Field Seminar
INQUIRY QUESTION:
What are effective practices for increasing the engagement of academically marginalized students, while simultaneously ensuring that all students are interested in and challenged by the academic material? For clarification, I am defining “academically marginalized students” as those who are excluded or teased due to their perceived intellectual deficiencies.
STORY OF THE QUESTION:
I arrived at this question after reflecting not only on my first two months in the field, but also on my own school experience. When I think back upon my elementary and middle school years, I can still name the classmates who were considered, to put it bluntly, the “dumb kids.” They often left the room with adults I did not know, or had an adult follow them around, or they just always got the wrong answer when called upon (which often led to some stifled snickering). I remember that if our class were going to do group work I would cross my little fingers and hope that I did not end up having to work with one of them. None of them were my friends, unless they overshadowed their academic struggles with wild daring or an especially cruel sense of humor.
I realize that this is saying a lot about me as a child, but it also speaks to the powerful judgments that even young students make about their classmates’ academic abilities. Furthermore, these judgments often lead to marginalization both in and out of the classroom. In my fieldwork this year, I have observed a similar dynamic with two particular students in my sixth grade class. Both of these students have IEPs and leave the classroom for several hours each day. Though one of them seems to enjoy more social status than the other, both tend to appear disengaged, are passed over during partner work, and rarely raise their hands to answer questions. Furthermore, one of the students, who has auditory and speech issues, often elicits stifled (but still audible) laughter from some classmates when he reads aloud. If this classroom is any sort of community, then these two students do not seem to enjoy full membership. It is to their credit that they continue to try, but I can often sense what could only be frustration and uncomfortable self-consciousness.
I do not want to be complicit with this situation. After I consider my past and current experiences together, a part of me wants to globalize this phenomenon, to think of it as normal, inevitable; kids picked on each other in the past, they pick on each other now, and from that we can logically conclude that kids will continue picking on each other as long as there exist kids in the world to do so. Yet there is another part of me, and that part believes that classrooms can be special and unique places. Now and when I have my own classroom, I want to build a community where, to borrow from Johnson & F. Johnson, “children assist each other’s learning in an environment that is supportive of its members (as cited in Gilles, 2007, p. 29). Thus, I seek strategies and practices for moving from the reality that I described in the first two paragraphs to the ideal that is articulated in my inquiry question. In the early stages of this process, I have been inspired by the pedagogy of Gilles (2007), Oakes & Lipton (1999), and Rothstein-Fisch & Trumbull (2008), as well as by the praxis of the teachers they include in their books. I will make attempts to incorporate some of their strategies into my lessons, and hopefully find some that are particularly effective for my specific classroom context.
STATEMENT OF BELIEFS:
I stated in the previous section that I believe classrooms can be special and unique places. Teachers who enact cooperative learning models in their classrooms presumably believe this too, because the social relations and norms they establish often contradict our largely competitive and cynical macro-culture. People often claim, with a lamenting tone, that school is not the ‘real world.’ I do not necessarily disagree with this sentiment at its face value, but I wonder: is the ‘real world’ worth replicating? If they can, shouldn’t our classrooms differ from the ‘real world’ in the ways that will make them more just, more community-oriented, and just plain nicer? I believe so; though I have rarely had the occasion to see such classrooms firsthand, I have read of enough examples to know that it is possible.
I believe that classrooms in which all students’ abilities and contributions are respected can lead to increased academic, as well as social and emotional, growth. The focus must remain on learning—that is importanT. I think a safe, comfortable, and cooperative classroom is a better place in which to learn. As Oakes & Lipton (1999) claim, a competitive classroom opens the door for marginalization and, because one comes with the other, dominance. Whether it is because a student has lost all confidence, or because a student’s primary focus has become the pursuit of good grades or teacher approval, real learning is jeopardized. This may be one reason why Gilles (2007) noticed that “students in the cooperative condition… were more motivated to achieve, and were more productive than their peers in the competitive groups.” The constant sense of failure is lifted from the shoulders of those who struggle academically.If this pedagogical model has the potential to bring marginalized students back into the classroom – and I mean fully back, not just physically – then Oakes & Lipton (1999) are absolutely right to frame this as an issue of social justice. What happens to these students who have given up on themselves as learners? I can cite plenty of statistics about what it means to be an adult without a diploma, or an adult with low reading skills, and these consequences are amplified for black and Latino students (e.g. Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2011). I believe that any teacher who claims an orientation toward social justice must do all they can to keep students from the margins of the classroom.
