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).