A Letter from An Anxious Teacher

17 November 2013

 

To whom it may concern,

 

I am a teacher. I stand in front of awaiting eyes, ears, mouths and minds. I don't always stand in front. Sometimes I sit side by side or sit gathered in circles. I have plans for my students. I have expectations. I would like to consolidate skills through practice. And I want to consolidate these practices by providing opportunities for my students to learn and to practice and to grow. I have a picture of what a successful learner looks like. I think I have this vision. I think it is a fair vision. I feel that every child can achieve. I am deeply curious about my students. Most importantly, I see education as transformative. I need to remind myself of this. I shouldn't need to, but I do.

I can point to those in the classroom who share my expectations. They know what success looks like and they have the means to work toward the goal. They are more or less motivated. I don't want to let them down. I want to support and challenge them.

I am still nervous, though. I have set up the environment. I have laid out my expectations. I have planned out my lessons, and I have planned regular opportunities to scaffold the learning for the apprentices that are before me. I feel that my teaching will be engaging. Not just fun ... The learning will be engaging and the discussions will be engaging. I tell myself this, but there is no guarantee. I need to be honest in my reflections and determined in the way I navigate this ship.

Despite being nervous, I am enthusiastic. I am passionate about what I teach, and I know the students can share this passion and find pathways to apply this learning. I care and believe that I can inspire (or, at least persuade) my students of the importance of what they are about to learn. 

I am still nervous, though. Some will need more support than others. Some may even get lost at times. I think I can tap into their knowledge and interests. I think we will both be learning together.  I will make myself available. And I am dedicated to monitoring their learning, reflecting on their growth and intervening when extra support is required. That’s my professional duty. And I really believe that through practice and opportunities, the students take this learning on.

I know there will be those who it will be difficult to reach. There will be some students who are not at school everyday. There will be others who face considerable learning challenging. And there will be others who may need some time to trust or to engage. I do not accept that I will not reach these students. I do accept that I will need to reach beyond the school walls to build partnerships and seek advice.

I will teach with kindness and urgency. I will demonstrate expertise and empathy. I will do my utmost to be of service to the students and the community.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Anxious Teacher

Vision and Determination: Ideal Qualities for Every Teacher and Learner

"Each morning you have to break through the dead rubble afresh so as to reach the living warm seed." (Wittgenstein, Culture & Value)

Talk of best practices, teaching programs, cycles, and progressions can lull the casual observer into believing that programs on their own bring about result. A program's success is only as powerful as the vision and determination of the teacher delivering it and the learning engaging in it. We should not forget that learning is work, that skills and knowledge can and will be forgotten (if not reinforced), and that teachers and learners need to wake up each morning to ponder yesterday and reach for the "living warm seed" of today's and tomorrow's and the next day's learning. Schools (and other forums of learning) may be full of a great many activities (the 'rubble'), but teachers and learners must regularly return to the significance of all the activities (the 'warm living seed') that all the hard work is seeking to attain. 

Read More

Managing a Balanced Approach to Literacy: Part Five

The teacher’s role is to arrange tasks and activities in such a way that students are developing (Verhoeven and Snow, 2001). The teacher - therefore - must be "aware of the learning intentions, [know] when a student is successful in attaining those intentions, [have] sufficient understanding of the students’ prior understanding as he or she comes to the task, and [know] enough about the content to provide meaningful and challenging experiences so that there is ... progressive development”  (Hattie, 2012, pp. 19). The classroom and the whole school should promote "a coherent curriculum [that] helps students ... acquire basic skills as well as the strategies needed to tackle challenging tasks (Newmann, Smith, Allensworth & Bryk, 2001) ... Success builds on success, because as students gain confidence, they are willing to work harder and can more readily learn.” (Au, 2005, pp 175). To work toward this aim "what ... [is] needed is ... a theory of social learning which would indicate what in the environment is available for learning, the conditions of learning, the constraints on subsequent learning, and the major reinforcing processes.” (Bernstein, 1964, pg. 55) 

To contribute toward this aim, Gambrell, Malloy & Mazzoni (2011) identified ten features that comprehensive literacy instruction should include. Seven of the features are summarised in this journal entry. Click Read More below for the full discussion.

Read More

Managing a Balanced Approach to Literacy: Part Four

As raised in the previous journal entries, a balanced literacy pedagogy must

  • focus on building skills;
  • scaffold rich and diverse comprehension;
  • model and support composition as a cognitive and social practice;
  • anchor reading and writing in authentic, real world learning practices; and
  • motivate and inspire learners to become (embody) the role of readers and writers.

The goal is to foster learners with robust language systems who are equipped with the habits of mind for comprehension and composition with an awareness of how literacy serves as a mediating tool in real-world practices. Even though we have identified that literacy development requires explicit instruction on linguistic elements, progressive practice in comprehension and composition, and rich opportunities in authentic reading and writing practices, this does not mean that the instructional dilemma has been resolved.

Read More

Equity in Access to 'Quality' Education for Students in Remote Communities

One can regularly find glaring differences between the have's and have-not's, particularly when structural factors in society serve to perpetuate the differing outcomes for members of the community. I say this in reflection to a specific place and to specific people. It is a place to which I travel often, and the observations made here are observations which I have made previously. Yet I have never quite conceptualised it in writing in the way that I am attempting to do now. I am writing about a place in the centre of Australia. For those who are curious, it is not Alice Springs. It is a sizeable town for the Northern Territory. Many forms of life are lived. Some with material comforts. Many without. There is a deep Aboriginal history in the region as well as a more recent non-Aboriginal presence.

