10/10/17

I thought the text about Co-Teaching was intriguing. It definitely isn’t what I thought I was going to get when I saw the name of the chapter. Thinking about putting the curriculum into the hands of your students and seeing what they do with it to reach their peers is both exciting and terrifying to think about, for me at least. I feel a certain apprehension towards unveiling the work that goes into making things run (hopefully) seamlessly and smoothly, but if it resulted in me finding deeper ways to connect with students then I think it’d be beneficial. My only criticism of this text is that it does seem divisive in the fact that it speaks nearly exclusively about using this technique with black or neoindigenous (which is a term I found attractive) students. Surely there are ways to use this technique universally, or in mixed classrooms. And in these scenarios, I feel students would need even more background and preparation to be successful. In the end, all the extra work that goes into being able to pull something like this off successfully is a sacrifice that’d need to be weighed in the moment, but it certainly seems like it’d be worth the trouble if I were having zero luck connecting, or even alienating my students.

I really enjoyed the section from the Christensen chapter that talked about “Trolling for Stories.” One of the struggles I often face when planning is finding ways to connect the material to students lives in a way that makes it appealing for them to engage. I think Christensen did a good job pointing out some of the struggles in this approach, but she also made it clear how using student lives to bolster curriculum allows students to approach texts with an enhanced perspective. I think the fact that students often went off on tangents is indicative of this “trolling” approach. The conversations her students were having seemed to be valuable and productive, even though they weren’t directly connected to the material. I wonder how far we should be willing to let these tangents go and how often we should be willing to let them happen. I’m all about shifting gears and throwing out lesson plans in light of better discussion opportunities, but with everything that’s going on recently in the world, I think those opportunities exist every day.

In the Gallagher chapter, it resonated with me when he talked about starting students out with writing they can engage with and enjoy, getting them thinking about themselves as writers before handing out the 5 paragraph essays or “fake writing.” I wonder just how far we, as teachers, can push this idea. Looking at the standards, there are no direct references to the standard academic essays or papers that teachers often assign for assessments. Are there ways we can toy with the standards and find ways for our students to meet all the standards requiring with minimal “fake writing?” And thinking about that, if we do stay away from “fake writing” when possible, are we potentially handicapping the students who are going to go to college and be required to write persuasive and analytical essays throughout their entire college careers?