My
last post consisted of discussing how I thought utilizing bellwork and exit
slips would help make lessons more meaningful for students. After that post, I tried implementing what I
thought were meaningful bell work questions at the beginning of class that
related to the work the students completed the previous day. Unfortunately,
these questions did not interest the students one bit, and I was lucky if half
of the class even attempted to answer the question. While I’m going to chalk-up some of this to
my lack in classroom management (and maybe the fact that the expectation for
completing bellwork wasn’t properly set in the beginning of the class), I do
also think that there is another underlying issue.
Randy
Bomer (2011) emphasizes the importance of appreciating the preexisting
literacies that students bring to a classroom within his book Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s
English Classrooms (p. 20-47). When
I first read this I have to admit that I was not in full support of this
statement. This is not to say that I thought we should discredit all things
that aren’t academic or that could be considered “leisure” for our students.
However, I was under the impression that setting high standards for students
meant exposing them to literature and texts that they probably wouldn’t
normally encounter. Thus, when creating
my bellwork questions, I focused less on how they related to the student and
more about how they would help the student understand the texts. However, I
have now come to understand that appreciating what your students bring to the
table, and incorporating these things into one’s classroom, is a way of finding
some common ground with them and simply understanding the dynamic in which you
will be working.
Understanding
this dynamic is essential to building rapport with your students, and rapport
is essential to building an environment where your students are receptive to
and engaged with what you are saying. I noticed that at the beginning of the
year there was a lack of getting to know the students in an academic
sense. We did the typical ice breakers
and learned about one another on a surface level, but that was where the
introductions ended. Now, after reading
Bomer, I am curious to know what would happen if I dug further into these
students’ academic histories and asked them to reflect on times that they were
successful and the times that they struggled.
What would happen if I asked them to complete a reading autobiography?
What would happen if I asked them to tell me where they liked to write the
most? What would they say if I asked them to write about what interests them? My
initial thought is that they probably wouldn’t even take the questions seriously. That they would write it off as another
stupid thing they have to pretend to do until the teacher gives up on seeing it
completed.
Yet,
there’s a more hopeful side of me that thinks that maybe, just maybe, if I put
my heart and soul into presenting these assignments, and made them come across
as personal exploration, and not so much a requirement, that the students would
become slightly interested. And then, as
we began to do more personal exploration, the students would become more and
more involved and engaged in the task at hand.
And as they became engaged they would divulge their interests. They would open up and share and begin to
contribute to the classroom culture. They would begin to understand that taking
ownership of the classroom isn’t breaking the rules but an expectation, and
that they have much more control than they think.
It’s
obvious to me that what I described above is hardly realistic. A culture has already been formed within the
classroom where I observe, and it will be hard for me to change the habits the
students have created. However, I have
not given up on the idea that I can change one or two students’ mindsets. And
at this point, one or two students learning to even tolerate reading would be
considered a success.
I
really do believe in the amazing power of English classrooms. They have the
ability to completely alter students’ reality and expose them to ways of thinking
and ideas they never could have fathomed on their own. It’s unfortunate, and pretty discouraging,
that I am not currently experiencing this within my observations. BUT. I am going to cling to the hope
that with a little redirection and shift in focus, I can slowly make these
students begin to see how much they truly
can gain from a 50 minute English class.
Works Cited
Bomer, R.
(2011). Building adolescent literacy in today’s English classrooms.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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