I completely agree with you guys and I feel your frustration. I read Holly’s post earlier and I remember when I was in her shoes this summer. The Fast Track program had me going bananas. We were learning how to put together lesson plans and reading so much theory; however, it was hard because we were studying and writing for invisible kids. Now, that I am almost done with this program I can honestly say that I have learned a lot. It didn’t seem that way at first but once you get in the classroom and take a step back you finally notice where you an use some of the things that you learned in class and through discussion. Holly, you have head start. If I knew what I know now, I would have done things differently in my student teaching. What does it mean to use best practice? I must say that I had no die what best practice was. I believe Kate, Nicole, and Elvia will all agree. However, after presenting a lesson on sensory that I deemed as best practice and having to explain why it is the best for instruction helped me think about why as teachers we use certain lessons and teaching methods. What about the method you are using will benefit our students and what do you hope that they will take way from it. If you keep all these questions in mind when you go into your first student teaching experience and use it as an experience you will be fine. I recommend that you go in without any expectations and thinking that it will be a certain way because eve experience that you have will be different, your students, school environment, and cooperative teacher. Good Luck!
-Kasha
Now that I’ve finally figured out how to contribute to your discussion, could you all tag your contributions so that can attribute them accurately?
—Jill
I love that you guys are interrogating “best practices.” How do we know what works? And for what purposes? What does the research tell us about when and how to apply “best practices”? These are all great things for you to be thinking about as you develop your own pedagogical frameworks and attending tool sets (the tools that align with your vision for ELA teaching).
—Jill
I feel the need to reiterate how Kate responded to your post about not having any student teaching experience. I also feel like I would’ve benefited from having this class earlier in the program. It makes some of the problems and questions that I had when attempting to design a unit plan for my class make so much more sense. I could see how it would be a little disconcerting to read some of the assigned texts without having the experience, but you definitely will have an easier time when it comes to your student teaching and designing curriculum for your students having had this class first.
Holly-
I can completely understand your frustration with not having any student teaching experience yet…however, I hope you do not think that your enrollment in this class is untimely and may have better served you at the end of your NYU studies! First, I have been longing for this type of curriculum design class since I began one year ago! I can tell you that it DEFINITELY would have helped me tremendously to have this experience prior to beginning my classroom teaching.
Furthermore, beginning this process of researching as an educator is and will continue to be helpful to us at all stages of our education careers. If anything, you have a jump start on beginning to reflect, analyze and study your own experiences in the classroom. From your first day at your placement, you will already be aware of certain methodologies that are (or are obviously NOT) put into practice. Developing this type of mentality as a reflective practitioner will only enrich your student teaching placement further…
Lastly, I still am not certain what a “best practice” is…and I had an entire student teaching course centered around presenting “best practices” to the class! This class has actually helped my understanding of a best practice, because I now realize that “best practice” is a loose and somewhat gray term. How are these best practices established and developed…through research!
Chin up!
Kate
As a novice “researcher” myself, I am intrigued by this idea of writing research journal articles as a means teacher professional development. Even with my limited experience student teaching, my research for the annotated bibliography has thoroughly enriched my understanding of literacy development in urban classroom settings. This type of study is a wonderful way of pursuing areas of education in which I am personally invested and interested. It seems to be a great way to prevent oneself from getting stuck in a rut, professional and personal development.
Like many other English teachers, I also moonlight as a “writer.” This type of writing will not only enhance my personal repertoire, but it will help me to continually reflect and discern my own teaching practices. Furthermore, this type of writing is a way to keep abreast the theoretical and pedagogical developments in education research.
In my graduate courses, I have heard time and time again how common it is for practicing teachers to disassociate from theoretical readings and methodology once they are swamped with the daily burdens of classroom teaching. While it goes without saying that writing for publication is a time-consuming and extensive process, continuing this type of work, even incrementally, is a way for classroom teachers to continually adapt and grow within the field. I often talk about the importance of teaching students the value in developing their own voice. How is this different for us as educators? Just as students’ opinions, thoughts and experiences bring value to the classroom, so too may our own experiences and observations bring insight to our fellow educators.
