Observations

I observed my ten hours at Oriole Park School in Chicago. I do not have the exact
demographics, but my classroom was about three-fourths white and the other
one-fourth were a mix of Asian and Latino. I do know that the school is about
twenty-five percent low income. In my class of thirty-ish, five students had
IEP. These thirty students were all native English speakers. The teacher had
nineteen years of teaching experience.

Literacy in Science-

The teacher used science as a way to expand her students vocabulary, and
build skills that transfer into literacy skills; such as oral language development
that could lead to greater reading comprehension, better understanding of oral
language, including syntax or grammar, and complex measures of vocabulary.
The lab was simple, the instructions were “Cut up these vegetables, examine
the seeds inside of them, and analyze how you think these seeds are used.”
Afterwards was a guided inquiry that was heavily student centered, the main
part being a fairly toned down version of the Think-Pair-Share, where students
shared what they found about the seeds.

Digital Literacy-

Very little digital literacy was used in class. The greatest was the teacher using
the overhead to write out difficult words from readings and defining them. She
also wrote out vocab words that the students pointed out to her.(it was a class
motivator to point out vocab words to the teacher, she did this so the students
could remember the vocab words easier.) The classroom also had three I-Pads
for math, they used a website where they would play some game, but it would
ask them to solve math problems for points.

Literacy in Reading-

The class had an unbelievable amount of reading in it. You were talking about
how to make students read more, this class did not need any push towards reading.
They read whenever they could. They were also learning figurative language at
the time I was observing, so any time they found an example of figurative language
in their texts, they could point it out for tickets. They had to read fifteen minutes
everyday for homework, and once a month, there was a book report. Other than
private reading, they were reading a book together in class, and the kids loved it.
Also, every student was writing a “seed story” as an writing assignment, where they
would pick some moment, and then write all about it. This seemed like a version
of interactive writing with the teacher.  

12/3 Post

As a student, I loved big assessments like 100 question finals and the ISATs. I was great at the multiple choice and recognition skills needed to get pretty good grades on them. I know my experience is different because I used to hear a lot of moans whenever we had tests. The assessments I took were all for seeing end results. Bronzo & Simpson talk about not using assessments as something to do at the end of a lesson but is another tool for learning. They write, “acquiring information about student learning does not become an end in itself but is an evolving process of gathering feedback for the teacher and student so that instruction can become more engaging, more ties to real world issues and concerns and more personally meaningful (Brozo & Simpson, 2007 p. 88). These are all points that we bring up in class of making the class more meaningful and relevant to the students.

Bronzo & Simpson also talk about how effective assessment includes the students. Just like how a meaningful and effective lesson is catered to the different needs of the students, the assessment of that knowledge building should be changing with it too. This is a point that wants to make away with standardized testing. There are a lot of things wrong with standardized testing like the biases and the anxiety built up. It is also a measurement of knowledge on that day which there are many factors that can dampen how well a student can do. Bronzo & Simpson cite other authors who talk about this “phenomenon” of a student doing well on a standardized test and yet still struggle in the classroom. I have kind of experienced this in class especially in an English class because I could do well on the tests and have a good grade at the end but the day to day activities I struggled with. They explain this by saying that, “standardized tests cannot possibly measure students' background knowledge, their depth of engagement with the material, their metacognitive awareness, or the strategies they employ while they read (Conley & Hinchman, 2004; Unrau, 2004 p. 94). Usually preparation for standardized testing is not all content focused. There are strategies to answering multiple choice questions that are different from true-false and open choice. A student does not have to be an expert at the subject to get a good score on the test. They could just be a good test taker.

Observations 9th Bio / 10th Chem

I conducted my observations at Lake Park High School in Roselle, IL. It is a public high school that services five North-West suburbs of Chicago. The school has historically serviced a predominantly white middle class population but it has experienced a shift in demographics as the neighboring cities have seen an increase in low income housing. The demographics of the student body currently are 63% White, 6% Black, 19% Hispanic, and 9% Asian. 17% of students are labelled as low income, 4% categorized as Emerging bilinguals, and 9% of students have an IEP on file. I was able to observe 9^th grade Honors biology classes, and 10^th grade Chemistry and remedial Chemistry classes. The instructor has ten years teaching experience, a M.A. in Biology and an M.Ed. I was particularly interested to see how literacy and language demands were being confronted in an area that has recently experienced changes in population.

