Literature for Adolescents

               Due to a combination of issues related to the COVID pandemic and my own busy schedule—it was perhaps not my smartest move taking four graduate courses this semester—twelve hours of my field experience hours have taken the form of watching video-taped lessons on ATLAS, a database of authentic cases of accomplished teaching practice. This course, Literature for Adolescents, requires fourteen hours and the other two hours have taken the form of my visit to a YA section of the library and my interview with an adolescent reader. I have documented both of those on other pages in my website: a link to my library visit is here, and a link to the interview is here. All of the following quotes are from the lesson videos or their accompanying writeups on ATLAS.

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              All except two of the lessons that I watched were ELA. One exception is a high school introduction to sociology class that I watched because it focused on student discussion, an important theme of this course, and because I love sociology; the second exception is an “ESL 4 Transitioning,” course, which I will be referring to as ESL 4, that I watched because it both focused on student discussion as well as falling into the “Formative Assessment” category in ATLAS because it includes a variety of formative assessments in the lesson. The ten other ELA lessons similarly focused on student discussion. Three of those also fell under the “Academic Language” category in ATLAS, another theme of this course, because the teacher “models academic language for the students and/or has provided opportunities for students to learn and use academic language.” The students in the videos were in the range of 6th grade and 12th, although the ones that I chose tended towards later high school. Alright, now that the specific details of what I watched have been covered, let’s get into the interesting part of my reflection.

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              About half of the lessons that I watched were whole group discussions while the rest had the discussions take place in small groups—technically one of the small group lessons used the fishbowl technique which I count as small group since the students outside of the “bowl” were not speaking. It was interesting to watch the fishbowl lesson, case 1283 entitled “Analyzing American Literature Through a Fishbowl Discussion,” since I had not heard of the fishbowl technique before. I think that, for the most part, the format facilitated discussion by making it easier for students to both know when to participate (only when they were in the center) and know how to participate (the students came to the center and asked or answered questions written by students). Moreover, I appreciated how the small group lessons generally had one student who was the group leader and encouraged other students to participate or got the discussion going because it helps the students feel both valued by the teacher and more likely to value other student contributions since the teacher is mostly absent. There were also some groups that further divided the group members into different roles, e.g. recorder, presenter, leader, etc. I felt that this was especially good practice because in Cynthia Brame’s article entitled “Group Work: Using Cooperative Learning Groups Effectively,” she discusses how assigning roles makes group work more effective, and that certainly seemed to occur in the lessons I watched.

            

            The whole class discussions generally seemed to strike a good balance between teacher and student contributions with the teacher coming only briefly to refocus the group, clarify a point, or ask a question. While there were notable exceptions to this, it was unclear to me whether the higher rate of teacher interjections was a necessary scaffold or not. Admittedly, in the reflections some teachers acknowledged that they could have either spoken less, slowed down, or asked a less leading question, but I am still left wondering how you, as a teacher, are supposed to know if more modeling or interjections on your part are needed to enhance student learning. Furthermore, there were multiple instances where the students made comments I felt were biased, prejudiced, or resulted from a misconception. That is not to say I find any fault with the student, to be clear, because we live in a society where we have to actively fight to unlearn biases and prejudices. I am more bringing this point up because the teachers generally did not seem to correct or challenge any of these statements and it made me wonder both how I would personally have handled the situation and which solution is the best call to make.

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               For instance, in case 114 entitled “Analyzing and Discussing “Othello” by William Shakespeare,” one student made a comment about how sometimes we like to root for, or enact, villainous behavior even though we would never want to do that in real life. The issue was the example the student used: killing “hookers” in Grand Theft Auto. The teacher admits in the writeup that he was uncomfortable with this example and wanted to say something but decided to wait and see how the other students would react, especially since this was only the second boy to speak. However, the other students do not directly address it, some even laugh when he spoke, and the teacher still did not say anything. Now, perhaps the teacher said something to the boy after class, but he does not say that he does in his reflection and it makes me wonder—would it have been better to interject and lightly counter or reprimand the student? Or perhaps it would be taken more positively if the student chatted with the teacher after, instead of during, class? I am torn about which response would have been better because I can understand that no one reacts well to getting called out in front of everyone and yet it is also up to the adult, the teacher, in the room to set up a learning environment and atmosphere and by not saying anything is the teacher implicitly condoning it?

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            A similar, yet also starkly different example, occurs in the fishbowl lesson mentioned above. Here, the student makes a biased/prejudiced remark, but rather than saying nothing, the teacher explicitly agrees with this remark. One student talked about the western half of the United States as having “nothing” prior to the Gold Rush or Homestead Act because “it was the last place to get settled” and the teacher, both verbally during the lesson and in the write up, reinforces this statement. On the one hand, I can understand why both the student and the teacher felt that this was the truth, because that is the version of history that we are taught in most K-12 public schools. Yet, regardless of this understanding, I am still critical of the teacher because I expect teachers, if not the students, to be more aware of harmful stereotypes such as this one. For those of you who are not aware, this idea of the “Wild West” that had to be “settled” by Americans perpetuates the idea that, at best, the indigenous peoples living in that area did/do not exist or that, at worst, they do not count because they are inferior peoples and thus are incapable of properly “settling” the land. In this scenario, I suppose my questions are akin to the ones stated above, if I was the teacher, should I have confronted the student about this implicitly biased belief in the moment or should I have waited until after class? And if I do it after class, should I say something in class at a later point in time explaining why this is statement is biased, and frankly not true, so that the rest of the class is also aware, or would that just alienate the originally student more?    

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            On a more positive note, my favorite lesson to watch was case 176, entitled “Building Arguments and Promoting Civil, Democratic Discussions,” a grade 12 AP Language and Composition class discussing the book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Granted, the teacher said that due to the class’ heavy workload, it was mostly filled with the students who are more likely to want to participate and intellectually engage with the material, but I was still highly impressed by the discussion. The caliber of the students’ comments and how often the students were able to link what they said to what their peers had said previously is of particular note. I also really enjoyed how the students used a ball of yarn to mark who was speaking as well as who had spoken after whom and when. Although I acknowledge that the teacher believes it could be too distracting for a less mature group of students, I still want to use the idea in my future classroom primarily because it looked fun and I want to make learning fun for my students whenever possible.

           

           Overall, even though this was an unconventional method of gaining field hours, I felt like I gained a lot from the experience.