FINAL ANALYSIS:
In some ways, addressing my inquiry question in my Term III lessons proved to be a doomed endeavor. I planned and scheduled my lessons around the expectation that my small groups would consist of a few particular students. In each lesson, I sought a way to encourage the confidence of students who had been marginalized in the classroom because of their perceived academic deficiencies. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, however, these students only ended up participating in my math lesson. As a result, the analyses for my science and literacy lessons have tended to focus primarily on the lessons themselves rather than on the way that they informed my inquiry question. Furthermore, the scheduling changes that resulted in these students missing the lessons were made at the last minute, so there was no chance for me to reconsider my inquiry question. For the purpose of this analysis, then, I will have to draw almost exclusively upon my math lesson during discussion of my inquiry question. I will also have to expand the focus to some the other patterns that I noticed across the three lessons, which may not be directly related to my inquiry question.
My math lesson was the final Term III lesson I taught, and it finally gave me the opportunity to work with the small group for which I had planned. I had five students: all boys, two with IEPs and another who has been recommended for one, and two relatively high-performing students. In order to promote the confidence of the struggling students in the group, I wanted to use a cooperative group model inspired by Gilles (2007). To promote interaction, I rearranged the desks so that the students were facing each other, and I developed mathematical tasks that promoted “positive interdependence” through reflection and communication (Gilles, 2007; Hiebert et al., 1997). For instance, the final word problem that I wrote for the students to solve asks them to pretend they are members of an “elite team” of NASA scientists. The wording of the problem communicates the expectation that they will work together to come to a solution. I also thought it would be present the type of engaging and challenging problem that would stimulate discourse between the students, a problem of the type that Hiebert et al. (1997) reference in their writing on “problem centered classrooms.”Lastly, I attempted to employ some of the “talk moves” articulated by Shindelar (2009), again to promote communication between the students. (For example, I often re-voiced what a student had just said in order to ensure that everybody was on the same page.)
This was generally a new type of learning for my students, who are used to teacher-led and independent work much more than work that involves cooperation and discussion with each other. I felt that it would be beneficial for my struggling students because cooperative group work tends to avoid “expos[ing] students’ flaws to public examination” and because “all students, regardless of skill level, are able to contribute in areas of their strength (Oakes & Lipton, 1999). However, it also required my students to tackle not only difficult content, but also new ways of learning. They performed admirably on the latter task. During the number talk toward the beginning of the lesson, the students expressed willingness to stand at the blackboard and explain their work (including one of the students with an IEP). As my Penn mentor noted, it was evident that the students felt comfortable enough to take a public risk. They did need some coaching, however. Rather than look at their classmates as they explained their work, for instance, they looked directly at me. I also found myself needing to ask a lot of “Why” questions in order to provoke deeper explanations of their reasoning. Like the wonderful students they are, they adapted quickly and needed progressively less scaffolding.
When it came time for the final word problem (which can be viewed on my math webpage), I was admittedly concerned about how it would go. By this point, I had come to the realization that the content was becoming too hard, too fast. I wanted to challenge them and felt that they would be excited by the word problem, but as I passed it out and we read it aloud, I knew that their conceptual understanding was not yet there. I was particularly concerned for the struggling students, the ones whose confidence I was trying to encourage. Even if they were working as part of a group, how would they react to a complex problem that they were not prepared to solve?
Once again, the students responded admirably. While it turned out to be true that nobody got the right answer, they worked hard and cooperatively. One of the higher performing students actually turned to one of the struggling ones and, rather than offer help, was so tactful and compassionate that he asked for help from the struggling student. Another student preferred to work alone, and his choice was respected, but the rest of them worked collaboratively on the problem as best as they could. It should also be noted that this was the last period of the day and they had taken their math Benchmark Assessment that morning. In other words, they had every excuse to not work as hard as they did for as long as they did — and, let’s be honest, this says more about them as students than it does about me as a teacher. I cannot help but wonder, though, whether they would have maintained such a level of engagement if they were working silently and independently.
Another important understanding that I gained through all three of these lessons is that I need to incorporate more structure. By structure, I do not necessarily mean more control over the students’ thinking or acting, but more established guidelines for when, how, and for how long things will happen. My Penn mentor noted this in both of the Term III lessons that she observed, and my classroom mentor also mentioned this while discussing my science lesson.
