Reading Student writing and learning

Music: Keane, "Hopes and Fears"

Okay, so I jumped the gun a bit with that last entry...I have more to write (I may be having too much fun). I think that I will write one more blog today, a sort of "greatest hits" from what I'm learning from reading my students blogs today. Here I am, blogging about their blogs. That, in itself, is interesting.

1.

Surprises and connections. A student wrote about a connection she recently had between our Lit/Phil class and another class--human behavior, I think--and this surprised the $%#@! out of me! I was fascinated. Here is her post:

So I finished my paper on how the United States will become more sane. I wrote it on the Banking Concept of Education. While writing the paper, I began to realize how many things actually connect. I was shocked to see that ridding this concept actually would help the population to fulfill their human needs. From there, I started to think about how my classes are connecting. Many of the themes talked about in my core lit class correspond to the themes talked about in my human behavior class. This is probably because both are centered around the theme of who am I? What do I know? and given what I know, what can I know? I like to be able to use alternate examples to further produce arguments in the class.

Here's my response:

you can imagine my excitement in reading these past two blog postings. Let me get this straight...you have this assignment in another class, about how to make the U.S. a saner place and it has to connect to this campus, to all of us here at RWU (what a GREAT assignment, by the way!), and for this assignment, you decided to draw on Freire's piece, the one we read in Lit/Phil, in which he outlines the "banking" concept of education and proposes the "problem-posing" method as an alternative? I mean, is this really happening? Is this really a connection across classes? That's great!

2.

Another interesting moment. We've been talking in class about Freire's "banking concept of education"--here, I was able to connect it to one of the students' posts. Here's her words, first, followed by mine:

What is also different from highschool is the context of the reading. For the last ten years, when asked to read for homework, it was generally out of a textbook. Reading for college is completely different. You are given novels that hold some sort of underlying meaning which relates to the class. From this novel, you are challenged to make the connection as to what that is. I am actually enjoying this way of learning much better. Textbooks were never appealing, and at least with the novels, they hold stories and plots.

Here is the comment I wrote to her post:

Also, you are right. Textbooks are a problem. One could write an entire essay on "the textbook as banking method"...I mean, think about it--it's like the way the chairs are set up in our room: they direct all attention at the professor and take the emphasis off you all, or us. The important person, the room set-up suggests, is the professor. Textbooks do the same thing, sort of (I'm just making this up as I go here, riffing). Textbooks organize students' entire learning experiences for them and tell them "everything they should know." They are written by those who, in theory, have all the "knowledge" already and its the job of the textbook to transmit that knowledge to the students. The textbook is the "vehicle" by which banking is accomplished, right? Wow, I never thought of this before.

I love this idea of the textbook as the vehicle of banking or the means of banking. I really never had thought of this. I mean, I have often thought about the problems with textbooks--the stuff in them appears acontextually. If you want to read a Paolo Freire essay, better to pull it out of the book in which it actually appeared, instead of coming into contact with it in a textbook. Textbooks kind of sterilize learning. At the same time, there are good things about textbooks, too. If you're teaching a class for the first time, they give you ways of thinking about how to organize the material. They offer "assignments" and "activities" for students to do...but this is sort of evil, in a way, because, realistically, isn't that the job of a good teacher? But, I have learned SO much from reading the textbooks that I use while teaching. So, I don't want to go all nuts on textbooks, calling them evil. At the same time, I know that when I had to read them, I often found myself falling asleep. I don't anymore. But, I'm older and more patient and more practiced in reading difficult texts. There is something horrible, though, about facing the textbook--it's pages all look the same, the columns are all the same width, the book itself is heavy and awkward. These days, textbook publishers work to try to make them more accessible, adding marginal features and using different fonts, typefaces, organizational designs and layouts, etc. But a textbook is still a textbook--a how-to or a collection. I think I prefer primary sources and documents. I still love the metaphor, though, "textbook as banker."

3.

The blog as opportunity for identifying projects/assignments.
Student wrote:

My biggest weakness as a teacher is my terrible spelling skills. This is one of my biggest fears, that I will be in the front of the class and be unable to spell a word, or a student will notice a misspelled and point it out embarrassing me. There isn't spell check on a chalk board! This past week in my literature class we have been focusing on Phonics. I can read very well, but breaking down the sounds and spelling words is difficult for me. I am convinced that somewhere in my own education I missed this important skill.

To which I responded:

wow...interesting confession. I would like to propose a project (and you could do this for Ass. 3 in this class and I could help, if you like). In my field, the teaching of writing, people have studied this exact question: how do people learn how to spell (my own opinion is that it's a hard thing to learn, some people never get it, the more you read, the better you'll get at it). There is an entire body of literature on how to teach spelling. I'd love to have you look into this, if it appeals to you, for Ass. 3. We could talk more if you like, let me know. If this doesn't interest you, no worries.

If this entry was a little scattered, it's because it was written over the course of two days and I'm in a bit of a rush right now and didn't have time to make sure it all made sense. Hopefully, the gist of it makes sense.

mm