I’m currently
reading New Literacies in Action by
William Kist, in which the author profiles five different middle school or high
school teachers who have transformed their teachings by weaving new literacies
(also known as digital literacy) into the fabric of their classrooms.
I was
particularly blown away by a teacher named Marco Torres. As a way to help his
social studies students study and interact with their social surroundings,
Torres incorporated intensive video composition projects into his curriculum.
However, what started out as simply a social studies activity expanded into a
popular extracurricular organization called the San Fernando Educational
Technology Team (SFETT). Unfortunately, Torres ran into problems with the
district and lost his teaching job for eight weeks because he didn’t have the
credentials to teach what the school perceived as computer skills.
I’m so impressed
by how Torres handled himself in this situation. He wasn’t fazed at all when
his job security was threatened. Torres took a risk for the sake of his
students and never backed down against the administrative pressures. Today, the
SFETT is a cross-curricular organization that allows students to create
multimedia projects for all of their different classes.
As I thought
about this particular school, I couldn’t help but raise the following
questions:
·
Why
do you think schools tend to view each subject as mutually exclusive? Do they not
recognize the overlap among the various disciplines, or do they simply choose
to ignore this fact for practical purposes?
·
Do
schools foster an environment for risk taking (for both students and teachers)
or have they become a place of complacency?
·
Do
you know any teachers who think outside the box and take risks for the sake of
their students? What exactly do they do to make their classroom experiences
unique?
I understand
that it might be idealistic and irrational of me to think about risk taking in
this way, but I firmly believe that students will never be willing to take
necessary risks and challenge themselves if teachers and schools cannot model
this sort of behavior.
I think schools view subjects as mutually exclusive because of the way teachers are trained. The ideal is that we will be experts in our particular field and pass that expertise along to our students. This sometimes results in teacher tunnel vision—and to be honest, sometimes this is a good thing. You would never (ever) want me teaching math to the youth of America. Sometimes when teachers try to bridge the gap between subjects they can end up creating problems instead of solving them. For example, the science teachers at my school attempted to include a research paper into their curriculum this year. Sounds wonderful, right? It turned out to be semi-disastrous. Students were required to incorporate 12 sources into a 3 page paper. On the English side of things, we know that a requirement like this will result in a loss of voice or possible plagiarism, but that was simply not something that occurred to those other teachers because of their area of expertise.
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side, I have seen a push away from this idea that the subjects are mutually exclusive. Many districts are attempting to incorporate literacy across the content areas. Reading and writing are no longer relegated to the recesses of the ELA classroom.