I have been making my way through two of Gallagher's books, Write Like This and Teaching Adolesant Writers, and am seeing a theme emerge. Students needs LOTS of modeling and practice. I knew this, but it is good to hear it again (and again and again). But it is very frustrating as well, because I see "us" just pushing kids through. I see this true in every subject. For example, my grade level is teaching science this quarter. In order to get Social Studies grades, we just gave them two SS worksheets where they had to analyze graphs. Our students are very weak in this and need more than just one class period on this. My students did not do well on it, but since my teammates have grades for SS I have to as well. I am trying to find time to go over the sheets again with my students, but our schedule is so crammed already I don't know when to do that.
In Teaching Adolescent Writers Gallagher says he might not get to all of the standards. In theory, I would be ok not hitting every standard if it meant I was taking the time to slow down and really make sure my students have a strong grasp on a good number of them. But I am expected to be where all of my grade level teammates are. I am finding this increasingly frustrating. I feel like I have a good idea about what I should do, but I am not always able to do it.
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Responses
Tara,
I hear what you are saying about scrambling to "cover" all the material. I often wonder, too, what teaching might be like if we could "not" cover (dis)cover; (un)cover. "Not" covering might give us ways of uncovering the questions our students have about graphs and discovering how graphs make certain kinds of meanings visually available to us. I think it slowing down we are covering more, covering deeply and creating possibility for true learning. And in (not)covering, we are (dis)covering the kinds of teachers we want to be and seeing the joy of learning in our students. What Kelly's books say to me is how important it is for us to model for our students, to live with them in our classrooms as learners ourselves. What we all get caught up in is the pressures to be on the same page at the same time with everyone on our grade level. I'm wondering if others are feeling those pressures, too, but are worried about making their concerns visible. As I look at the Common Core, the emphasis is on reading deeply and writing from funds of knowledge, not so much covering. Would there be a way to open up a conversation about the need to slow down so that you can (dis)(un)cover the curriculum? Lil