I invite students to post additional questions about the course using the comments function of this blog.

After break we moved into reader’s and writer’s workshop. I gave the students a vocabulary self-awareness chart and they dutifully began filling it out. I didn’t give them time to complete the whole chart – again the tyranny of the clock – but at least they had a chance to begin thinking about those terms and concepts and know to keep an eye out for those terms as they read the assigned texts for this week. We then moved in to taking a look at the Gee chapter “What is Literacy” and I did a think-aloud protocol and interactive reading of the first page where he defines D/discourse. I did this to  raise student awareness of how academic articles are often about definition (that chapter in particular), and also how to work their way through a dense article.

After reading Gee, we moved on to reading about positivism and interpretivism. We’ll return to those concepts next week. The purpose of reading those two pieces was to gain a sense of how to write annotations. We did the positivism one as a whole group and then the interpretivism piece in small groups. Based on the feedback provided by the students’ exit tickets it was time well spent. I’m not thrilled with those two excerpts, but to date, they are the most succinct definitions of the terms that I’ve found. We need to do more discussion about those concepts though and link it more clearly to literacy and the material we’re going to be studying this semester and into the rest of the program.

We didn’t get a chance to do the discussion on “what is literacy.” I really like having that discussion the first night of class before they do their reading because it gives me a base line of what the students already know. But we’ll adjust. We’ll have that discussion next week after they do their readings. I’m wishing now that I had had them do a quick opinionnaire or anticipation guide. I think that would have gotten at the prior knowledge/misconceptions piece without a lengthy discussion. I will do that next time I teach the course. (and this type of realization is why I believe it is so important to take a few minutes to reflect after teaching and most importantly to write it down somewhere so it doesn’t get lost).

So that was the night. In some ways I feel we didn’t get a heck of a lot done, but in other respects I think we did. We began to build a learning community, I began to get a sense of individual personalities and learning needs, and I hope the students began to get a sense of my expectations and who I am as an instructor.

Just to clarify what the assignments are for next week:

• Read
  • Larson & Marsh chapter 1 – write an annotation
  • Gee “what is literacy” – write an annotation
  • assigned pages of Jenkins et al – no annotation required
  • one of the “Your Choice” articles – write an annotation

• Bring those annotations to class. I will not be collecting them, but you will be using them as part of your discussion.
• Someone in your group should go to the class wiki, go to your group page, and try it. You do not have to post a summary of your discussion because we didn’t do much discussion last night.
  • To access the wiki, go to the email you received from pbwiki notifying you of your invitation to join.
  • Click on the link and enter the required information, including a password of your choice.
  • That should take you in.
    • If you no longer have that email, go to mypbwiki.com
    • Go through the sign-in
    • You’ll get a message that you have a verification pending
    • Request a new verification
    • Go to your email and use the link from the new verification.
    • NOTE: YOU MAY HAVE TO GO TO THE SJFC SPAM FILTER TO FIND YOUR VERIFICATION. SOMETIMES IT GETS SENT THERE.
• Consider adding/revising material on the “Terms and People to know” page of the wiki.
• Consider commenting on this blog post. If you have any questions, here’s a good forum for asking. To comment scroll to the end of this post. You’ll have to scroll past the blogroll stuff (those are links you might want to check out sometime). Click on the link that says either “no comments yet” if you are the first person to comment or “comments” if someone else has commented.

If you have problems getting into the wiki, come to class 15 minutes early next week and I’ll work with you to get you in.

During the last class I devoted the first 30 minutes to a discussion of what they are experiencing in the field. There are a couple of things that bother me: 1) that there are a number of them that haven’t gotten hours in yet 2) that a number of them see the hours as something a hoop to jump through rather than as an opportunity to learn. It saddens me that some of them do not recognize their field experience as a chance to learn about teaching without the pressures of daily lesson planning, bureaucracy, etc. They are still in the mode of being students rather than being learners. 3) They are caught up in behavioral issues rather than learning issues. Conversation keeps coming back to student behaviors or lack of behaviors rather than what students are or are not learning. 4) The disparities between what is being observed in the urban settings as opposed to the suburban settings. I fear the students are being indoctrinated to accept things as they are instead of gaining a vision of what could be.

It’s discouraging. I’m not sure whether the time I’m devoting to discussing field experiences is worthwhile or not. I’m not doing a good enough job of connecting what they’re seeing and experiencing to literacy support. I’m doubting my abilities as a methods teacher. I guess it’s part of the difficulties of trying to conduct a class around generative issues rather than leading the students through a preconceived program of what they need.

The students also spent time on their wikis. I’ve begun reviewing them. Some are really well done. Comprehensive, imaginative, and push the boundaries of the technology. Others are mundane and meet minimal requirements. I think what I need to do is have the students do a self-assessment of their learning at this point. If they were to grade themselves right now, what would their grades be. There are a number of them that in my mind are in the B range. A handful are doing A work.

We spent the second part of class on grant writing. I gave them time to find grants and to start writing them. I asked them to bring in rough drafts to the next class. We’ll see what they come up with. I’m hoping for some good stuff, but fearful that I won’t. There just doesn’t seem to be any energy among the students. Is it me? What am I not doing? What am I missing?

Teaching is a transaction between student and teacher and some how this semester the energy is low. I’ve come to the conclusion that teaching the same group two semesters in a row is not a good idea. I think maybe we’ve gotten too used to each other.