Reflective Perspective or Done Don Gone Wrong?

Good morning class, I am Mister Holloway

We’re here to learn and have fun all the way

I’m pre-service and work so hard – no holiday

 Now we’re applyin’ our Science all the day

I was born of the dominant white middle-class

Raised around the world but with a little riddle passed

On to me ‘bout equality and fairness as a filial task

Still I search from on my perch never thinking it’ll pass

This is term 2, I’m in this private boys’ school

Our year 7 science lab always foils fools

This class is sharp and it deploys tools

Yearning for learning and sometimes destroys stools

Had a Science literacy test a week ago

But one boy was away – he’s pretty sneaky, oh

Next he got the test and did he leak a groan?

I don’t know but know he showed no cheeky glow

Meet Donny, he failed that summative contest

Diagnostic for me but my mentor had confessed

That “D” can’t read or write with speed or context

And not knowing what to do I moved along and called, “next”.

I was unprepared; want him to try do well

If I’d put him on the spot would be to fly him through hell

Invisible he tried to be until the high noon bell

But I want to find a way to make his pride to swell

I must say to my dismay I failed to differentiate

I was finding my feet, trying hard to find a difference ǀ to make

To any one student but instead I perpetuate

That at-risk students get left behind, broken, or they’re left to break.

Donny had hidden away too well and far too long

Temptation to leave solution of literacy was too strong

Ratio of students to teacher twenty-six to one

And reaching every student seems too hard-won.

So, what goes into reasoning pedagogical?

We experience and feel, emotional and logical

There’s a gap in there and we’re aware that we should stop to pull

Together ideas, from far and near, we think and we act, but not the fool.

At this stage, Piaget states, a child is in transition

Into teenage, we’d say that it’s a manned mission

To unexplored space in learning, standards risen,

Help from peers and teachers is sorely needed and given.

While a private school is full from the pull for the middle class

The diversity, socially and ethnically is a task

To be fair and fully aware every family has its past

Homogenizing cultural capital vs valuing virtual schoolbags in contrast.

While Donny is not obviously from a marginalized group

The assumption that private school students are a harmonized troop

Guessing “D”’s of low SES is a hardly-wise view

But until I’ve more to go on, that’s my partly-biased truth.

Difficulties in reading and writing were but two factors

In a cast of learnt behaviours, all proved actors

In a play that paved the way for nay-sayer detractors

Or breadcrumbs for someone to come to help “D” to max scores.

Other than laying low, Donny often forgot his book

During class he’d get it from his locker, or with a perplexed look

on his face return empty-handed or reversed and took

His leave of me, to pee now please, or better yet get crook.

Dyslexic was the first word to come to me when

I saw Donny’s literacy test mark, and feeling

Like, what other clues could his parents and I use to begin revealing

Any phonographical, organizational problems that need healing.

In this global age it appears to me that we’ve

Reduced everybody to a number just because we believe

Positivism holds the answer, check performativity

For the value of each person in this world I truly grieve.

In this system, Donny could proceed with a fail

Little does he need to do or heed still to sail

Through though you know he hates school, it feels like a jail

Let’s help this whelp with the freedom to achieve and prevail.

Education’s Donny’s right, to be fair for social justice

Each lesson plan has goals and we can adjust its

Scope for “D” to cope and hope it’s challenging and just as

Accessible for him and for all and self-esteem, in them it musters.

As well as trying to find outside help for Donny’s difficulties

I will work hard to find his learning styles and try to target and please

His multiple intelligences could be coming in twos and threes  

Always to praise a raise of grades, the benefits - you can’t annul these.

It could also be that Donny could use any reliance

On imagery or kinesthetics to be an achiever in Science 

Foregrounding the discipline in this class seeks the appliance

Of a few tools and subject-matter rules to stand on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin thought outside the box

Walt Disney and Davinci’s images gave us lots

Edgar Allan Poe and Hemingway wrote and hit the spot

Forever they’re clever. Dyslexic? Whatever! Forget them we will not

Tips to teaching text to teens, Tovani took to task

She sure showed some super strategies, saving struggling staff

Remarkable reading, writing reference, really a rescue raft

Question quality, quote the quenchless quandaries, query those quixotic quarks.

So many things I’d like to bring back to the class to help Don

Next year he’s year 8, it’s not too late, but the chances won’t forever go on

While I assessed and tried my best at the time, everything’s moved along

I’m a learner for life and for growth I strive and this is not Don’s swan song

___________________________________

Is teaching literacy just a distraction from my core disciplinary business?

It all comes back to the provocation of the course of, "Should we teach students or subjects?"  If a teacher is able to improve a student's ability to learn, there will be a greater amount of the subject itself getting learnt.  So of course teaching literacy isn't just a distraction from core disciplinary business, but enhances our ability to teach the content effectively, and reach the student.
For me, literacy has always been an issue.  I rarely read books in highschool as it was too much of a struggle and wasn't worth the angst for me!  Only when I found things that I was really interested in, that presented answers to questions I had, did I begin to not see reading as a chore.  Since then, I've often felt the need for extra strategies to help my reading skills, since I am slow, and I often do struggle to think about what I'm reading if it doesn't jump at me as interesting. 
I'm looking forward to examining new strategies and ideas about literacy that will shake up my own literacy and my ability to help with that of my future students.

That ol' thisness.