The honors Biology classes that I observed were comprised of mostly white students that were native English speakers. During these classes, students worked in small groups to engage with a Biology curriculum based on storylines. The activities were heavily text dependent, requiring students to read brief passages of scientific discourse and then to discuss and collaborate to problem solve. The instructor’s role in these classes was that of moderator. Disciplinary literacy was not explicitly addressed and I did not observe any modelling of disciplinary reading strategies. Nonetheless, students did not seem to struggle with the literacy demands of the course. I believe that this was due to their linguistic background, the monoculture present among students and embedded in curricular materials, as well as highly developed knowledge in the ways of doing school. Students were successful in responding to known answer, or text based questions but they were not probed for deep conceptual knowledge which I believe may have revealed areas of weakness in their comprehension.

The Chemistry classes utilized a more traditional curriculum and interaction with curricular materials centered around the instructor. During these classes, I did observe modelling of disciplinary literacy practices. The instructor projected a passage using a document camera and then engaged in a modified think-aloud. The activity was framed as collective notes, but essentially the students copied while the instructor highlighted sentences. The instructor would pause to paraphrase or elaborate and the students would write down what the instructor said. Disciplinary literacy practices were engaged in the form of multiple representation of data as well as drawing for deepened comprehension.  Given the linguistic diversity and learner diversity present in these classes, more reading support was incorporated into the curriculum than was in the Biology classes. Unfortunately, all questioning of the text stemmed from the instructor and the questioning pattern in the classroom was predominantly IRE. This could be due to the fact that the instructor is towards the beginning of the gradual release spectrum. Hopefully as the year progresses, the students will be able to inhabit a more active role in questioning the text and driving class discussion.

What Brings me to Teaching

Ummm… This is a little awkward but I actually enrolled in the class late so I missed the whole "why I decided to be a teacher" thing, but Rick has graciously allowed me to complete the post soooooo yeah, here goes...

I can tell you the moment I made the decision to pursue teaching, however I feel like that would leave out a lot of context to frame my perspective that led to the decision. It probably started in high school. I was a pretty average student who experienced several terrible teachers from my past. I 

had  one teacher who disliked me so much he would roll his eyes before calling on me to answer a question if no one else hands were raised. I had another teacher who really seemed to have it out for me for "being a distraction" even though I wasn't half as bad as 20 other students who never suffered any consequences. This was all in Jr. High. So if I told myself back then that I was pursuing a career in education, my younger self would've slapped older me. 

However, in high school, I had the opportunity to experience several teachers that not only cared for me, but they also believed in me. I struggled a lot back then (and I still kind of do now, as apparent in this late post), but these teachers saw something in me that I didn't see in myself (potential). These are the teachers that regularly reminded me of how smart I am, and they regularly worked with me when I was truly struggling. These teachers successfully facilitated deeper learning, and constantly kept me engaged in the lessons. I began staying a couple minutes after class just to talk o the teachers about my thoughts on the lesson and any questions I had. My geography/history teacher Mr. Landreth has traveled across the globe for most of his life immersing himself in the culture and effectively used these experiences when teaching. Therefore many of his lessons became personal stories that gave me an in depth view into the history behind so many cultures from a perspective that very few have the opportunity to perceive. My history teacher, Mr. Kemmerling, was so outgoing, and good at storytelling that history lessons became adventurous plots with twists and turns and drama and comedy. This is probably why I took a special interest in becoming a history teacher.

Finally, I graduated high school and became a very successful student of College of DuPage for a few semesters. Yet at the time I was completely directionless. I had hit a point where I NEEDED to make a decision on what to do in life. I am very indecisive so the thought process was very long and drawn out. The moment I finally decided to pursue education was sitting in my 2003 Toyota Avalon, seat leaning back as I was staring through the sunroof, listening to Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. Thinking about my experience in education throughout the years. I thought about how much of an influence those teachers were for me and how they allowed me to become the successful student that I became. I thought about how nice it would be one day for me to do the same for another struggling student, and guide them to success. That's when I realized I wanted to be a teacher.

Here is a picture of a dog. Your welcome.

