So we have arrived, then, at a consensus that students need to have access to texts that challenge them to be better readers. However, we also examined the multi-faceted problem that teachers face in getting their students to a) want to read and engage with the text, and b) understand the text (and, even further, develop and apply various reading techniques and skills to these complex texts). This reading delved into multiple strategies to help students learn how to engage with and seek to comprehend what they read.
The example used in the text was of a high school social studies class that was doing a unit on immigration laws in the 20th century. They spent quite some time examining various laws, poetry, data, and other relevant texts from this time period, and synthesizing them to ascertain the intent and bias behind these laws. I loved the efforts made by these teachers to ensure that the students dealt with all levels of learning to arrive at their conclusions and points of view, and the amount that they challenged their students to think beyond their own perspectives and opinions.
Ideally, this type of teaching should be the goal in the Spanish classroom as well. Recently, I was substitute teaching an Advanced Spanish Conversation class that (incidentally) also had the theme of immigration as the main subject of conversation. I think the man struggle in that class was getting the students to go to the next level, as they should be able to. For example, they were required to interview an immigrant from a Spanish-speaking nation, asking them at least 10 questions about the experience of being an immigrant in the United States. I expected them to have ample content to fill a 15-minute conversation with a classmate, and yet many of them finished far before the 15 minute mark. Walking around the room and observing, I first noticed the problem on their homework sheets. Many of the questions they had asked were simple-answer questions: How long have you been in the States? What do you do for a living? Is your family here? They had taken the easy route, perhaps to avoid the discomfort of asking more intense questions, and perhaps out of habit. Their conversations were merely summaries of what they had learned, making their interaction more presentational communication than interpersonal, as was the goal.
A topic like immigration can be difficult to facilitate for learning, as it is a "hot topic" in our society right now; data is often misrepresented or falsified, individuals may have varying beliefs and opinions, and at times it can be hard to find a balance in the classroom that also facilitates the "going deeper" that we want to encourage in our students.
I wonder now if part of the issue might be that I didn't give them the proper tools or instruction for these interviews. Would it have gone better if I had given them a list of questions? Spoken to them in detail about how best to conduct their interview? Given them ideas for questions to ask? I wanted them to try to be independent, but it seems to me they might not be ready for that yet; they haven't gotten to that point in their scaffolding.
In future teaching experiences, I think it will be important to me to give my students one step at a time, especially when they are at the "i + 1" learning stage. I think many of my students feel a bit overwhelmed by the expectations of the class, and perhaps that is partially my fault. They need to be guided until they achieve independence, step by step, with continuous practice opportunities.
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