Swamped by dissertation

I wonder how many blog posts I would have for all that I have written in my dissertation in the last two weeks?

This is just to say that that is where I have been of late instead of here: dissertation hell.

Hoping it's almost over.

M. Shelley

The dominant teaching paradigm

Greetings.
As promised, here are my thoughts on why we are often unable to teach literature as we should, or to really, truly, enact any meaningful change in the classroom (such as making space for the kind of professional development that F. Scott wrote about a few days ago).

I've been working with a classic study in the field of education, Willis's (1977) Learning to Labour, to help me explain some of the resistance I got from my students last year during my dissertation study. Willis studied a group of young men, "the lads," whose consistent, overt, naughty resistance to school ended up reproducing the omnipresent class system of their community. Due to the culture of their working class lives, they interpreted school as having nothing of real value to offer them, so their days at school consisted mainly of resisting and opposing anything that the school asked them to do. In so doing, "the lads" made it certain that they would continue along the path toward their working class existence, only realizing at a point in the future how they had missed out on their opportunity to get an education that would provide them other options besides a working class destiny.

One particular aspect of Willis's study became incredibly relevant to my dissertation study. The opposition I got from my students in my classroom was often naughty and characteristic of the opposition of "the lads"--which is what led one of my committee members to suggest I take a look at Willis. But what was most salient toward my dissertation was not Willis's finding about class reproduction, but rather his characterization of a dominant teaching paradigm that organized school in the minds of everyone involved in the study--"the lads," the other students, the teachers, the administrators, and the parents.

Willis argues that embedded in the consciousness of our society exists an understanding of school as essentially an exchange between teacher and students. Students comply with what the teacher asks in the classroom in exchange for something. In the school Willis studied, the exchange was for knowledge, which led to certain qualifications for certain jobs, income, and eventual ability to purchase goods and services. In short, if students complied with what school offered, they would eventually be able to get jobs to support themselves.

In reading about this exchange-based teaching paradigm, I realized that the school where F. Scott and I teach is also, at its center, swirling around a basic exchange between teacher and students. Students comply with what we ask of them in the classroom in exchange for grades. These grades will eventually lead to college admission, hopefully at the prestigious college (whatever that might be for each individual student) that our school community holds as the goal. Over 90% of our students go on to 4-year colleges every year. The College Admission is the end goal, and students need the right kind of grades for that, and that is how we get them to comply with our classroom requests. I believe this to be the case because of how often I hear, "how many points is this?" and "what do I need to do to get the A?" and my colleagues belief that unless we give students a grade for everything we ask them to do, they will not do it. Students are not concerned first about actually understanding; their first concern is about their grades.

Willis's framework becomes powerful though when you consider his argument for how impossible meaningful change is within this dominant, exchange-based teaching paradigm. He examines several other versions of teaching and shows how they are all just revisions of the basic paradigm, and not very meaningful ones at that. At the center of all the reforms he examines, he argues, sits still an offer from the teacher in exchange for students' compliance. What changes in what the teacher is offering. Because the basic paradigm is so completely entrenched in everyone's understanding of school, if what the teacher is offering is too far off of what is expected in the exchange, students will not be able to interpret it as anything but some betrayal of the basic exchange, and then you get the naughty, resistant, oppositional behavior cropping up.

Willis argues that the only way to actually enact meaningful reform is to disrupt the basic exhange-based paradigm. How to do this? Well, you have to make changes to the material structures, organization, and practices of schools that are both evidence of the presence of the teaching paradigm and the defining characteristics of it. The material structures have to do with the physical spaces of the school and how students have little privacy, how their movements are often constrained, and how they don't have free access to all areas of the school (think locked up computer labs, off-limits teachers' lounges, restricted student parking areas, smashed-together lockers, small and uncomfortable student desks, etc.). The organization has to do with how the school day/year is structured (think bell schedules, attendance policies, seat time guidelines, etc). The practices have to do with how school is done in a particular community (think advanced vs. regular tracks within schools, teachers starting and ending class periods at the bells, teachers making all the decisions about the curriculum, etc.). If we want to make meaningful change, we have to make real changes to the material structures, organization, and practices that maintain the exchange-based teaching paradigm.

What might those changes look like? I imagine school campuses that feel more open and inviting to students with access at more hours of the day and comfortable places for students to hang out. I imagine flexible daily schedules that can ebb and flow with the demands of the curriculum and the individual needs of students--a class can end early if the goal for the day is met or students can work from home on a particular day if there's no need for the whole class to meet for example. I imagine a dedicated effort to include students in more decision making about curricular in instructional issues. Yes, teachers are the ones with the professional knowledge surrounding this stuff, but we should be looking for meaningful places to involve our students in decision making whenever possible and strive to work to put our students much more at the center of their own education. I imagine using technology in powerful ways to better mirror students' lives outside of school and to create more flexible learning spaces.

