D&Z Chs. 3-4

            Chapters 3 and 4 from Daniels and Zemelman highlight quite a few ideas which I have embraced as a student and future teacher.  In a nutshell, they give reasons why teachers should use reading selections outside of the prescribed textbooks of their content area to foster enriching interaction with the content as well as helping students to become lifelong learners.  I am a strong supporter of this idea.  I have taken part in classes which relied solely upon textbooks to teach content.  I have also been fortunate to have experienced classes which used textbooks as nothing more than reference materials and allowed most of the learning material to come from outside sources.  There is so much left out of text books.  We lug around these thousand-or-so page books that say so much and almost nothing at the same time.  I think that splitting away from this idea of learning everything entirely from textbooks would benefit every individual greatly.

            I took World History my junior year of high school.  My teacher gave us an assignment which required that we read one source outside of our textbook and write a report or critical paper on it.  I chose to read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  (I highly recommend this, by the way, if you are at all interested in WWII, post-modern literature, or simply want a great read.)  After reading this book, I noticed that the reasoning behind war troubled and intrigued me.  Ever since that assignment, I have put in many hours of additional reading in order to answer some of the pressing questions I have about war.  Why do we have them? What greater purpose do they serve? Is there ever really a "good guy" and a "bad guy,” or are there always extenuating circumstances?  This anecdote just serves to prove that lifelong learning and a search for answers can come from sources outside of textbooks.  Perhaps if we took the chance in our own classrooms, we would be able to replicate this experience.

 

Understanding by Design

            The reading about Understanding by Design was incredibly informative and helpful.  I think the idea of shaping learning by starting from the end is revolutionary.  The system requires teachers to be organized and know where they want their students to go and have developed a way to get there.  By doing this, teachers have the opportunity to listen for teachable moments and work them into the overall goal.  The author states that this method is also called planned coaching.  It is a system which allows teachers to follow their objectives and use their teaching tools (textbooks and projects) and methods to achieve these objectives.  Circular priorities (a fundamental concept of this framework) allow teachers and students to interact with the material in a meaningful way which goes far beyond meeting state-mandated objectives for learning.  It allows students to achieve enduring understanding instead of memorizing facts for assessment purposes.

            I had a teacher for literary criticism who worked his class in this way.  Instead of beginning by having us read about New Critical theory, he had us watch some video clips which helped the class understand where he planned for us to end up when the semester was finished.  He used the first two class meetings to get us acquainted with the much more complicated ideas behind post-modernism and worked his way backward.  Now, I know that UbD does not require teachers to start a unit from the end and work their way to the beginning of a chronological progression.  It is a planning framework which requires teachers to know where they will end up so students can grasp and try to answer the essential questions presented to them.  This teacher’s method of instruction simply reminded me of UbD.  He knew where he wanted us to end up and slowly introduced the material to us so we would not be caught off-guard by the involved material.

 

D&Z Chs. 1&2

            As I was reading the chapters in Daniels and Zemelman’s book (which, go figure, I enjoyed it), one particular excerpt stood out to me.  “Yes, there are a lot of obstacles to young people falling in love with math, science, history, language, and the arts.  But that doesn’t mean that our idealism is sentimental and misplaced, or that we should give up the dream that binds us to this profession” (p. 10). I have, on various occasions, been accused of being a sentimental dreamer.  Generally speaking, this type of comment does not negatively affect me—I don’t stop hoping.  There have been instances, though, which make me question myself and my dreams of becoming a teacher. 

            A woman who used to be very close to my family once asked me what I wanted to do with my life.  I replied with, “I want to teach English.”  This response caused her to wrinkle her nose and give me one of those knowing glances—the one that says, “Oh, bless your poor, little heart.”  This woman was one of the last people on earth I ever expected this reaction from because she was, in fact, an English teacher.  I was hoping to hear that I had my work cut out for me but the rewards far out-weighed the struggles (or something along those lines).  Instead, she suggested that I would have better luck working my way through the managerial track at a fast-food restaurant.  Her words caused me to question myself, and I had to readjust my worldview.  That being said, do I believe that my teaching career will change the lives of every student I encounter?  I can only hope.  Will movies be made about my life and the impact I have on my students?  Doubtful; I am a dreamer, not a lunatic.  I suppose the reason I appreciated the authors’ words so much is because they grant me permission to be a bit of a dreamer—I think we all need that in our lives. 

            Now that I am finished with my “sentimental” diatribe, I will briefly discuss the text.  I enjoyed the reading, and the writing style was smooth and simple to understand.  The introduction to the content discussed the things teachers need to do and understand when it comes to helping students learn how to read.  The second chapter dealt with the many strategies employed by good readers.  My favorite segment from chapter 2 discussed how reading is an active, constructive process of comprehending information.  The reader either clicks through a passage, or clunks through.  Our job, as future educators, is to help our students advance from clunking to clicking by teaching them the tools and strategies of good readers.