Sarah Kristiansen SED 445

This Nate Bowling article was one of the first articles I came across this semester. It was extremely uncomfortable reading it, uncomfortable with the idea that someone--a teacher no less--would tell me that America doesn't care what happens to black students. OF COURSE I CARE! I felt immediately defensive but kept reading. One of the speakers at a conference I recently attended spoke about striving for equity and social justice in the classroom and started the conversation by saying that we would be discussing things that made us uncomfortable, and she wanted us to lean into that discomfort. Bowling makes his feelings very clear: segregation is alive and well in the U.S. and the white community is totally okay with it. Once more, my immediate internal response was to feel defensive. I reminded myself of something I often tell my own kids, that just because it isn't an issue in YOUR life doesn't mean it isn't the most important issue in someone else's. Lean in. ...

I have spent the last two Saturdays at education conferences, the Blended and Personalized Learning Conference at the Rhode Island Convention Center and the Rhode Island Writing Project Spring Conference at Roger Williams University. Blended Learning Conference The BPLC was huge. Walking into the registration area, surrounded by the vendors who had set up in the hallway, showing the new technologies to make teaching and learning more streamlined and effective, it felt more like a tech conference than a teaching conference! I went to five breakout sessions and sat through an inspiring keynote address at lunch. I learned about personalized learning, about project-based learning, tools to gather data. But for me, the most rewarding session was the first one I attended that day. Hosted by LeeAndra Kahn, it was called "Infusing Equity and Cultural Relevance in our Learning Environments." She told us to "lean into the discomfort" that inevitably comes with convers...

I'm not sure how many of my classmates still read my blog posts...I know I am SERIOUSLY long-winded. :) I was so excited to read the 6+1 Trait writing piece. We have spent so much time talking about how formulaic writing is the least effective strategy for teaching writing, which I will freely admit came as a surprise to me. For me, the problem with getting rid of the formula is that it left no guidelines at all for writing, no way to create a framework for students who are just learning to write. It just felt like setting them to the task of writing without a clear path seems like it would be a herculean task and one that would not inspire a love of writing in students. THEN I read this article. This is the not-formula formula that I have been looking for. These traits seem to be the traits that exist in all great writing, no matter the genre, and they act as rough boundaries instead of an unyielding formula. That's a win. The other part about these traits that I like ...

1. Michelle Kenney’s article “The Politics of the Paragraph” discusses the problems with teaching the five-paragraph essay. She disputes one common thought on formulaic writing, that writing formulas are like training wheels, and you need to “know the rules in order to break them.” In your own experience in high school, did you learn the five-paragraph formula or other formulaic writing? Did you find that it helped you become a better writer? If you were taught formulaic writing in school, did you have any issues when you started writing on the college level? Or did you find that formulaic writing helped prepared you for college writing?   I absolutely learned to write with a formula. I can remember learning the 5-paragraph essay format in high school, and once I understood how to formulate that kind of essay, I applied it across the board to other essays, longer papers, all writing assignments. I found the formula to be an easy way to write an expository essay. When I got to co...

When this class started, I mistakenly referred to Kelly Gallagher as "she." Every time I reference a new text since then, I read a little about the author, to make sure I'm using not only the correct pronoun, but I also want to know a little about the author. It's like reading the labels on food in the grocery store. I noted that Danling Fu learned how to write in English when she was in grad school, and as such has an important perspective as an English Language Learner, what works and doesn't. Gives me confidence that what I'm reading is important and accurate. Something that pops up early and often in this book is the idea of identifying students' home cultures as an asset instead of a deficiency. When she refers to her students as "funds of knowledge" it reminds me of literacy practices and Emdin's co-teaching article, which references students as experts. I think it's critical to recognize the importance of a student's first-...

looking forward to the class twitter feed! This article really hit me in the gut. https://t.co/2aI9VtjFTT #meaningfulwriters — Sarah Kristiansen (@skristiansen) January 22, 2017 When I started reading Michelle Kenney's article, "The Politics of the Paragraph," I knew I had read it before. A quick scan of my twitter feed and I found that I had read it just after this class had begun, and felt the need to share it. I noted that it "hit me in the gut" because the notion that formulaic writing was NOT the most effective way to teach students how to write was an absolute shock. I really thought that teaching my 13-year old how to master the five paragraph essay was going to be the secret to helping him become a better writer. Shows how much I knew! I have always thought, as Kenney touches on, that formulaic writing acted like training wheels for writers. But I am finally starting to understand that those kinds of restrictions and strict adherence to a form...

