Readicide Response

This is for Jamie, at her request


When I first looked at this book, the title struck me.  I didn't think it was a real word and had to look it up.  While it isn't a word, it is a blend which pretty much means the destruction of reading.  I thought this was pretty interesting paired with the rest of the title stating that schools themselves are killing reading.  Who knew that schools were the ones killing reading.  It makes sense because with all of the high stakes testing, more and more reading is crammed into students, and the effect seems negative.  In the first chapter he talks about test cheating and how predominant it has become.  But it isn't the students who are cheating, its the teachers and administration.  They did this because of bonus's, which explains why they did it.  This also shows how education has seriously shifted from the student to the political side of the spectrum.  What harm is there in fudging some test scores in order to get a bonus?  A lot of harm when you get caught it seems.  Thinking about this, asked myself why it was happening.  The answer I thought of was the high stakes testing and who it affects.  The obvious answer is that it affects students the most, but it also affect teachers and other administration.  In the case of the "Texas Miracle", and many other school systems during NCLB, teachers jobs rode on their students success.  As a teacher candidate I always hear about how education is about the students.  But now because it is a political matter, the idea and human nature involved has shifted greatly.  While back before education became political, teachers maybe taught for the students.  Now their job depends on students achievement.  I think it is unwise to believe that most teachers will put students first. Most will put their own safety and security before them.  When faced with losing a job, teaching to the test or fudging scores seems like a good option.  The game has been created for educators, but now that teachers are playing the game to wisely, they are finding that the game is flawed because it isn't about students but their achievement on paper.  This chapter raised a lot of questions for me, mainly questions that he discusses.  This takes a very good look at the realistic side of what is really happening in education today.

The metaphor of the airplane seeing the grand canyon but only on one side was a interesting analogy as to how education is only benefiting certain students.  The political cartoon in the beginning also struck me as funny yet depressing.  The cartoon was the one about the student asking if it was gonna be on the test.  This struck me as interesting because I look back at my education as a kid.  From what I can remember I don't ever remember worrying about what was gonna be on the test.  Maybe i did but don't remember, but I am sure that it wasn't a priority for me.  In college i find myself asking if i will be assessed on something.  If i hear that something is not gonna be on the test, I don't care what it is.  I have developed an attitude where I know I can coast through school with my 3.5 if I pay extra attention to what is required of me.  I see this as a good thing and a bad thing.  To me, a 3.5 overall is pretty good and I am pleased with myself.  I know the minimum, and i know where i can coast comfortably.  Is it me or the system that creates that idea in me?  I don't know.  I am one of those people who has grown accustomed to learning to the test.  I don't find it a bad thing but I don't feel challenged most of the time and get pissy when I think about how much class time i have spent coasting and doing 3.5 quality grade work.  I am done ranting, for now.

In chapter two, it angered me to read the section about how schools have eliminated novels in order to create more time for testing and test prep.  This really shows that schools don't value reading.  The "value" word comes across as a buzzword to me.  It is a flashy new word that has no meaning.  It has no meaning or is immeasurable, but looks good on paper.  How much do schools value reading?  If schools value reading then why are students force fed classics that possibly turn them off to further reading.  I read all sorts of conglomerate book series when i was a kid.  probably hundreds.  around middle school i stopped and i remember why.  "To Kill a Mockingbird".  I hated that book with a  passion.  Living in the South, anti slavery and novels of the such were force fed to us.  Where was the value in that? Slavery was wrong and so were Jim crow laws.  I agree that teachers should take a stand when it comes to test taking vs. reading.  Although, I worry that many teachers will not go this route because it isn't part of the education game.  People like Gallagher really care about student success, which makes me happy that there is people like that out there who are willing and do take a stand.  After reading this, I found it all very interesting and eye opening for lack of a better word.  I looked at myself and asked if i could do this.  I don't know, I love reading and writing and have a desire to help people, but I am not sure I would be one to take a stand.  While it may seem weird to say, I see myself as a teacher who wants to teach but cares for my own job security first.  This book really made me look at myself.  Does that mean I shouldn't teach if i am not ready to stand up for preventing readicide?  I don't know.  As I progress through the ED sequence, I find myself less and less interested than I had started.  Books like these really depress me when I think about education.  Readicide is the fact of the matter about what is happening.  He gives great ways to combat readicide and I hope that they will happen.