Kate
I know I’m likely the only one in our class that doesn’t have any sort of teaching/student teaching under her belt. It’s been a bit discouraging reading these research articles and learning about publishing articles for “best practice”, having never truly “practiced” teaching.
Right now all I have to go on is my experience as a student and what I’ve learned from my current program of study. I guess I understand why a class like Curriculum Research is taken by those who are about to graduate!
I understand the connection between the readings, our text and what I believe to be “best practice”, however so I’m not feeling completely lost! It’s actually making me excited to start student teaching; that way I’ll have a better sense of why we plan the curriculum, and the process behind knowing your learners, their interests and how to apply that to your subject matter.
-Holly-
I know its only been a week since we have began reading for this course; however, I am really starting to see how all the reading is connecting to curriculum and research. The Wollman-Bonilla article, “Does Anybody Really Care” gave me insight on what it is that we do as educators. It helped comfirm why I want to teach and what I want to help students get out of education. Caring about your craft and your students are so important in the teaching profession. I really enjoyed the Wollman-Bonilla article because she cared so much about research that she defined it as social action. She argued that “as researchers we must honor this trust by taking responsilbility for helping to make education valuable”( Wollman-Bonilla 2002). She also explains that “social action provides a witness to to what is widely ignored, to what might be, and to trust families place on the value of education” (Wollman-Bonilla). I grew up in a disadvantaged area were the school system was not the best; therefore, this article really helped me think about my experience and the research that I am gathering fom my teaching experience. I am inspired to take what I care about and use it to help disadvantage minority students excel in education and provide them with skills to compete with students who are socially and academically advantaged.
-Kasha
Hey ladies. Hope everyone had a good weekend! I’m just now getting through the readings due for tomorrow and wanted to think a little bit more on what research means for the average educator, especially after reading the Wollman-Bonilla article.
What she explores is much of what we learn in the Steinhardt Teaching and Learning programs. It’s my personal opinion and observation that NYU tends to focus on cultivating the reflective practicioner- a person who actively seeks betterment in their craft to better serve their students. This can absolutely be done in partnership with exploring the research of other theorists in our field. Teaching is indeed a practice, just as those in the medical and law fields, and it is highly necessary to stay knowledgeable and current in order to succeed.
I’m still reading… I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts once I get through the rest of the articles.
-Holly-
Ed Theatre! I’m extremely familiar with enthography, and have studied under Johnny Saldana, a popular qualitative researcher in the field. He worked with us to create our own ethnographic monologues. It was a great experience and I plan to use it in my classroom— especially when trying to cultivate empathy and understanding.
I’m very familiar with Anna Deavere Smith’s work; it’s definitely a nice take on enthodrama. Thanks, Kasha!
-Holly-
[video]
our futures!
As I read the reading for this evenings class I was particularly interested in the article on ethnographic research. As a whole we are all interested in differentiation and language; therefore, I started putting some things together as we began to blog about curriculum. I found ethnography to be useful in differentiation and beneficial as we define understanding. “Ethnography is grounded in theories of culture and allows researchers to view literacy development, instruction, learning, and practice as it occurs naturally in social-cultural contexts” (Purcell-Gates 93). It is rooted in the concept of culture and allows researchers to live in the world amongst its participants. Yesterday, in class we spoke about the Six Facets of Understanding and how they are essential to instruction and planning. We expressed that in order to be successful creating curriculum and making sure our students are learning we must get to learn them first; especially, as we began to use the method of backwards planning. What do our students like, what do they know, and what do I need to teach them to lead them in the direction I want them to go? These are all questions that we ask ourselves as educators. I believe if we used ethnographic research and involve it within our planning we can help teach reading and writing because we will become familiar with what our students know and what we need to help them with to become successful participants. We can take what they know already know from outside the classroom and value it.
-Kasha
Holly- I really liked that passage also. I was really interested in the idea of the family dialog journals as a way to sharpen students understanding of audience, especially in light of our curriculum map and one of our goals being the understanding of audience and how that affects narrative structure. I really like the idea of using the concept of intended audience as a way to help students be more deliberate and clear in their writing. This article (Teaching Science Writing…) definitely got my mind going on different ways to approach teaching writing.