I tried last year to deliberately offer my students something outside of this dominant exhange-based paradigm, but the expectations about what school is supposed to be in my students' minds, in my colleagues' minds, even in my own mind--kept getting in the way. I know that unless we examine the assumptions we all carry around about school that serve to maintain the basic, dominant teaching paradigm, we will never be able to make real, meaningful change for our students. We have to look for and examine these assumptions so that we are able to truly imagine ways to meet the needs of our students, now and into the ever-changing future.

Signing off,
M. Shelley
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Willis, P. (1977) Learning to labour: how working class kids get working class jobs. Westmead, England: Saxon House.

Reconsidering Literature and the Classroom

I'm working on my dissertation today. I came across the following tidbit, which captures much of what F. Scott and I have been chatting about in terms of how we've been asking our students lately to discuss literature in class. So here it is:

In Why Read?, Mark Edmundson (2004) calls for a reconsideration of how literature is typically dealt with in the college English classroom. He insists that teachers work away from more traditional classroom (New Criticism-esque) approaches toward a more meaningful approach to literature--asking students, for instance, what it would be like to take on a piece of literature as one's guide to life. What would it mean to live life by the guidelines suggested in this text? He argues that "literature [...] is the major cultural source of vital options for those who find that their lives fall short of their highest hopes," that "in literature there abide major hopes for human renovation" (p. 3). Probst (2004) echoes this. He explains that reading is not about searching for "'the meaning' of the work, a meaning residing in the text, as in the New Critical approaches," but rather an opportunity for exploration and creation (p. 3). He says that teachers should not ask "What does the work mean?" but rather "What can we do with the work?"--a similar question to Edmundson's about what it would be like to live life via the guidelines suggested in a particular piece of literature. In doing this, Probst reminds us, that our middle and high school students are not the intellecutal elite that end up as graduate students of literature; they are a "representative group from the local community," and therefore it's important to honor and make room for the individual exchanges between reader and text (p. 34). They are not literary scholars, but they can still access the "resevoir of all human concerns" that Probst sees in literature if we create the right kind of classroom space for them to do so.

In Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, Interpretation, Insight, Sumara (2002) makes a similar argument, that teachers need to work toward making literature matter more to our students. He claims that overall, literature "creates the possibility for deep insight," that engaging with literature "can facilitate the creation of interesting sites for thinking," that these literary engagements can "expand [students'] imagined world of possibilities," and that because in life "understanding requires interpretation, and interpretation requires practice," literature study can provide important opportunities for students to learn these skills (pp. xiii-xiv). Ultimately, Sumara believes that literature captures the "unnoticed experiences that combine to make a life" (pp. 154-5).

But Sumara--through his perspective as a former public school teacher--sees problems with literature instruction in schools. He is worried that the public schools "are not very interested in helping young people develop" important interpretation practices for literature (p. 157). He sees this in how students are often forced to read a lot of literature quickly, looking only for literary devices in order to write critical essays (p. 157). This, he thinks, is why students often claim that literature doesn't matter much to them, rather than seeing it as an integral piece of understanding the human experience (p. 157). Instead, literature will matter in schools if teachers put aside "theories of learning that insist on excavating Truth" but instead create "conditions for people to learn to be surprised by what might happen if they dedicated themselves to literary practices that require a sustained engagement with someone else's structure of thinking" (p.160).

(end of dissertation tidbit)

Now, as to why it's so difficult to actually get schools to teach literature in this way --> if I have time today, I'll write about the dominate teaching paradigm that controls the way we ALL think about school.

M. Shelley
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Edumundson, M. (2004) Why Read? New York: Bloomsbury.

Probst, R.E. (2004) Response and Analysis: Teaching Literature in Secondary School (Second Edition). Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann.

Sumara, D. J. (2002) Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters: Imagination, Interpretaiton, Insight. Mahweh, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Professional Development

I think we should have some- don't you?

An observation that struck me recently is this. Often what we do under the rubric of 'professional development' is anything but. Yes, we may have some outside expert, usually in a hotel ballroom with five hundred of your favorite people with you, tell us all about a new way of thinking about some aspect of our jobs. And some of those 'talking head' types can be great. But rarely are such experts presented as a cohesive vision of improving classroom instruction. And there is almost no follow up at all. 

The rest of the time, professional development time is filled with a lot of things that are certainly useful, often necessary, but not at all related to improving teacher's skills. The truth is, that in this industry, the time resource is in such short supply that we are always robbing Peter to pay Paul. During time allotted to PD, we are doing all the other stuff that is necessary to running the institution, department or district, but not actually allowed for in the structure of our working lives. So we need to do that work (curriculum development, team planning, department and committee work), but again, very little of it is concerned with making any of us better at our jobs. 

