Freire and Escamilla

Earlier this fall, my colleagues and I attended the Texas Association of Bilingual Educator’s Conference.  TABE is a place that I love to go to.  I hang out with well known and  influential professors and teachers; I hang out with teachers who are influential and not well known. I learn so much from everyone.  I add to my list of books I need to read and add to my bag of tricks for the classroom. I eat.  It is great to go with people from my school so that we can build those congenial ties that are crucial to collegiate ties.

I also present.  This year, thankfully, I presented with one of my best friends and a great teacher.

Presenting at a conference like this is nerve-wracking and I have to ignore that feeling in order to be successful. I present often and I don’t take the experience for granted. This time I was presenting on immigrant parents’ views of reading comprehension and of the TAKS test, which is Texas’ answer to high stakes testing. Rigor, High Stakes Testing and Comprehension make up my very own Axis of Evil. 

For my students and myself, it isn’t so much that the test is unfair or unflattering, although in  many instances it is; it is that it is completely unknown.  Their parents haven’t lived it, their older siblings haven’t lived it and it is a terrifying, do or die test.  The presentation was about how to “bridge the gap” between the experience of everyone involved and the test.  Specifically, we looked at how everyday activities support true reading comprehension regardless of the level of the student.

I always arrive at the conference thinking that someone, at some point before I present, will say something that I can refer to in my opening. I haven’t been disappointed yet. This habit of picking up other people’s words helps to keep me focused in sessions and, I think, honors other presenters as well.  I always give the original speaker credit. 

This time it was Kathy Escamilla referring to Paolo Freire and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  She spoke as a keynote the opening morning of the conference and by the end of her talk, it was everything I could do not to jump up and down while shouting “Say it, sista!”.  I have heard her speak before, but each time I find something new to inspire me.

She spoke at length about how decision makers who are nervous because the status quo  is changing (aka oppressors) use language that at first startles those with a different view (aka the oppressed or those who speak on their behalf).  After listening to the language for months or even years, those oppressed individuals adopt the same language and use it for themselves. This is done without any rancor or malice on anyone’s part.  I read Freire in college and have carried his writings with me ever since and the idea of education for social change is what gets me up in the morning.  His books spend chapters explaining how language is used by individuals to wield power, or to strip it from others. 

The phrase that Kathy used over and over again that has stuck with me over a month later was, “Good teaching is good teaching.”  It is such a benign phrase.  The implication is that if you are teaching well, everyone in your class should be learning and if they aren’t, it isn’t because of your teaching methods.  Unfortunately, many teachers and principals who use the phrase haven’t looked at their teaching methods critically in several years.  It worries me that as the jargon around Best Practices and Rigor weaves an even stronger net cookie cutter methods will continue to be used under those guises.

How often have I used that phrase myself, always in an attempt to persuade someone to change the way that they are approaching a “problem child”.  Looking back on it, it seems apologetic.  I wonder if it was or if it only seems that way after having heard her speak.  The conversation usually started with an appeal from the other teacher and I would dutifully create a laundry list of suggestions, only to be speared with a scathing look or the phrase, “What am I supposed to do with the other students while this one receives special treatment?”  To which I would reply, “Good teaching is good teaching and it can only benefit the other students in your room.”  As if doing it for the benefit of one child wasn’t enough.

I did incorporate that phrase into my opening and borrowed another from Susan Ohanian, “One size does not fit all.”  We have to teach the kids the way that they learn, and that sometimes means that good teaching is good teaching, even if it is a phrase borrowed from the oppressors. 

The first week

The first week of school was crazy.  We had a full week, which is not what I am used to.  It was long. Its also been a very long time since I taught little ones.  I have moved this year from third grade to a multi-age first and second grade class.

There are some really great things about teaching a multi-age class.  The first is that I have more freedom to react to the needs of the students as opposed to following the district mandated curriculum.

The second is that the kids are able to scaffold each other in more complex ways than I have encountered in other more traditional classrooms.

I’m sure that there are more, but I can’t think of them right now.

The week started off a little weak. We had the typical “setting up the classroom” lessons, the kid who cried for the entire first day and the dismal dismissal duty that took upwards of 45 minutes. 

All in the typical week, though.

Blues Boot Camp

Over the summer, one of my roommates, my husband, a good friend and I decided to organize and then host a dance event.

It was to be the Blues Dance Event to end all events.  We wanted to raise the bar.  We wanted real learning to go on. We did not want an Animal House style party weekend.  We out Duc in charge of organization, made Maureen the Major Domo and I wrote out what we wanted people to learn. Bryan was in charge of money.

Well, it came and went and was a great success.  We had about 120 people come and stay through the entire weekend and are now sifting through the survyes that we sent out afterwards.  People took classes for two days and danced through three nights.

Maureen as Major Domo was great.  She organized the instructors and thought of small details that no one else would have. It was great. Duc kept us all on track and I decided that I am not a detail oriented person.  

We are already beginning to plan for next year. Which should be even cooler.

A second wind after Thanksgiving Break

During the summer I decided that I needed to re-examine the Texas TEKS and make sure that I was actually covering them.  I was surprised to discover that there were technology TEKS that I was responsible for teaching. 

After some searching on the web, I discovered this thing called “Blog”.  I thought that I would be able to use it to kill two birds: technology and writing.  I am not a writer and I am not a good teacher for teaching writing.  Everything the kids write sounds akward to me and I am not certain how to fix that.  So, this seemed perfect.  They could write often about their lives and hopefully for an audience of other kids and then they could read other kids writing and have attainable goals.  Too often, kids try to write like their favorite authors and not like thier peers and they can’t.  They aren’t 40 year olds. 

There were two flaws with that master plan: can first and second graders blog? Are they allowed to in my district? I had three computers, but one didn’t have a hard drive.  I was told that first and second graders are not allowed to blog. I just got the hard drive two weeks ago for the third computer.

So, in the meantime, I bought a digital camera by Fisher Price that I thought we could use as a way to jumpstart journal entries and moved on. The kids have had a great time taking random pictures during recess and lunch.  I have had a great time looking at them, but I haven’t found the time to teach them how to upload them or then to use them to write with. 

This is frustrating.  Having the multi-age class has led to a lot of frustration with my expectations.  The first graders are outnumbered and I tend to forget that they are first graders and then I give them an assignment that they can’t handle. The balancing act is difficult and given that, technology just seems like too big a hurdle.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though-my class is being separated into first graders and second graders and the district will allow first graders to blog now.  I am hoping that that will give me a second wind.