I am really glad to see an entire week of assignments dedicated to personalized learning. I feel like personalized learning is coming at me from many different directions--it started with a Socratic  seminar in my SED 406 class last semester (when Kelli-Lynne and I had to research and play the role of Don Halquist, remember, Kelli?), I attended the EdCamp professional development earlier in the semester and this was a major topic that was discussed, I have a dear friend who works for the Highlander Institute who is a major supporter of personalized learning, and another good friend is a high school teacher in Barrington and will be presenting at the Blended Learning Conference in April. Needless to say, this is not the first time I'm hearing about personalized learning. NETFLIXING HUMAN CAPITAL I tackled the Roberts-Mahoney piece first, and it might be the first time I've read something describing the detriments of big data. And maybe she doesn't directly say that data ...

Poetry. Groan. I generally dreaded this unit in high school, with only one exception. Found nothing redeeming from my poetry class at CCRI. Until I read these chapters, I had imagined that when it came time to teach a poetry unit to my students, I would spend my time trying fitfully to teach students to find meaning in poems that I myself wasn't entirely sure I could find myself. Don't get me wrong, I like poetry. But almost every scholarly interaction with it has meant a teacher has tried to tell me what a poem means, whether I could see it or not. I never thought of a poetry as a bridge to connect to my students, and to help them connect to each other, and to their world. I am happy to be schooled by Linda Christensen. Like narratives, students are able to use their own voice and their own life experiences when writing poetry. This is another chapter that I marked up like crazy with my highlighter. I can see myself returning to this chapter for tangible lesson ideas. ...

This week's readings were jam packed with information and more challenges to the way I see myself as a teacher.  My highlighter was working overtime, I don't want to forget any of the important nuggets of information. As I read all of the passages, I continued to return to the idea that the most important part of my teaching will be to build authentic relationships with my students. CO-TEACHING The Edmin reading was not what I expected it to be. I was anticipating some strategies to teach with another adult, and the beginning of the piece reinforced that notion. While he describes the different ways that educators co-teach, it was the principle of co-teaching with the students that really surprised me. It does not escape my notice that I am continually surprised by what I'm reading. As a middle-aged mom, I thought I innately understood how to be a teacher, and I'm constantly reminded of how much I have yet to learn.  I especially liked Edmin's description of t...

THE STANDARDS After reading both the NCTE standards and the Common Core standards, I'm once again reminded that they are not so unreasonable. As a parent with an elementary and middle schooler, the general sentiment among parents is that standards are the enemy--or rather, that COMMON CORE is the enemy. I've always disagreed with that blanket statement, and re-reading the standards reminds me that it is indeed not only reasonable to expect kids to know most of what they are asking for, but if every parent read them, they'd probably assume this was already happening, and be totally on board with it. One concept appears again and again in the standards, and that is that a student should be able to "synthesize" text. This is something I'm eager to learn how to teach--teaching students to be critical thinkers, to make connections between their texts and to the world around them is clearly vitally important. It seems, however, that teaching critical thinking an...

Deficit Ideologies In the article "Failing Still to Address Poverty Directly: Growth Mindset as Deficit Ideology" by P.L. Thomas , I thought it was remarkable to read it as a pre-service teacher and assume that the words "growth mindset" were going to be a good thing. As Thomas was quoting Carol Dwek who laid out definitions of fixed and growth mindsets. I found myself nodding along with the idea of the positive notion of a growth mindset. Seems like it made sense to me! I had to recognize that as a white, middle-class student, a growth mindset was easy to imagine because I didn't have to face what Thomas refers to as "two significant flaws with the growth mindset," namely the way that this ideology blames the student, and that it neglects to address the root of the problem, poverty itself. The term "deficit ideology" was new to me as well, and I thought that his comparison to a teacher who grades an exam as "100-30=70%" made a ...

Writing is Hard The first chapter of Kelly Gallagher's book makes some fundamental aspects of writing and teaching writing abundantly clear. Writing is hard. Most of the country is not proficient in writing. The Top Ten Writing Wrongs in Secondary Schools gives some clear and explicit reasons why she feels that way. In particular, the idea that teachers assign writing without teaching students how to write resonated with me, as a mom of a reluctant 8th grade writer. One of her other points, which addresses tracking--another topic that concerns me with public schools--is that "students in the low track are more likely to do less writing and more worksheets..." and that the students "who need twice as much writing instruction end up receiving half of the writing instruction of others." How do we as educators level this playing field, and give all of the students what they need? I would like to etch the quote "no one rises to low expectations" somewher...