And that's okay, because meaningful improvement for teachers doesn't really start on days when there are no students in the building. Real professional development is better termed 'instructional coaching.' It starts in classrooms with actual students and real teachers. Yes, there probably needs to be some understanding of the learning goals , and some framework for methodology, but after that it is a pretty organic process. The main problem is that once you engage real instructional coaching, it is time intensive. There needs to be time in the classroom, time for reflection on what happened in the classroom, development of new strategies and the translation of those strategies into actual activities, the deployment of the new strategies in the classroom, gathering of data on the efficacy of the new strategies, reflection, and repeat. 

Other than the time in the classroom, there is almost no allowance in our working day for the rest of the process. Teaching five classes a day, the rest of my working time is spent meeting with students, pulling together material for future lessons, working with colleagues on a variety of issues, all of which are important and need attention, and oh year, grading (which eats the lion's share of my non-classroom working time). I do, of course have wonderful, rich , meaningful conversations with my colleagues about our work, but they tend to haphazard. Stuck in between all the other things. If improving student learning is really our goal (and I think it is), then maybe we need something different.

The last key element is that it can't happen in a vacuum. At least not for me. The word 'coaching' is key in this model. Even Tiger Woods has a coach. No one laboring to improve in their chosen field does so without some assistance, some feedback. We need coaches who really understand teaching and learning, and who appear in our classrooms for meaningful amounts of time, for the express purpose of observing our work, in order to give us feedback that will help us to continue to improve. Those observers need to have a wide base of knowledge, both in teaching strategies, pedagogy, and (at least in my context, high school) a high degree of knowledge specific to the subject at hand in a give classroom (very tough to assess a math teacher if you really don't understand math).

I don't know about you, but no such system exists in my building, or as far as I know, my district. But I do know a boatload of people who are qualified to do this work. One of them shares my office with me, and this blog. Several of them are right down the hall. Several more of them are also administrators in my building. They are the people I talk to every day about teaching- its up and downs, our struggles, the student's struggles, the challenges of the particular material we are working with. I already trust these people because I work with them every day. 

We need to be our own instructional coaches. This may be blindingly obvious, but how often is it really happening? I hear about some schools and districts that have positions like this, at the building or department level, but not very often. My experience has been that after the probationary period, no one has been watching my teaching very closely. As long as my kids don't light the room on fire and no parents are complaining, the system seems to be happy with my job performance. I'm sorry, but that isn't good enough for me. I took this job because I actually care about it. I am not a teacher because I had nothing better to do. I had a professional life before this one (and it paid better). I don't want to spend the next twenty years teaching the same lesson over and over again and blaming the students when they don't learn (we all know someone who fits that description). I don't want that for me, my students, or my own child. 

So what would it take to have meaningful instructional coaching in my building? Not that much actually. It would take time, and that translates into money. But not an inordinate about I think. Especially when measured against all the things that money is spent on that don't actually improve student learning. It would take structuring some time into our day when we could sit in each other's classrooms, some time to work together reflecting on the observations and collaborating on new strategies, and ready access to some pretty low tech gear (a video camera being first in my mind). 

It's not too much to ask is it? Seems so simple. Makes a lot of sense- at least to me. 

So, why exactly can't we do it?

Wishing for time...

F. Scott

Mistrust

Had a department meeting this afternoon, and I'm left with something simmering that just doesn't feel quite right.

Why is it that we teachers walk around with a default mistrust of the administration at both the building and district level? Much of the meeting today--though the laughing felt positively cathartic here in the last few days before spring break--consisted of basically bashing the administration. So our district literacy coordinator wants to come meet with the department--why did we laugh about that for what seemed to be a good five minutes?

I suppose that in difficult times, like when districts across the country are faced with impending budget cuts that essentially lead to Sophie's choices (cut teachers or cut programs or which totally necessary program can we get rid of?), it's difficult for teachers to maintain trust in the people who are making big decisions that may affect our lives drastically. We are afraid that the worst might happen. It's far easier to direct anger and mistrust at our administrators than to trust that they are operating on the best intentions but are often put in impossible situations where there's no way they could make decisions that would keep everyone happy.

The truth is that even in the best of times without impending budget cuts in the schools where I've worked, the implicit mistrust of the administration from the perspective of the teachers is palpable. And I've never totally understood it. It think we can all do a better job of trying to understand the full complexities of the situations that challenge our schools rather than vilifying the administrators who have to make the tough decisions in the face of those complex and often impossible situations.

These are the reasons why I myself never want to be an administrator. Well, that and the fact that I know that I feel most relevant with both feet firmly rooted in the classroom.