I particularly liked the section on over analyzation of texts and novels.  Teachers are getting so in depth in texts that it becomes trivial and meaningless what they are looking at.  This struck true to me because I have seen it for myself. While in college, it was a image for me to relate.  I had a nameless professor who said there was one single important word in the whole book and we essentially analyzed the book around that single aspect.  Madness.  Were we so deep into the book that we were looking for pennies? maybe.  It was a perspective though, and seeing different perspectives is good for honing the skill of reading from different perspectives.  The kill-a-reader-casserole was pretty funny, but once again and depressing.  Novels lose their original idea when they are taken out of context.  I understand that those pulled portions have something that students are supposed to find and interpret.  Feeding little bits of texts seems to be becoming the norm for education, but at the same time we value reading.  I guess we value reading [when we feel like it and in little spurts].

This book was a good read and i picked up a lot of valid questions that I had ever thought of.  Like other texts we have read that give solutions to problems, I really liked it for that reason..  It is easy to find texts about issues and what needs to change but not how to do it.  I am one of those people most likely.  This book gives real examples with solutions tailored for each situation.  It is easy to say don't do it that way, do it the right way.  Gallagher gives us the problem and then gives solutions to match each, which I really liked.  It wasn't just stock answers, every solution was different because of the circumstances.  This is realistic to me because no two problems are the same, so no two solutions will be the same.

Response to "Flipped Classrooms"

The article that I decided to read was one about flipping classrooms.  The method is that instead of learning in the classroom and doing homework outside, the class is conducted through videos and online materials for the students to watch at home and they come to class to clarify and discuss.  The article points describes how it works, without going into too much mundane details.  It also does not incorporate any statistics about how this method works.  I imagine that this method is still pretty alien to most teachers and isn't something that one can just do.  It takes a tech savvy person and someone who is willing to change their whole lesson plan to work around it.

The article has another aspect that is intriguing to me.  It talks about how parents can support a flipped classroom and how it can be beneficial to both the student and parent.  Since all the material is found online, both students and parents can access it and watch , rewind, and pause to learn more.  Now parents can be apart of the learning process right next to their children.  Many parents are and can be reluctant to help their children because they don't know what they are learning and probably don't remember the course material off the top of their head.  Being able to watch videos and have all needed text at their fingertips, students will be able to take time with material rather than having to cram it all in in a short 1 hour session.  This can be a good or bad thing because it creates responsibility in students.  Not all students are interested in learning and if we tell ourselves that they are, we are lying to ourselves.  In order to do well and actually learn, students will have to use their own time and use it wisely to fulfill the requirements of the flipped classroom.  I think that some sort of accountability measure should be in place to ensure that students watch and do the lessons.

I think that this is a great idea, but is going to be a tough sell to whole school districts.  And the logistics seems pretty crazy when you really look at it.  It seems that the education pendulum is swinging towards a less homework scenario, yet flipped classrooms are homework of lessons, so they are kind of mandatory.  This may be okay with 1 or 2 classes, but if you have the whole school using this method, the amount of material that has to be covered out of class will be astronomical and require a lot of time.  I am not saying that students shouldn't have to do homework, I just imagine that past a certain point, students wont do it.  Every student will have their breaking point and some are more interested in learning than others.  I think that flipped classrooms will allow the students who want to excel to excel while the ones who don't care will continue not to care and not do work.  But that is the big problem with education today; how to motivate students to want to learn.  I think that it is good to set a goal to motivate all students to learn, but a goal that is unobtainable.  We want everyone to be smart and productive members of society.  That is  a good start i think.  That is why I think flipped classrooms will be a good idea, but only for those who want to learn.  Why should teachers worry about the unmotivated and non caring population of students(which seems awfully high nowadays)?  There is a quote that I always liked even though it is a bit brash; The world needs plenty of bartenders.  This is true and a bit depressing.  When does teaching students become about motivating the uncaring and not the wanting learners?  Maybe flipped classrooms will help excel students who value learning.  Does the world need everyone to be a Doctor? No, because then we would still need bartenders.

