Are We Serving Our Students?

Standardized testing and standards.

I learned to dislike both these things at a young age through the taking of tests and teachers venting how they skewed learning. I was fortunate to go to a private school growing up. Every year from grades 4-8, I was required to take CAT testing (California Achievement Testing). Don't ask me why we took a California test in Rhode Island, I'm still trying to figure that out myself, but I remember absolutely despising October because that's when everyone knew it was time.

It only took a week to take a test that would spit out scores on whether we were behind, average, or exceeding expectations. ONE test decided this. A test that had questions on things I had never even heard before. How can I be considered "average" when the knowledge that I'm supposed to share is being chosen for me?

Yearly standardized testing stopped when I entered ninth grade, but now public school systems told me I had to exceed according to standards. Teachers constantly complained within class that they had to teach a certain way because they were restricted by the standards.

In a way, teachers feeling restricted by the standards connects to the article "Racial Justice is Not a Choice". Within the article, it states "High-stakes standardized test also discipline curriculum and learning: they determine what knowledge and content is considered legitimate for teaching in the classroom. They also discipline teachers' pedagogy because they compel teachers to teach to the test and place restrictions on depth and breadth of subject matter."(246) Just as teachers teach to the test, they also teach to the standards. The standards tell teachers what students should be learning, which helps students stay on track, but in a way, it causes teachers to be less creative in how they present material and what material they present. Also, kind of like how standardized testing determines what is being taught in schools.

This "standardization" of learning does not cater to all students. Children learn in different ways and have different upbringings and therefor the information being thrown at them is received differently every time. So how are all students supposed to meet standards at the same time in this way?

Here is a link to an article about the pros and cons of standardized learning. I thought the writer made some pretty interesting points about how it helps students, one being the "Ease of implementation at scale". What do you think about this advantage stated? In theory it might work, but what about in practice?

My Language Isn't Everyone's

Language is the key.

Growing up, this is something that was taught to me going through elementary school all the way through high school. Sure, I was exposed to Spanish class, but that was just an "elective". Speaking a different language was saved for our language classes. Anywhere else within the school was reserved for English only. Even the ESL students were reserved to one room; separated from everyone else because they consistently spoke a different language.

Why?

Like Linda Christensen says in her chapter "Language and Power", my teachers told me the same thing: in order to get a job and make it in the real world, one had to properly learn how to speak and write. Otherwise, you would never get a job.

I took this as my religion. Fear of failing in life, failing out of college because my writing and diction wasn't up to par pushed me. I worked on my grammar and said nothing else on the matter. I never even thought of my peers that were forced to leave a part of themselves behind because they had to speak proper English rather than their home language.

Language may be the key to the professional world but language is also power, and by taking away a student's home language, you are also taking away their chance to empower themselves. Schools tend to "white wash" students so that they are able to conform to the dominate society. By doing this, students have "...a disconnect between generations of language speakers and a loss of family ties, traditions, and cultural memory"(Christensen, 209). Where a person comes from is often a big part of their identity. By telling someone that the language that they use isn't proper, it can cause a lot of personal confusion and devaluation.

This makes me question, how can I teach my students in a way where I am setting them up for the professional world, but at the same time, I am showing that I value where they come from?

Here is a video I found from a documentary about using Ebonics within the classroom. It talks about how the lesson isn't teaching the language, but instead is guiding students toward the language they should be using within the classroom. Using the word "translation" instead of correcting the ebonics makes the children feel like their language is still valued because it is not being labeled as "wrong".

Language might be the key to the American world, but empowerment is the key to student success. By taking into consideration students' backgrounds in lessons, we empower them to be proud of where they come from and bring to the table what they have learned from their own cultural background.

Community in Narrative Writing

Narrative writing has always been one of my personal forms of writing. It's open and not ridged like formal essays. Although I have to stay focused on what I am writing, I am allowed freedom on what I am writing about. I'm able to let my personality come out in my piece.

However, like Christensen states within Chapter 2 of her book Teaching for Joy and Justice, it is rarely taught anymore. Teachers have come to focus more on a the formal essay that students will need to know how to write by college instead of focusing on the type of writing that allows students to become stronger analyzers. If you know the techniques and have used them yourself, the more in tune you are when they appear within other authors' writing.

Narrative writing also takes away the one view on society that most people are exposed to. It allows students to see the world from their peers' perspectives who might have a different background than themselves. Christensen states, "As students analyze their own experiences and hear stories from their classmates' lives, we make it possible to 'challenge the myths of our society, to perceive more clearly its realities, and to find alternatives, and ultimately, new directions for action'..."(61). The single focus sense on society becomes multi focused and opens students' minds to change to help students who may write about the struggles they have within their everyday lives.

Here is an article I found that supports Christensen's argument that narrative writing is just as important as formal writing.They state that the point of life is for students to analyze and understand their own experiences so that they can grow as a person. This can be done through narrative writing. I really like the idea of having students keep a journal which eventually expands to a larger project.

I think that this journal activity can be combined with Christensen's Read-Around activity. I really like the idea for my own classroom. In a way, it gives students a space where they can write their thoughts down and then pick an event that they are comfortable expanding. The activity is then transferred from individual into something thats more involving when students go around the circle to share what they wrote and how the writing connects to them. It can become a very multidimensional project to shake things up so the typical lecture style classroom isn't always in default.