To be more specific, I find myself at the local primary school in the town. Like many schools, the yard at recess is a space of chaos, screams, chattering and climbing. The school population is diverse, which is reflected by the students of Anglo, Asian, and Aboriginal backgrounds. Buildings are colourful as are the classrooms. Inside a particular classroom, I see the divide between those who live in literacy and technology-rich environments and those whose access to books is severely limited outside of school. Those from literacy-rich homes benefit from experiences that are consistent with the content and ways of learning to be found in the typical Australian classroom. The types of investigations and the routines of learning are consistent between school and home contexts. Successful students learn the rules, acquire the knowledge, perform the tasks, and imagine future school success. And these students are able to do so with a fair amount of stability and support from family in the home, who often have a strong understanding of what is occurring in the classroom. The fact that some students come to school better placed to succeed is something well documented. The fact that the school curriculum can inadvertently benefit the culture and experiences of certain students over others is also demonstrated by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (1990).

Read More

Supporting the child's literacy development and exploration

I am profoundly struck by a persistent image in my mind that - for me - both clarifies and reflects the challenges of learning to read and write. It is an image of a child moving from skill to skill, actively and with resilience. At times, there are spurts of growth. At other times, it can be hard going. It is an image in which the accumulation of carefully scaffolded experiences turns the child into a reader and a writer. It is an image in which there is significant care taken so that the learner is apprenticed into new practices and the learner is able to reach closure on old skills so as to build new ones. It is an image in which the child encounters new words and propositions, and the child can actively manipulate, refine and process the knowledge encoded in our words.

It is a precarious image. At any stage, the learning can become befuddling and the learner will be unable to progress. It is a progressive image. It is one in which the learner gains a control of the fundamentals, is initiated into different practices with language, and learns to use such learning actively and independently. It is important that the learner engages in the literacy, gradually comes to see the point, and works deliberately and meaningfully with suitable time spent thinking about the content, contexts and form of messages. The learner is encouraged to visualise, notice patterns and think critically.

Read More

A Perspective on the Development of Language & Literacy

 The following is a republication of the website's front page as a blog entry. As a blog entry, the discussion presents a synthesis of the author's thoughts on Wittgenstein, language, literacy and learning …. 

“Working in philosophy - like work in architecture in many respects - is really more a working on oneself. On one’s interpretations. On one’s way of seeing things.” — Wittgenstein, Culture & Value

With the above quote in mind, it seemed fitting to establish an online space dedicated to  "Wittgensteinian" commentary on language, literacy and learning. What then is commentary that is particularly Wittgensteinian? It is commentary that is in the spirit of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, for many (most) visitors, that description may not be particularly helpful at all.

Wittgensteinian commentary emphasises a becoming-ness,  for want of a better term.  We become speakers of language. Webecome readers and writers. We become parties in conversations. We become participants and practitioners. We become knowers and connectors. We become members of communities. We become  these things given that we have access to the right conditions and opportunities.

 

Read More

Language, Literacy and Numeracy as Unfolding Skills

Language, literacy and numeracy are learned progressively in key spaces, which come to shape future uses and come to influence what is spoken about, what is read and what is calculated. 

I want to paint a picture of the child who is regularly engaged in conversation, regularly engaged in reading and writing and who is regularly engaged in calculating. I want to paint the picture of skills and concepts being developed (one on top of the other) carefully so that the range of cultural uses of the tools are acquired (not just one narrow band). I want to paint a picture in which the consolidation of one skill or the revelation of something read or written merely becomes the blueprint of what is to come next. 

The child evokes imaginative play, cautionary advice, reflective practice on information, assessment of quantities, and more. The adults in a child's life initiate the child in the practices which will become more and more demanding over time. Every text read and written will become a template for the next. And every numerical question solved will be used to influence those to come. There is no silver bullet for the ongoing skills which are acquired. Quick fix educators may hope to resolve issues of language, literacy and numeracy without appealing to the hundreds to thousands of encounters which contribute to their development, but the fact of the matter remains: learning to read, write, speak and calculate requires hundreds and thousands of encounters with more advanced peers and adults providing feedback, establishing expectations, providing encouragement and shaping practice.

Read More

Launch of Wittgenstein-On-Learning.Com

Let's Launch !!!

It is with great pleasure (and relief) that I launch Wittgenstein-On-Learning.Com -- a Wittgensteinian view of language, literacy and learning. 

Whilst not everything is exactly in place, the core design and content will all be falling into place over the coming weeks. The site's welcome page is in place. The glossary is fleshed out. The readings are healthy. And the notes within key topics are drafted and will be rolled into the site gradually.

Visitors should find lots of stuff here, and visitors should have reasons to return with regular updates to be made to the journal and on Twitter. There are even plans to add a podcast, though that will need to wait for the moment.

The bigger question is, "who will/should visit the site? And why?" These are the most important questions for me to address in this entry.

A Wittgensteinian view of language, literacy and learning recognises that people are transformed through learning (and by what is learnt). When we learn a language, and when we develop a literacy, and when we work with numbers, we acquire tools in the community and a capacity to participate (to fulfil a form life in the stream of living). 

Read More