Response to Tovani

The first thing that came to me as I read this book was that it seemed like it was very practical.  Most of the other texts we have read were all great insight and theories to teaching and methods, yet didn't seem like they were practical for all situations.  I really like how there were a ton of anecdotes in the story, it made it more of a better read rather than conjecture and theorizing.  The other texts seemed to lean on the "If...therefore" type of arguments.  Almost like they were trying to be logically correct more than practical.  Tovani gives practical insight and some really good ideas that I think could be useful in the classroom.

Chapter 1 hooked me right away when I saw the title was labeled "fake reading".  She really looks at who students are in terms of reading and quickly dispels the idea that just because students read that they comprehend.  She gave some great ways to chart the traits of effective vs. noneffective readers.  It is absurd to think that just because we as teachers make students read over and over again that they understand it.  Maybe there is osmosis at work.  The osmosis joke is worn out and I am sorry for using it. It was interesting that there are I imagine that students fake read all the time in order to get done with a task.  That arises some big questions like how do we get them to be engaged or is there a way to make it so they cant just fake read a document.It was also very neat how she described how she got her students how to open up to her about fake reading at the start of their classes together.

The chapter on types of struggling readers was interesting, breaking down the two types of resistive and word callers.  It is interesting that she noted that students can get by by using these struggling readers tactics but it will bite them in the end as they don't learn anything.  The last chapter was interesting too when it talks about getting students to be able to recognize their own reading habits.  It is something that I quite frequently overlook.  When I am reading and don't understand a passage, I will generally power through and forget about it once I get past it.  I think it is a very good idea to get kids to be conscious of their own reading and recognize what they are comprehending.  It is so easy to read something and forget about it.  This books makes me think twice about how easy it is to fake read texts just to finish them.  It will be interesting to try to combat that in the classroom and I hope the tools here will be a big help.

Response to "A Response-Based Approach to Reading Literature"

Out of all of the articles we have read for these blog postings, this one is the one that has most interested me.  The others are more of "perfect world" scenarios.  The others had good ideas and were sound pedagogy's but made me skeptical knowing that full implementation would be hard if not impossible.  This article shows a good way to teach literature in a different manner than lecturing.  The discussion based model really lets students come up with their own ideas about how to interpret literature.  Not all students will like all literature that they have to read in school, but if they are allowed to come up with their own ideas about why they liked or didn't like something, it will make it more meaningful to them.  When teachers force a certain way of looking at literature on students, it creates two different outcomes.  Students will either agree or disagree with the teachers point of view about a piece of literature.  While it is good for some, it wont get the students who had other ideas to keep reading.  Students should be given a  point of view but allowed to create their own.

This brings me to my next thought about the matter of literature.  Why is "classic literature" being forced down students throats?  The obvious answer is that it is classic literature.  It is classic.  That does not mean anything to students now.  Literature is so non appealing to them because they are so far removed from the material that they are having to read.  If I had a choice, I would forgo Romeo and Juliet for Star Wars.  When you ask why something is considered classic literature, people always bring up the elements within such as human nature, memisis, or theme.  3/4 of everything out there whether it be movies or new books contain the same elements.  Its sad and all that slavery happened, but no one gives a hoot about Huck Finn anymore.  Getting students interested in what they want to learn means breaking teaching traditions.  Curriculum and standards are being revamped every other decade, maybe the material should be revamped also.  Change the teaching method all we want and Romeo and Juliet will still suck to the majority of students.

Now that my rant is over I want to say that I completely agree with his method of teaching.  Giving students their own method of interpretation will make for  better discussion and ideas and theories about literature.  We have all had the experience where we have thought we had a pretty good idea of something, and then someone else's idea makes you rethink your idea.  This is where the skill based learning makes sense to me.  The student has the skill to decide if Romeo was an idiot or not.  There is no right or wrong answer, but a process.  I am still unsure of how to evaluate that skill even though I understand the importance.

This is a good article and i am going to save it because I see myself doing discussion based teaching.  This provides excellent and proven examples about how to effectively run a classroom and make literature more in tune with students as they create their own theories about pieces.