Alien Pedagogy

As an English teacher, I find myself often having to explain that reading and writing are skills that fall within the domain of every subject teacher. At different professional development workshops, I have encountered more than a few P/E teachers who were strongly opposed to this idea. Against this, I have met English teachers whose students never leave their seats during the lesson — “nor should they!” some might argue.

Are the two subjects so different?

Reflection

Growing up, I cannot remember ever reflecting on my athletic ability in order to improve. I was horrible at sports, though I enjoyed playing them. I wish now that someone would have helped me to improve at sports then.

Fortunately, over the last two years at my school, my colleagues and I have played basketball every Friday night. On the train home, my friend and I always took the time to deconstruct how we’d improved and what we could do to improve in the future. At night, I’d write in my journal about how I intended to improve.

In an English class, I’d probably do this in a reflective writing activity. This strategy is not limited to English, but I mention it because it involves writing, which is sometimes thought to fall inside the English domain alone.

I should write that I have witnessed this style of reflection once. One P/E teacher I worked with used to do a great deal of peer assessment in the component skills required for sports. I don’t know whether this extended to journal writing, but even my untrained eyes could see the students improve. I should also note that my personal anecdote does not indicate a larger trend.

Research

Now that we can self-diagnose using Google, are doctors that important anymore? If they are, to what extent are we teaching our students how to research problems they face and when to seek extra help?

Do the reading, writing, and research skills required for this fall within the realm of educating people about our physical nature?

Putting more “P/E” in English:

I’d like to see more leadership, teamwork, and creative problem solving opportunities in my classroom. I often see this happening in P/E, but the students that are capable of confidently refereeing a basketball game are sometimes reluctant to take charge in the English class. Moreover, I often admire the way that we are willing to learn from our losses in P/E but less likely to take that same determination to improving our reading and writing. Isn’t there room for the English department to learn from our P/E teachers?

To Conclude:

I have certainly met P/E teachers that think P/E is the last place where students should be reading and writing, but I maintain that there is room for English skills to enter the P/E classroom. Conversely, I have also seen English teachers that think English is the last place where students should be physically moving, but I think there is room for these “P/E skills” and mindsets to enter the English classroom.

My next few blog posts will attempt to describe how I’d teach subjects that aren’t English, or ways that I’d like to bring in skills from other disciplines to English.

Perhaps this is a bad idea. I often find myself feeling irritated when someone from a different discipline tells me to “teach a science text” or “a popular history” in my class — as though I don’t have my own standards to cover.

However, it’s important to remember that the spirit of these statements is made with the best interests of our students in mind, and it reflects a passion for science and history, as opposed to a disdain for literature.

Moreover, I have consistently found myself inspired by Dy/Dan’s attempts to improve math education and consistently try to make parallel approaches to teaching literature. I feel that I’m a better teacher for having tried this.

So I hope that the next few posts won’t come across as unwelcome, arrogant, or disrespectful.

Any reader is invited to share thoughts from his or her discipline that can be applied to teaching literature.

(Last weekend, I attended a workshop on leadership, led by Bambi Betts)

One thing that stood out to me during the presentation was that I was attending it with not only two colleagues, but also my principal. Hearing his contributions to group discussion were consistently illuminating and I found myself realizing how little I knew and understood about him.

It makes me wonder to what extent the separation of administration and teacher development hinders team identity.

(Last weekend, I attended a workshop on Leadership by Bambi Betts)

What should good learning goals look like?

Betts argues that our instructional goals should:

• Be observable
• Reflect the school vision
• Help learning
• Dictate frequency
• Be research-based

This is focused on instruction and assessment, not standards/ objectives.

• Correct: All writing assessments will be assigned with graphic organizers to scaffold writing.
• Incorrect: Graphic organizers will be used more often to scaffold writing.

The next step is getting the department to implement these goals. Knowing exactly how the success of this initiative will be measured is also important.

While at this workshop, I got the impression that more than one department head had tried to put goals like these into place, but had faced opposition/ passive resistance/ civil disobedience from their colleagues. Betts herself cautiously expressed frustration about teachers’ tendency to resist clear goals that impose time lines.

(Last weekend, I attended a session on Leadership, led by Bambi Betts)

This year, I have taken the responsibility of leading our secondary English Department. I’m supposed to work on curriculum, but what does that mean?

Betts reports that department heads should be focused on one of three things:

• Standards / Objectives
• Assessment
• Instruction

This reminded me immediately of the lesson plans that I write based on my Understanding By Design units. Is any aspect of education safe from UBD?

Oddly, I have found myself planning meetings and year plans with “the end in mind,” but it never occurred to me that I should focus our meetings on these three categories rather than programs. So while we have shared strategies and reviewed our standards, we have also gotten bogged down reviewing other aspects of the school program.

So here’s the next step: focus on standards, assessments, or sharing research-based strategies.