Today was the first day of a long-term co-teaching gig I am doing at East with three teachers in whose classroom I've been observing as part of my ethnography. Over the past months of the ethnography I have shared ideas about my observations and given them some critical literacy references to read. They've been really receptive and we came up with a plan to co-teach. I couldn't be more excited.
I felt like I had been doing a lot of "telling" people about things we need to do. Changing the teaching culture at East is going to take way more time than I thought. I have always been a person who tries to walk like she talks, so ... "showing" seemed a good option. Planning with these three very busy teachers has been great. I decided to use the unit and lesson plan formats that East is asking teachers to use (but they aren't). Planning templates are based on Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design. I am determined to show that we can develop critical literacy projects and still meet any demands the school or the state requires (the template has a space for Common Core standards). It wasn't actually that hard to do and I didn't feel like I compromised any critical literacy principals to write the unit plan.
Basically, we want students to understand that literacy can be used to make changes, that literacy has "designs" on us (thank you Hilary Janks), and that they have power to change injustices they experience. The teachers have helped me understand the 9th grade mindset so I can figure out how to plan. I have been trying to have the teachers see that we can work alongside the students in ways that all of us are changed. I'm impressed with their willingness to take risks. Once students figure out what social justice issue they want to address, we will form groups around different ideas, do some research on the issues, develop social actions, and carry them out. We'll document what they do any way the students want. For example, we could produce a YouTube video, write a letter to the editor or an oped piece, have a flash mob, or who knows what else. I'm planning on developing a website where students' projects will be posted.
The cool thing is that we are weaving all this together with the text the teachers need to use as part of the 9th grade curriculum - Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It turns out there are a ton of justice issues in the play that we can connect to what our students deal with: perceived lack of power of youth, commodification of women as property, teen suicide, discrimination, violence. We'll see how this one goes.
I wanted to also add in some National Writing Project stuff so we opened with a writing reflection. We used Beyoncé's Formation video. They wrote their impressions and we talked about who they thought was her audience, what her purpose was, and what social issues they thought she was focusing on. They were on it. They worked in groups to name justice issues they deal with in their own lives. It took a minute to get them started, but once they got going it was awesome. Even some students who I have seen with their heads down or sitting and doing nothing were engaged the whole 72 minutes. I felt like it went really well. I wondered how the teachers felt about things being much more loose than they usually have it, but they seemed to go with the flow.
The best part ... I asked two young men with whom I have been developing a relationship how I did. They said, "Oh 85-90%." I'll take that!!
Day two on Wednesday. We're planning on starting with Suli Breaks's spoken word poetry video "I will not let an exam result decide my fate" for writing reflection.
If you have any ideas for critically oriented things to show, read, or listen to for reflections, please let me know.
I felt like I had been doing a lot of "telling" people about things we need to do. Changing the teaching culture at East is going to take way more time than I thought. I have always been a person who tries to walk like she talks, so ... "showing" seemed a good option. Planning with these three very busy teachers has been great. I decided to use the unit and lesson plan formats that East is asking teachers to use (but they aren't). Planning templates are based on Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design. I am determined to show that we can develop critical literacy projects and still meet any demands the school or the state requires (the template has a space for Common Core standards). It wasn't actually that hard to do and I didn't feel like I compromised any critical literacy principals to write the unit plan.
Basically, we want students to understand that literacy can be used to make changes, that literacy has "designs" on us (thank you Hilary Janks), and that they have power to change injustices they experience. The teachers have helped me understand the 9th grade mindset so I can figure out how to plan. I have been trying to have the teachers see that we can work alongside the students in ways that all of us are changed. I'm impressed with their willingness to take risks. Once students figure out what social justice issue they want to address, we will form groups around different ideas, do some research on the issues, develop social actions, and carry them out. We'll document what they do any way the students want. For example, we could produce a YouTube video, write a letter to the editor or an oped piece, have a flash mob, or who knows what else. I'm planning on developing a website where students' projects will be posted.
The cool thing is that we are weaving all this together with the text the teachers need to use as part of the 9th grade curriculum - Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It turns out there are a ton of justice issues in the play that we can connect to what our students deal with: perceived lack of power of youth, commodification of women as property, teen suicide, discrimination, violence. We'll see how this one goes.
I wanted to also add in some National Writing Project stuff so we opened with a writing reflection. We used Beyoncé's Formation video. They wrote their impressions and we talked about who they thought was her audience, what her purpose was, and what social issues they thought she was focusing on. They were on it. They worked in groups to name justice issues they deal with in their own lives. It took a minute to get them started, but once they got going it was awesome. Even some students who I have seen with their heads down or sitting and doing nothing were engaged the whole 72 minutes. I felt like it went really well. I wondered how the teachers felt about things being much more loose than they usually have it, but they seemed to go with the flow.
The best part ... I asked two young men with whom I have been developing a relationship how I did. They said, "Oh 85-90%." I'll take that!!
Day two on Wednesday. We're planning on starting with Suli Breaks's spoken word poetry video "I will not let an exam result decide my fate" for writing reflection.
If you have any ideas for critically oriented things to show, read, or listen to for reflections, please let me know.
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