In some ways, addressing my inquiry question in my Term III lessons proved to be a doomed endeavor. I planned and scheduled my lessons around the expectation that my small groups would consist of a few particular students. In each lesson, I sought a way to encourage the confidence of students who had been marginalized in the classroom because of their perceived academic deficiencies. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, however, these students only ended up participating in my math lesson. As a result, the analyses for my science and literacy lessons have tended to focus primarily on the lessons themselves rather than on the way that they informed my inquiry question. Furthermore, the scheduling changes that resulted in these students missing the lessons were made at the last minute, so there was no chance for me to reconsider my inquiry question. For the purpose of this analysis, then, I will have to draw almost exclusively upon my math lesson during discussion of my inquiry question. I will also have to expand the focus to some the other patterns that I noticed across the three lessons, which may not be directly related to my inquiry question.
My math lesson was the final Term III lesson I taught, and it finally gave me the opportunity to work with the small group for which I had planned. I had five students: all boys, two with IEPs and another who has been recommended for one, and two relatively high-performing students. In order to promote the confidence of the struggling students in the group, I wanted to use a cooperative group model inspired by Gilles (2007). To promote interaction, I rearranged the desks so that the students were facing each other, and I developed mathematical tasks that promoted “positive interdependence” through reflection and communication (Gilles, 2007; Hiebert et al., 1997). For instance, the final word problem that I wrote for the students to solve asks them to pretend they are members of an “elite team” of NASA scientists. The wording of the problem communicates the expectation that they will work together to come to a solution. I also thought it would be present the type of engaging and challenging problem that would stimulate discourse between the students, a problem of the type that Hiebert et al. (1997) reference in their writing on “problem centered classrooms.”Lastly, I attempted to employ some of the “talk moves” articulated by Shindelar (2009), again to promote communication between the students. (For example, I often re-voiced what a student had just said in order to ensure that everybody was on the same page.)
This was generally a new type of learning for my students, who are used to teacher-led and independent work much more than work that involves cooperation and discussion with each other. I felt that it would be beneficial for my struggling students because cooperative group work tends to avoid “expos[ing] students’ flaws to public examination” and because “all students, regardless of skill level, are able to contribute in areas of their strength (Oakes & Lipton, 1999). However, it also required my students to tackle not only difficult content, but also new ways of learning. They performed admirably on the latter task. During the number talk toward the beginning of the lesson, the students expressed willingness to stand at the blackboard and explain their work (including one of the students with an IEP). As my Penn mentor noted, it was evident that the students felt comfortable enough to take a public risk. They did need some coaching, however. Rather than look at their classmates as they explained their work, for instance, they looked directly at me. I also found myself needing to ask a lot of “Why” questions in order to provoke deeper explanations of their reasoning. Like the wonderful students they are, they adapted quickly and needed progressively less scaffolding.
When it came time for the final word problem (which can be viewed on my math webpage), I was admittedly concerned about how it would go. By this point, I had come to the realization that the content was becoming too hard, too fast. I wanted to challenge them and felt that they would be excited by the word problem, but as I passed it out and we read it aloud, I knew that their conceptual understanding was not yet there. I was particularly concerned for the struggling students, the ones whose confidence I was trying to encourage. Even if they were working as part of a group, how would they react to a complex problem that they were not prepared to solve?
Once again, the students responded admirably. While it turned out to be true that nobody got the right answer, they worked hard and cooperatively. One of the higher performing students actually turned to one of the struggling ones and, rather than offer help, was so tactful and compassionate that he asked for help from the struggling student. Another student preferred to work alone, and his choice was respected, but the rest of them worked collaboratively on the problem as best as they could. It should also be noted that this was the last period of the day and they had taken their math Benchmark Assessment that morning. In other words, they had every excuse to not work as hard as they did for as long as they did — and, let’s be honest, this says more about them as students than it does about me as a teacher. I cannot help but wonder, though, whether they would have maintained such a level of engagement if they were working silently and independently.
Another important understanding that I gained through all three of these lessons is that I need to incorporate more structure. By structure, I do not necessarily mean more control over the students’ thinking or acting, but more established guidelines for when, how, and for how long things will happen. My Penn mentor noted this in both of the Term III lessons that she observed, and my classroom mentor also mentioned this while discussing my science lesson.
I am really referring to the little things. During my literacy lesson, for example, when I turned the students loose to do some independent work I did not specify how long they had to do it. As my Penn mentor told me, it is good to give them a time limit and to make it shorter than you might have planned. That way, they will get to work right away and you can always extend the amount of time they have to finish up. From her experience, it is this added bit of structure that can keep the students on task and engaged with the lesson. This particular example is especially interesting because I paid so close attention to time management during the planning of the lesson; I laid out the expected length of time for each portion. Yet, why did I not tell the students how long some of these portions were going to last? If I already knew that I planned for them to spend five minutes working on their own, then why not just tell them that they were going to work independently for five minutes? This seems like an easy-to-incorporate yet effective bit of advice.