The Why Facet

     How do you get students to care about reading? In this week's readings Buehl makes an interesting point that when it comes to thinking in the way of any specific discipline they are novices, they see reading as an obligatory necessity to complete the bare minimum to pass the class. Whereas an insider of a disciplinary field approaches reading with an inquiry mindset; to use the readings as a way of accessing information to inform actions or answer questions. 

     As future teachers, we are all aware how easy it would be to simply select from a list of basic literacy strategies, however we also know that to deepest form of learning comes from learning how to think like an expert. I remember the teachers that simply gave me an activity just to answer the questions but they never facilitated the inquiry mindset. It was these teachers that I never felt engaged in the learning process of their specific discipline. In order to facilitate this mindset, the students must think on a deeper level than to just remember the information. 

     The teachers that did facilitate this inquiry mindset always had me more engaged and excited to learn about the deeper meanings of certain texts. Ever since I was a kid, I have always been interested with the inner workings "behind the curtain" of what was being presented to me. Like when watching a tv show or movie, I was always curious about why they chose to show me this certain detail that seemed to be inconsequential to the plot at the time. I would then try to predict how this detail would later come to be very important to the plot. It was the teachers that facilitated this kind of mindset in the classroom that always captured my attention and made me curious about the "why". Why did things happen in history the way they happened. What is the author trying to achieve for the reader in this text? 

     How did some of the teachers you had keep you engaged in deeper learning and to develop this inquiry mindset?

     Another thing I really liked about what Buehl talked about was embedded literacy strategies into the regular flow of instruction. The best kind of instruction is the kind that teaches the student to think critically without even realizing it. Many teachers had me engaged in activities throughout the instruction that facilitated multiple goals for a teacher but I always saw them as a more entertaining way of learning. Thinking back now, the teacher likely had a check list of ways they facilitated deeper learning from just one day of instruction. As for me, I had no idea I was learning as much as I did at the time. 

     Training the student to look through a disciplinary lens requires more than just covering the content. It requires metacognitive conversations that answers the question "why". Why is it important for me to understand the authors intentions? Why is it important for me to learn these materials? "Why" is what defines the intersection between literacy demands and disciplinary thinking (Buehl, 300). 

Essential questions

During this week's assigned readings Buehl emphasizes the importance of essential questions. He states that wherever you go or whatever your career may be it is crucial to ask those important questions to have a better understanding of certain things. At the beginning of the chapter, he gives an example of Bill James who is a preeminent baseball player, that asks himself questions like "What qualities make a good hitter?"Then he builds on that idea in a mathematical sense and allows students to make deeper connections He transferred these questions through a different disciplinary lens. As future educators, it is important to spark the same interest to our students and have them look at questions in a different way. Our aim should be to stimulate thought and provoke inquiry for our students so that they can ask more questions. Some mistakes that educators might make are that that they don't go to the core of the questions. Instead, we inform the students "yes, you are correct" or "no you're incorrect"  and do not let their minds explore other possibilities. Essential questions are the ones that lead a conversation, that invite other students to give their opinions. Students are able to look at the evidence and come up with conclusions on their own.






One of my favorite shows on Netflix is Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act. One might ask how this connects to essential questions. Hasan takes the approach of having his audience make conclusions on their own based on the facts surrounding political topics. He connects with his audience with a comedic take but asks critical questions surrounding controversial topics. In one of his shows centered on Saudi Arabia, he speaks of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on whether or not he is a true reformer. This question is posed to the audience, and Hasan builds on the idea. While the crown prince has legalized women driving in the state, there are many underlying parts to his regime that would counter the idea of a democratic rule. Hasan brings in facts and undisplayed ideas in the news outlets like the prince's arrest of many women fighting for civil liberties and those who protest his regime.The idea of a democratization in Saudi Arabia remains stagnant in the royal regime. Hasan presents these facts and figures and questions the audience. He utilizes comedy as an outlet to convey ideas so that these topics don't appear heated on stage but rather open to the audience's perspectives. When engaging with the audience he tries to pose critical questions and rather than push on certain ideas he lets the audience make their own conclusions.


The utilization of scaffolding and building on ideas allow students to garner perspective and build on critical ideas rather than just accept something they would later question. Students need to connect ideas and personalize the material to allow them to increase their depth of knowledge and synthesize the material they are learning. It becomes the responsibilities of teachers to not assert ideas and concepts but to build on them and ask those leading questions. This is what allows students to critically think on these ideas.

