my self very, very, very clear, even the development of some sterling new curriculum---a real breakthrough – would not make us happy if it did not deeply and seriously empower the target population to demand access to literacy for everyone”(19).

Numbers That Say Something

With Numbers like these Paulo Freire may just be right that literacy is the road to change.

“As Paulo Freire knew so well – the creation, in and out of schools, of social languages (literacies) through which all of us can read and write more equitable selves and worlds”(Gee, 419).

STEP OUTSIDE THE BOX: Issues of multiple literacies and gender norms

          “Step outside the Box” This seems to be the sentiment of all the readings this week from multiplicity of literacy, to the ‘New Economy’, to gender equality. As educators we have to be able to step outside of the rigid box that has defined, what, how and who gets educated. We are doing injustice by staying in the old box and not allowing for the new transformations; from fighting technology to reinforcing pedagogies that enforce the ‘culture of power’. Throughout the wide range of topics we read you hear over and over the same message for the need to CHANGE. The OLD system is not working for the NEW world. In the worlds of the great Yvon Chouinard ,“We cannot keep trying to fix a broken system, sometimes all you really need to do is turn around 180 degrees and take one step forward” (Yvon Chouinard, 180 Degrees South).

Over and over we see the need to fight back on the demands of the educational system and say this is enough. We have to see teachers as, “Transformative intellectuals”(Maher, 273), who are respected and given freedom to do their individual work within the classroom. With a pedagogy that matches their students’ values, and lives and does not create continuous miss-matches that time and time again excludes the same students. Stereotypes are created by unfair “Opportunities to Learn” states Gee, “If two children are being assessed on something that they have not had equivalent opportunities to learn, the assessment is unjust…. If one cannot prove that the children being tested have had equal opportunity to learn than the assessment is, “invalid and unethical”(28). And when we see the failure of the same stereotyped students are being enforced and perpetuated in the school system we have to begin to ask questions.

It (good or bad) happen in the classroom,” In spite of today’s barriers and obstacles, of racism and elitism as well as sexism, it is in the classrooms of individual teachers, helped by allies in their schools and communities, that our best hopes lie for resolving “gender turf battles” and building democracy”(Maher, 274). You have to ask yourself are you creating a match or a miss-match? Weather we are talking about school literature choice that are embedded with message of inequality or the fight against technology or the acceptance of multiple literacies; what we are really talking about is inclusion or exclusion, and unfortunately the system with this narrow box only allows for a small amount to be included, but for most to be left looking in trying to learn (assimilate to the culture of power) how to be included. Williams make this argument concerning literature for young readers (both action and violence novels and young romance literature), remove the hysteria of concern around these issues most boys aren’t killers and most girls aren’t sexual victims; although the odds of sexual abuse are higher for girls than violence for men- either way no one wins. “ When such rigid expectations result in institutionally unimaginative or personally inflexible responses, no student benefits”(Williams 302).

What we must do is use these reading as a teachable moment to reflect on the complexities and the culturally constructed expectations that limit us all. There has to be VALUE and VISION, we have to push and stretch our student’s minds. Whether we are challenging technology tolerance or the modern identity paradigm we have to push boundaries. “To transgress the boundaries, valued so strongly by society, is to begin to undo violence and oppression and the regulation and control of these identities. These transgressions are a “step out side the box,” and therefore an attack on the power held by those who conform and police identity boundaries”(Hill, 31). A student sums it up so well, “In school, writing is about handing something in. Here (on-line) it is about having something to say”(Kajder, p.215). We have to ask ourselves what are students are writing for? Which result are we striving for accountability or value?

The world is changing and a new economy is evolving and you have to wonder if by staying in the old box are we preparing students for a world that does not thrive on ‘basic skills’, As Gee discusses,“ the old industrial capitalism was about mass producing standardized products for heavily controlled mass markets. In the new global, hypercompetitive, science-and-technology-driven capitalism, products and services are created, perfected, and changed at ever faster rates”(Gee, 414). You are your project. You are your own portfolio (Gee). The new world is flat world and these are the new skills needed: (Burke, 153).

-Collaborators and orchestrators

-synthesizers

-explainers

-adapters

-green people

-personalizers

-localizers

How do we produce learners for this new world? “We create an “active learning” environment, “experiencing the world in NEW ways, forming NEW affiliations in preparation for NEW future learning “(Gee, 32).  WE STEP OUTSIDE THE BOX!

And, sometimes we can’t always so boldly take the 180 degree turn that we will like to be able to do, but hopefully what we can do as Williams suggest,“ teach our students how to recognize the challenges of the river; how to navigate it to get to where they want to go; and, when necessary, how to turn the boat around and –slowly with great effort-move upstream against the current”(Williams,302).

Romance Novels to Advertisments

Sexist language and images are everywhere you look from reading choices, clothes shopping, television adds and more... YOU CAN'T ESCAPE IT!!

From such a young age,  we (women and girls) are inundated with how women should be, act, behave, LOOK, and most important how the prince charming is coming to rescue us.

Time for concern?

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