In my science and math lessons, some of the difficulty that I ran into regarding structure stemmed from my attempt to integrate practices that were unfamiliar to the students. In my math lesson, I built in a lot of discussion and collaboration. At times, however, the students had difficulty meeting my grand vision. We can take the number talks at the beginning of the lesson as an example. While the students were generally willing to stand at the blackboard and discuss their work, they refused to look at their peers as they spoke, preferring to just look at me. They seemed to want to maintain the familiar line of communication that runs between student and teacher, but not from peer to peer. I may have been better served by having the students turn to a partner to share their work, rather than come to the board. This way, the expectation for peer-to-peer discourse is more explicit and could be a stepping stone toward greater comfort with this practice.
I encountered a similar friction in my science lesson. At the end of the lesson, I asked the students to reflect on what surprised them, what they found interesting, what questions they had, etc. As it turned out, the students had no idea what I meant by reflect. Furthermore, when I explained it, they were incredulous that I was really asking them to “just think” about something. As my classroom mentor explained later, they have received a very process-oriented education to this point, and thus to ask them to simply reflect seems the same as asking them to simply do nothing. In other words, if they’re not producing anything tangible, then what are they doing?
In the end, these issues of the students’ unfamiliarity with some of the structures I was introducing did not pose major issues for my lessons. I am pleased with how they all went, and yet they could have gone more smoothly. One of the more difficult aspects of Term III is how discrete the lessons are. For this reason, it may be even more important to take previous classroom norms into consideration, since there is no time to put new norms in place. Answering a specific inquiry question is difficult for this same reason, in my opinion. What kind of question can be answered in the span of three lessons? Not mine, at least. However, my math lesson gave me some confidence moving forward that all students in our classroom can be made to feel as important and valued members of the classroom community.
REFERENCES:
Carnevale, A.P., Rose, S.J., & Cheah, B. (2011). The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Gilles, R.M. (2007). Cooperative Learning: Integrating Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing, Inc.
Hiebert, J. et al. (1997). Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (1999). Teaching to Change the World, (pp. 215-26). Boston: McGraw Hill.
Rothstein-Fisch, C. & Trumbull, E. (2008). Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students’ Cultural Strengths. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
In my science and math lessons, some of the difficulty that I ran into regarding structure stemmed from my attempt to integrate practices that were unfamiliar to the students. In my math lesson, I built in a lot of discussion and collaboration. At times, however, the students had difficulty meeting my grand vision. We can take the number talks at the beginning of the lesson as an example. While the students were generally willing to stand at the blackboard and discuss their work, they refused to look at their peers as they spoke, preferring to just look at me. They seemed to want to maintain the familiar line of communication that runs between student and teacher, but not from peer to peer. I may have been better served by having the students turn to a partner to share their work, rather than come to the board. This way, the expectation for peer-to-peer discourse is more explicit and could be a stepping stone toward greater comfort with this practice.
I encountered a similar friction in my science lesson. At the end of the lesson, I asked the students to reflect on what surprised them, what they found interesting, what questions they had, etc. As it turned out, the students had no idea what I meant by reflect. Furthermore, when I explained it, they were incredulous that I was really asking them to “just think” about something. As my classroom mentor explained later, they have received a very process-oriented education to this point, and thus to ask them to simply reflect seems the same as asking them to simply do nothing. In other words, if they’re not producing anything tangible, then what are they doing?
In the end, these issues of the students’ unfamiliarity with some of the structures I was introducing did not pose major issues for my lessons. I am pleased with how they all went, and yet they could have gone more smoothly. One of the more difficult aspects of Term III is how discrete the lessons are. For this reason, it may be even more important to take previous classroom norms into consideration, since there is no time to put new norms in place. Answering a specific inquiry question is difficult for this same reason, in my opinion. What kind of question can be answered in the span of three lessons? Not mine, at least. However, my math lesson gave me some confidence moving forward that all students in our classroom can be made to feel as important and valued members of the classroom community.
REFERENCES:
Carnevale, A.P., Rose, S.J., & Cheah, B. (2011). The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Gilles, R.M. (2007). Cooperative Learning: Integrating Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing, Inc.
Hiebert, J. et al. (1997). Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Oakes, J. & Lipton, M. (1999). Teaching to Change the World, (pp. 215-26). Boston: McGraw Hill.
Rothstein-Fisch, C. & Trumbull, E. (2008). Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students’ Cultural Strengths. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.