This learning segment focused on engaging students in becoming critical thinkers and effective communicators through writing. My students read excerpt of Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela and watched the film Invictus in preparation for a writing assignment. In this assignment, the students developed an expository-style paragraph, with a thesis and evidence from both the film and the text to support their claims.
I believe that it would have substantially benefitted this group of students to go through this whole unit at a much faster pace. Due to certain circumstances, some under my control and some not, the entire unit from start to finish was about six weeks long. Three of those weeks were spent reading different portions of Long Walk to Freedom, only. The students were not as engaged as I would have hoped in the readings. Despite giving some background information, I was not personally comfortable teaching South African history; I feel that I may have glossed over some very important facts, which would have created greater historical context and comprehension for the students. I would have liked to be able to work with the students’ history teacher to make this an interdisciplinary unit, in which they would have learned the historical and political context of President Mandela becoming president. I think that involving the history classes in this unit would have reinforced many of the main concepts and big ideas that I wanted my students to learn and could have helped with the timing of the unit. By the time the students had finished reading the text, they were disengaged and unenthusiastic. I attribute this to the extended period of time over which the text was read. Their lack of interested and motivation lowered their comprehension of the text, even though the reading level of the text was consistent. I feel that if the students had been more engaged in the reading the whole time they would have gone into the writing portion of the unit with stronger ideas and examples to support their points.
In retrospect, I would also have differentiated this unit differently. Much of the way that I differentiated this lesson for my students with IEPs and lower skill levels was to reduce the amount of writing they had to do. In the future, I would modify the reading and guiding questions as well, to assist in their overall understanding of the text. Additionally, I recently found a graphic novel version of Long Walk to Freedom, which I was unable to use for these students due to timing. However, in future teachings of this unit, I might use portions of the graphic novel to support some of all of my students’ understanding of the complex history and concepts, which Mandela discusses in his writing.
Actions for Improved Practice and Professional Development
In mid-February, I began working with this group of students. This change mid-year created a great learning curve and posed many unexpected challenges for me. Behavior management in the setting of this school has been a constant challenge that I have been working to overcome. This is especially so as the end of the school year draws near. For future, I must continue to work to develop my skills in Danielson’s Domain 2, focusing on classroom management. As a first year teacher, I have struggled with pacing, as evidenced by this unit in particular. In my transition as the lead teacher in this classroom, the pace of my lessons was pushed even further to its limits because I am constantly focusing on managing the behavioral issues in the classroom. In the future, I would like to have a classroom in which a unit or lesson is not held up because of behavioral issues. I would like to spend time at the beginning of the year working on developing systems and consequences for behavior management that would carry through the entire year and would not hinder any learning.
Connections
As a teacher of English, my role in a student’s literacy education is incredibly important and central. In AUSL schools, it is made evident that every teacher is responsible for a student’s literacy education and growth. But in the English Language Arts classroom, a student has the opportunity to focus specifically on learning to love reading and writing, not just the skills involved. This love of reading and writing is what drew me into teaching English Language Arts. Literacy is much more than something that students may or may not learn to love; it is a civil right (Plaut, 2009, p. 2). It is vitally important that our students walk away from their educational experiences with the tools to be successful in our future economy. Right now those tools are literacy and critical thinking. In this and all units, I strive to develop my students’ literacy and critical thinking skills because, “If we do not create classes, lessons, and school cultures that promote and encourage thinking, then we are indoctrinating rather than educating” (Woods, 2009, p.14). Literacy and critical thinking instruction go hand in hand. As teachers of urban students it is our responsibility to ensure that our students have sufficient practice and learning in both of these areas before leaving our classrooms. Statistics show that children who cannot read by the time they enter high school are more likely to be incarcerated at some point in life. Even though the United States only represents 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s inmates (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p.24). As teachers, we are the people responsible for mitigating that statistic, and providing our students with true access to their civil rights.
Becoming a competitive member of the world’s workforce no longer means that our students can simply slide through school with minimal knowledge acquisition. Darling-Hammond (2010) states:
...education can no longer be productively focused primarily on the transmission of pieces of information that, once memorized, comprise a stable storehouse of knowledge. Instead, schools must teach disciplinary knowledge in ways that focus on central concepts and help students learn how to think critically and learn for themselves, so that they can use knowledge in new situations and manage the demands of changing information, technologies, jobs, and social conditions. (p.4)
Especially in urban settings, teachers, schools, and communities must encourage and build cultures around literacy and critical thinking in order to prepare our students for the economy that they are facing when they leave our doors.
Finally, as a teacher in an AUSL school, which serves mainly a minority population that comes from low-income communities, I have seen first hand the importance of being able to build relationships with the students and the importance of strong relationships among the adults in the building. Sadly, “[c]hildren in our bottom-tier schools are going to be disproportionately served by teachers with weak skills and bad attitudes- and who won’t be staying around long, in any case” (Payne, 2010, p.71). This makes it impossible to develop the kinds of relationships necessary for truly impactful learning to take place. At the systems level, according to Payne (2008), “Reform after reform fails because of nothing more complicated than the sheer inability of adults to cooperate with one another” (p. 6). If the adults cannot come together for the good of the students and have equal understanding and values, no reform will ever make a difference for the children. As the leaders and role models for these children, we must truly listen to and trust each other. It is important that all adults see the big picture and can foster strong interpersonal relationships, for the good of the students that they are serving.