Ensuring our students are literate across disciplines

I particularly enjoyed this reading because it brought up a lot of great ideas to get students thinking, but also hit close to home. Buehl brings up interesting points when approaching reading. “Doing reading” versus “using reading.” It’s ironic because so often in classes I dreadfully think to myself, “Ugh I have to do the reading this week and I completely forgot,” or “I don’t feel like doing the reading.” Not once have I thought, “I’m excited to be using this reading in class.” Of course, texts have made me think and I enjoy engaging with them and use them often, but I think words and how we formulate our thoughts have big power. I know I should work to change my thinking, but we too must change our students thinking. More than what Buehl suggests. We can teach students to engage and question texts, but how do we ensure this is happening outside the classroom? I understand changing their thought processes is a lot of work, but I think we need to go above and beyond and ensure students use this thinking outside of class. Some may say it will come naturally over time, as it did for many of us. But I believe we must tell our students they are “using the reading” as opposed to “tonight’s assignment we will be doing a reading.” How we word things with students is extremely important.

Our wording in our questions also makes a huge impact as Buehl argues we must teach our students to use essential questions, and not rely so much on our leading questions to get us through a discussion. Obviously, you want students to come to certain conclusions and may need to lead our students along the way, but you want your students to be doing the heavy lifting. That being said, I also found it interesting that in Chapter 5 Buehl claims that there are certain reading styles in every discipline. Essentially stating you should know what to look for and that you don’t have to close read everything. He even goes further in the reading and claims it would have been more helpful in mathematics to close read as opposed to the reading style he chose to approach in his philosophy and history classes. Obviously disciplinary experts approach reading in certain ways but isn’t it even more interesting to think about reading in this way. It appears Buehl is saying, “you don’t need all the information, just the information that is most helpful to you.” While this is a valid argument, what are we teaching our students when we approach texts in these lenses?

“The central premise of disciplinary literacy is the mentoring of students to examine, question, organize and interact with the world through a variety of different disciplinary lenses. The goals assume that teachers of a disciplines are at least to a moderate extent, insiders.” As a future teacher, I’m scared to teach my content, and I haven’t realized this fear until my methods of teaching math classes. There is a difference in passing a class and fully comprehending all the ins-and-outs. Why are things the way they are? Can I truly model what is happening in this equation? Being fully literate is an extremely important part of teaching now, especially, if we want to teach literacy ourselves. This is why we are math majors with education minors (or whatever the case may be). Either way we need to be literate in both our area of expertise and education. This legitimizes the profession, but puts a lot of pressure on new incoming teachers. Which goes back to my other questions. Do I actually know why things work the way they work? What if I don’t know how to ask the right questions? How can I ensue my students will become critical thinkers?

At the end of the day all of these questions will be answered, and eventually, after years of teaching, we will all find our confidence in ourselves not only in our discipline, but as teachers in general.

It truly is the small things that make an impact.

Essential Questions

During this week's assigned readings of Buehl, he gave better insight as to how teachers should better help students digest readings. Buehl argued that need to keep in mind the following: we are, to a certain extent, experts in our particular disciplinary, while are students are considered the "outsiders". While we read texts that pertain to our current majors, we (should) do it through the lens of a disciplinary expert. We question the text, we analyze it, we throughly study it. After years of this, you are considered an insider, and the literary practices previously mentioned, come naturally because this is what truly interests us. But to our high school students that have differing interests, this is not the case. Therefore, as (future) teachers, Buehl states we have to prep the students and help them approach the text in a better manner. Instead of having them think they are doing the reading because they are basically forced to, put them in the mentality that they are using the reading (Buehl 170). Buehl proposes we do such thing by re-structuring how we assess student's comprehension about what they just read. Instead of asking basic content questions that can be easily answered if a student simply skim reads, assign essential questions.

Essential questions allow the student to really interact with the literature/assigned reading. Questioning the text can also activate a higher level of skill set. This is so, because, "Questioning is central to monitoring students as researchers through a discliplinary lens" (Buehl 170). In the image below I have provided a chart that could help us generate effective essential questions. Assigning essential questions is also not limited to literacy heavy based subjects such as English or history, the example Buehl mentioned in the reading was how someone questioned the mathematics of baseball and how that completely changed the game.