I wasn't a reader at school and it was with great difficulty and little enjoyment that I got through any of the prescribed novels.  I only remember actually finishing one and can't actually remember what the name of it was.  It was the autobiography of what seemed a pretty bland existence and the fact that it was so simply written is the reason that I persisted with it at all.  I must admit that through the discussions in class that we had about this book, I came to a greater appreciation of it but still don't feel like I'd enjoyed it or gotten very much out of it. 
Josh's comment about choice really resonated with me:
"It was so much better reading it this time, when I wasn’t being told to read it, it was my choice. Choice is really important.” 1.
I only discovered a real joy of reading fiction after I left school and it has been through me having choice in the matter that makes me cherish reading and getting my own meanings out of books.  My lack of confidence with my reading was part of why I didn't enjoy it throughout school.  I guess if I'd had more experiences like that of the unknown novel about the simple life of a farm boy where I had felt the teachers love for the subject, had some prior knowledge, been helped to find purpose in reading the books, sensed that I was an agent in the learning of others and felt like I belonged to the community of my class that was all reading the same book, I may have thrived. I was pretty resistant to it though, as I felt accepted by everyone, but in my head was still an outsider.
The chord this strikes with me is that specialised attention to all students being engaged in my classes is something to strive for.  I figure that this is an interplay of teaching my subject and teaching the students- both need to come together so that the individual responses to the subject are taken into account.  Prior knowledge and experiences, which undoubtedly vary from one individual student to the next need to not be seen as a hurdle, but as a part of the thisness of the class that is best embraced to get the most out of the subject matter for all participants involved.

1. http://steveshann.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/walking-through-the-barrier-josh-part-3/

I wanna be a good teacher! But I cannot decide for whom that should be.

Compliance with teacher competencies and the assessment thereof, do not necessarily have anything to do with being a ‘good teacher’.  The subjective nature of the term ‘good teacher’ means that the impression of what this is for an individual student will be different to what this is for a national governing body and different again from what this means for the parents of the students.  Said ‘good teacher’ will vary in their attempts to be good by whom they feel accountable to: the students, the students’ parents, the school body, the national governing body, et cetera.  The expectations of the general populace may well be different to the ideals that are being sought within an educator’s education.  I know that some peoples’ hearts may actually threaten to stop if they were told that classes will not be properly segregated into subjects, students would not be sitting in neat, orderly rows, and writing on the walls will be encouraged. 

Can the social context of an extremely good teacher, who is not going to burn out by trying to please everyone, allow them to make themselves equally accountable to all of these stakeholders?  One good test of that may be seen in a teacher’s education, when a single assignment is marked against four different marking criteria, represented by four different individuals, representing four different interest groups or ‘subjects’.  As long as we have an idea of what their and our own criteria of what a good teacher or good assignment is, we can intelligently respond, projecting the image our own micro-cosmos upon the background that will either enhance or disfigure the original intent.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-living-creatures-being-sold-as-keyrings

What exactly do you do Bubble?

A helping hand

Yoda, Splinter, and Mr Miyagi have all been influential figures in my life and present certain similarities to one another that are deeper than the fact that they’re all sagacious warrior sensei types.  I use the word Sensei as it fits the concept I’d like to use that is somewhere between my definition of ‘teacher’ and ‘master’.  While this Sensei-figure may tread the line of being too random and becoming irrelevant in their musings and Zen wisdom, they occupy a position of earned respect without straying too far into the realm of ‘master’, who commands the blind respect of their disciples. 

When the misty-eyed reminiscences of my youth fade, I think that my Sensei would be beaten down, closer to peer level should they be a truly ideal and accessible figure in people’s lives.  Would this view work for anyone else? Examined carefully, it must be.

Influence

  How interesting can rocks be? I mean, really?!  I’m pretty sure that all geologists who really get into it must be just interested in selling out to petro-chemical companies for going into petroleum exploration.  Right?  

  I like turtles, it’s obvious to Everybody that turtles are cute, charismatic, and cool critters.  My life idol is Peter Pritchard: a David Attenborough figure in the turtle world, who once spoke of walking, on his way to a turtle conference at a Las Vegas hotel, past all the zombies slouched in front of their slot machines and thinking, “These people look miserable; barely even interested in this pursuit which is meant to be exhilarating.” He pondered the irony and it hit him as he reached the conference room: They have no Turtles in their lives! Or at least a decent turtle substitute.  The joy and passion that turtles hold for turtle people is undoubted.  

  This is how I come to one of the more influential teachers in my life, a man whose turtle substitute is rocks and whose passion and knowledge, combined with an approachable demeanour and good humour allowed him to convey subject matter which could have made most of the class fall asleep.  I owe my first semester of Geology pass to Professor Richard Arculus.  It was proven as second semester geology's fail appeared like easier subject matter to me, but the way in which it was carried out was above average, rather than completely phenomenal.  

  I recall clearly the day when Prof. Arculus explained what Kaolin was (a type of clay) and how it was used.  I was staggered to hear that this mineral had been passing through my body for some time now, without my knowledge, and was used (unless my memories of this turning-point of days aren’t as accurate as I’d like to think) not only in toothpaste, but also in many forms of powdered “mashed potato,” and McDonald’s thickshakes!  Could rocks actually be interesting?  I wasn’t completely sold on that one, but that was the closest I ever got to thinking so.