Seems like I should say something here about teachers' unions. Oh my. I have always been a member of my local teachers' union, but I've always had very mixed feelings about it. The worst I've seen of teachers' unions perpetuates an us-vs-them mentality of total and complete mistrust of the administration. The worst I've seen of teachers' unions protects ineffective teachers. The pictures my teachers' unions have painted of my schools' administrations have often contradicted my own experiences with my administrators, which have been largely positive through the years.

But on the other hand, we teachers are often asked to do more and more, with less time and no additional money--and unions have achieved fairer treatment in school districts for many teachers through the years. I see clearly why they are there--so despite my concerns with teachers' unions based upon my experiences with them, I will always belong. They play an important role in a system that is essentially a clusterf$@&.

What I mean by that is that the American Educational system is too big, too entrenched in persistent ideas about what it means to do school, too underfunded (I could go on...). It's a mess. Sometimes I feel so frustrated by the enormity of the problems in our system that it seems that nothing besides striking the entire system down and building it up again will ever be able to achieve real, meaningful change for our students.

But then I remember why I do what I do. I know that in my own circle of influence, I can make a difference. I can attempt to make school meaningful for my students. I can try to effect change in my school. I can find like-minded teachers who will sit with me in our tiny offices as we lunch on the leftovers we've brought from home and imagine our ideal visions of our classrooms and schools and actually talk about how we can move toward those visions. I can find school leaders I can trust and believe in to help us enact our visions.

And the thing is that I know those school leaders are out there in the ranks of our administrators, but if the default view of the administration is that it is always up to something nefarious and selfish, how will we ever get anywhere toward real and meaningful change? We teachers enact this view of the administration in the way we talk about our administrators when we are beyond earshot of them.

Our words represent what we think. In the words of one of my trusted school administrators, words are things. The words we use ultimately define the things in our lives. We can choose to keep talking about our school leadership with the negative words we often use by default, or we can seek to better understand the complexities that confront our schools and aim to first have a good-faith belief that our administrators are acting on what is best for our students until given some concrete reason not to trust the leadership.

Enough for now.
Signing off
M. Shelley

Where's the time?

As a commentary on the life of a teacher in the midst of grading sophomore rewrites, helping seniors through big research papers that are due next week, proctoring state achievement tests, preparing for an all-day Saturday meeting on revising state standards, trying to work through dissertation revisions...

I have not had time yet to write in this blog.

But I'll get there.

M. Shelley

An interesting week

We had one of those weeks last week that seemed like it just wouldn't end.  A late night at school, and just being plain old busy took its toll. Yet in the midst of that, I also had a week of having some really amazing conversations with colleagues. 

Note: while this post was sitting here doing absolutely nothing as a draft, my partner beat me to the trigger by posting on the lack of time. We return you to your, now redundant, originally scheduled post.

The point is, none of the conversations were planned or scheduled, but they produced some amazing ideas about teaching. We are having these conversations continually, but it always feels so haphazard, so last minute. When I do get to translate some of these great ideas into my teaching (and I do try), I don't have the time to really reflect on how they impact my students learning. It's hurry up and get to the next class, next meeting, next whatever, with a never ending pile of papers waiting for the in-between moments. I know plenty of people have demanding jobs, that doesn't bother me. But don't we want our kids to have a bit more?

Teaching is often, though not entirely, a performative job, at least in the context in which we are working (big high school, too many students in the class). Where is the built in time to think? Shouldn't we be doing that? 

The dean of a nearby  college of education, in an article appearing in a forthcoming book, pointed out that the other two performative professions, acting and law, have ratios of preparation to performance far higher than ours. Actors will spend hundreds of hours preparing for tens of hours of performance time (the ratio increasing the more professional the troupe). Lawyers will spend thousands of hours, working in teams, so that one of them can stand fro some hours in the courtroom. In my working day I have 255 minutes of class time, and 153 minutes of non-class time. There is also 35 minutes of passing period time, which for me is talk to students run to the bathroom time. So thats about 4.5 hours of working with kids in class, and about 2.5 hours to do everything else- plan, grade, meet, conference... No built in time to work with colleagues or collaborate, which are the most productive development activities we know of. And lest ye think my day sounds short, I average about 10 hours per week outside of school (read- unpaid) continuing the planning and grading, often much much more (unlike the lawyer I get no bonus for working harder, and unlike the actor, there is no fame for getting good at my job- believe me). Many weeks its much more than that. I am not complaining (well, maybe a little), I just want the time to figure out how to do my job better. But, in an effort to do all the things we are asked to do (which my partner just listed), we never get to the good conversations about teaching and learning. Bummer.

The flip side is that I work with some really amazing people, and we all know that we have the potential to do some amazing things. If we can just get this crazy system to make some room for us to actually be teachers.

Trying to find time to think...

F. Scott