The first thing that I noticed about this reading was the (timely) mention of the lack of modernity in education. We have not kept up with the times; we are not teaching our students the skills that they need to succeed and be relevant in our world. This chasm between what we teach and what they need to know to do well in life has led to the rise of "adulting", or what happens when students are let loose into the world not knowing how to manage on their own. I have often wondered how my life might be different if I were not dependent on someone else to change a tire, configure a budget, organize a resume, prepare for an interview; these are all things that I feel I should know but have never been taught.
"Literacy" is becoming, in a way, closely related with this idea of "adulting", or having the skills to make it on one's own. It is imperative that students learn the skills they need to be competent in a modern workforce, to collaborate, to create, to synthesize and analyze; yet we still teach them to memorize "O Captain, My Captain" in eighth grade without telling them why it matters (anyone else had that experience?).
I think that Beers brings up an interesting point in the first chapter when she discusses the many, many flaws in the NCLB legislation: forcing schools to achieve a minimum standard of learning, trying to put kids on the same level with the same expectations does not do any good for the students whose economic situations and family backgrounds cause them to be at a disadvantage anyway. This type of thinking borders on socialist theory, yet Beers poses an excellent question: Why does our governmental and school system choose to focus on the symptom of the problem, rather than the problem itself?
Beers imagines an educational system that begins way before a student steps through the doors of the school: one where students from low-income backgrounds are not disadvantaged from the get-go; one where our society fixes the problems of race and gender inequality in the workforce and in so many other areas, recognizing their effect on students' success; one where students are not taught age-old texts and skills in order to pass tests that determine a school's funding. Despite the many issues in this legislation, however, she does point out the good intention behind the NCLB legislation: that is, there is finally a legislation that recognizes the issues of inequality in our school system and is working to fix them.
As I mentioned earlier, the idea of literacy is evolving, and the skills that students need to know are becoming increasingly at odds with what students are expected to learn in school. As a future Spanish teacher, I face the added challenge of trying to incorporate these skills into the process of learning a new language. Language learning, like English literacy instruction, is in many ways struggling to keep up with the times--and yet in our increasingly global world it is more needed than ever. Even with the advent of translation technology, there is still nothing to compare with the ability to communicate person-to-person across language barriers.
It can be very easy for language teachers to fall into the grammar-instruction trap, but I would suggest that it is important for us to also begin to incorporate these modern skills into our language and culture instruction. I could easily go through the entire list and suggest how and why to do that in a Spanish classroom, but instead I would like to point out a few that are especially relevant to language learning.
1. Communication skills. Much of my language learning has taken place in a classroom setting, and while that has helped me to get a real handle on grammar, it has not made it any easier for me to authentically communicate with others. I would much prefer to seek out and use real, authentic texts for my students than to create ones that suit my needs like a puzzle piece. The real world doesn't work that way. My goal is for my students to be able to understand communication as it is rather than how I would make it to be, and for that information to be presented to them in multiple contexts and formats.
2. Interpersonal and collaborative skills. Language learning is all about interpersonal skills--learning to understand people and how they operate, not only as individuals but as members of a culture and a generation, learning to work with others even when they may have different perspectives, learning to value those perspectives even when one might disagree or think differently. Learning about culture is often learning what people think and how they behave, and how to act in a respectful way toward a different perspective--often learning how not to offend members of a certain culture.
3. Social responsibility. In the past couple of years at Olivet I have gained new perspective on just how much my own country and culture has affected people in Latin America--sometimes for good, but many times this is not the case. I have learned about events in our history have shaped the economics, politics, and culture of other nations. And I have been given a sort of drive to do what, personally, I can to help, to alleviate, to make their voices heard and to make my American peers understand our responsibility to these peoples. I think that has probably been the hardest part of my education: understanding how my own culture has greatly affected the rest of the world, how our greed and desire for power and lack of respect for others has caused poverty and hardship and difficulty throughout the world.
Being an effective teacher means learning how to help students succeed in life with the literacy demands that they face. It may mean fighting an uphill battle with standardized test scores and student disinterest and state standards, but it is not only possible, it is absolutely necessary.
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