Ted Talk Video- How To Escape Education's Death Valley

I decided to include this video because, in a way, I felt it related to the reading. The presenter began with providing the alarming rates of high school drop outs in America, considering how this country is a world leader in several different aspects, its educational system lacks attention. In his Ted Talk presentation, Ken Robinson speaks about how schools across America have established a culture of compliance while eliminating student curiosity. By doing so, schools have made much of the assigned work routine-like and uninteresting. This is where I believed this video tied in with the text by Buehl. The amount of students dropping out, in part, can be can be caused by the restraints put on their creativity. As an educator, to spark interest in your students, you can utilize the essential questions method.  "Covering topics of a discipline is not the same thing as teaching a discipline" (Buehl 171).

Essential Questions on Education and in Education

Phenomenon based learning, a concept yet in its developing phase but gaining popularity in countries that have moved away from discrete subject based teaching towards more integrative curricula. As its name implies, learning is centered around an observable phenomenon (preferably observed by the students especially in elementary classrooms), and lessons are generated around the questions that arise from the observations. Project based learning but entirely authentic as it centers learning on real world issues and events. Examples of this can be seen in Finnish classrooms where phenomenon are considered global events that could be social or scientific or both. Global economic emigration is a good example where global warming is exponentially decreasing the arable land around the world's hotter climes and forcing large group migration in search of employment and economic opportunities. Here I have attached a short youtube video on what could be the future of education if we want to use essential questions to drive learning in classrooms that ask the questions that their communities are currently struggling with. (A Nevada classroom used this approach in a pre-school classroom where much of the learning was centered around having observed the solar eclipse http://nstacommunities.org/blog/2018/06/18/the-power-of-phenomenon-based-learning/)

You must be questioning why I have gone on this tangent when I was supposed to write a blog post on Buehl's chapter 5 and 7. Reading chapter 5 and converting my own practice of 'reading as inquiry' to 'reading is inquiry'; I wanted to explore the ways in which we can make reading purposeful in the present. Can we truly answer students in the ways that resonate with them, when they ask "why are we learning .....?" Could we possibly answer these questions in a way that makes sense to all by turning away from discrete subject based questions, towards more phenomenon based inquiry? Something that I think, Buehl is referring to, when he suggests that learning should be based on essential question so that it can be deep rather than based on coverage; instruction based on curricula guidelines and paced according to timeline and goals of curricula; when it generally does not go past our working memory and thus has no lasting effect in our learning or lives.

Another question that has resonated with me from Buehl is: "what are the most enduring understandings __ the big ideas that a literate person should know after the passage of a significant amount of time, say five years?" Do we really ask ourselves these questions before preparing a lesson. Not the generic, what do we want students to learn from this? But _what is the purpose of this lesson? What purpose does it serve? Is it of any value to the student's current or future lives? And if there is, then are we providing all students equitable "opportunities to learn" (Gee, 2003, 2013) that will result in enduring understandings?

The idea that teachers should first question themselves over the significance of what they are teaching before they even start planning is a caveat that we seldom think about; especially, when our own knowledge of the discipline remains shallow. Do we know what it means to engage in the practices of a discipline? Readers will argue and disagree, but for current and future teachers in all disciplines I will ask: have you engaged in authentic research and produced a text that reflects the practices of a disciplinary expert, a mathematician or a scientist? If yes then you are ahead of many. If not, then you are not alone but this must be the time when we need to reflect on our own practices especially when we go in classrooms with such ambitious ideas as Kist's concept of classroom as studios and teachers as masters in their crafts.

And last, have we even begun to question the purposes of education as it currently functions? whether this aligns with how we envision education? and would asking this question help us in providing students with more meaningful and authentic opportunities to learn?
Can we ask our students what they expect from their own education? and be able to realize something that is far more ambitious then they had ever envisioned?

References
Gee, J. P. (2003). "Opportunity to learn: A language-based perspective on assessment." Assessment in Education 10(1): 27-46.
http://nstacommunities.org/blog/2018/06/18/the-power-of-phenomenon-based-learning/)
https://www.nextgenscience.org/sites/default/files/Using%20Phenomena%20in%20NGSS.pdf