This week Prof Clayton said that the “number one rule of teaching is: know your audience.” There are/she has a few number one rules, I think, and Johanna Mustacchi seems to share at least a few of them, and gave us a little show and tell incorporating some of those right at the top of her presentation. Ms. Mustacchi opened by inviting us to make ourselves known – she said, ““I just want to start by getting an idea of where you’re all coming from…[and find out] what’s your angle…” She modeled for us: how to not wait for a moment to engage your students in what you’re doing; get to know your students; help your students find a reason to identify with what you’re doing. “Excellent!” Mustacchi said, to each one of us after we answered her initial question --- and we hadn’t said much – just our names, our fields of interest. With that “Excellent!” she was establishing a culture of success, letting us know she appreciated us, that we had much to offer, before she’d ever gotten to the “content”. To start with, it wasn’t our academic literacy or achievement she was valuing – it was our engaged presence. That’s quite something to know about how to address students, and it transcends all content areas. Success with the content follows – at least, the path leading to success has begun to be cleared. As the Cazden “Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” article noted, “We are, indeed, designers of our social futures.” It’s up to us.
We can appreciate each other (or not), but appreciation, both in terms of valuing and understanding, is what will make anyone feel welcome, and feeling welcome just opens the door to the world of Success, in this case, success with academic literacy – and keeps it open. Mustacchi talked about appreciating students’ facility with IM language, for example – in the same terms and in the same way that Delpit or Ladson-Billings write about appreciating students’ home languages, even while we have to make sure our students understand the “cash” language and can use it appropriately.
More of the evening was about what’s “fair” – Prof Clayton said that adolescents have a strong sense of what’s fair and what’s not – and “they can get really worked up around that.” Ms. Mustacchi appreciated everyone for saying their names and fields of interest – that’s fair! The prof reminded us that academic literacy is “power” in our society – and that not everyone has it – not fair! There’s a “disconnect – we’re not reaching all the students” – not fair! We’re not adolescents – but still – we should be getting all worked up about that!
The theme of the current issue (Spring 2008) of the Harvard Educational Review is “adolescent literacy” and well worth looking at (available of course online at the Pace Library). Wish I could give you a link and make it easy, but I’m still in the troglodyte phase of my metamorphosis… and flying in the face of Ms. Mustacchi’s judgment that “to be completely cyber-literate is one of the most important things in the world today” – I’ll just have to get there a bit later…
Spanning the gap from multiliteracies to academic literacy, bridging the achievement gap, striving for social justice – this reform is a process, and it takes time, and money. We’ll write terrific grant proposals and gain a few hundred dollars here and there – but where’s the real money going to come from? Do we or don’t we have to train all the teachers? What’s the critical mass in terms of buy-in – does everyone have to believe this is the way to go, or will a few hands-full of us be enough? What does it take to make this movement really soar?
3 comments:
Sounds like an interesting class. I enjoyed reading Johanna Mustacchi's article and approach to integrating media into the middle school. She uses media to engage (since it is very important and interesting to students of this age)- in a sense showing students that she appreciates what is important to them and what they have to offer. Media is also used to promote critical thinking in the students as they learn to look behind the messages that the media is sending through education and actual hands on production of each type of medium. The lessons allow for an appreciation of individual identities which are important to middle school students. They seem to really grow as learners as they strive to show thier individual identities and interests off in a medium that is relevant and interesting to them.
We did have a brief, but interesting discussion on justice and fairness. We've touched on "fair" a few times in class. What does it mean to be fair to our students? Does it mean that every child gets exactly the same treatment? If so, is it fair to give a student with an IEP or 509 plan extra time on a test, or headphones, or any other accomodation?
In a previous class, we watched a video in which these issues were discussed, and the presenter defined fair as giving each student what he or she needs to succeed--to level the playing field. Yes, some children may have more than others, but fair is a more complex concept than equal. We have to weigh so many other factors into our decisions to help balance our appearance of equality and our desire to be fair. It doesn't sound like an easy task, but one that we will need to struggle with continuously—to be perceived as unfair is surely perilous.
Great article from Pew that goes right to the heart of what Johanna was talking about:
Teen Content Creators
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