This article was written by a teacher in Los Angeles. She describes the implantation of the Common Core standards. She is especially perplexed by the practice of “close reading,” which means that students are expected to comprehend text without any context or background knowledge.
She and her colleagues were disappointed by the “professional development,” which was not at all professional.
She writes:
“Our trainer started the session by apologizing sincerely for all the anxiety and confusion surrounding the rushed implementation of the Common Core State Standards in LAUSD. The first slide in her PowerPoint presentation showed the governance structure of LAUSD. At the top was the elected school board. She was letting us know that if we had issues with the Common Core State Standards, we needed to bring these up with the school board. Everyone else down the line, she implied, was just following marching orders, and it would do no good to call and harass them.
“We were lucky. When I returned to school, I found out that the math teachers had had a similar training session. However, theirs started with the trainer telling them that no “negativity” would be tolerated, and that it wasn’t a question-and-answer session. In essence, they were told to sit down and shut up and not bring up concerns about the reordering of the teaching of important concepts that is happening in math under the Common Core State Standards.
“At least we were treated like professionals.”
Then came the training about how to teach the Gettysburg Address by close reading.
The teacher writes:
“When we discussed the sample Gettysburg assessment, several teachers pointed out that the assessment offers no background on the Gettysburg Address. Students are not to be given any information about the speech, even if they are relatively new to the country. Many of us in LAUSD have students in our regular English classes who have only been in the United States a year or two, and they most likely do not know our history.
“Other students may simply not remember their U.S. history lessons from middle school, and may have forgotten who Abraham Lincoln was, or why the Gettysburg Address is important, or even that “address” in this instance means a speech and not a location.
“If a student is clueless but lucky, she might be sitting next to a student who does know this information. (All the Common Core assessments I’ve seen so far require discussion with a partner, but forbid talking to the teacher. So if you are a genius or sit next to one, you hit the Common Core lottery.)
“But those kinds of concerns are apparently very pre-Common Core, and are outdated now.
“When we asked if we could do a little pre-teaching to provide context, our trainer somberly shook her head.
“She actually said it would be best to simply give the “cold, hard assessment,” and that we need to “remove the scaffolding sometime.”
“Then I noticed a relic on the wall from the pre-Common Core era—a poster of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The Bloom’s Taxonomy chart is a pyramid. At the bottom is the foundation of all learning. As you go up the pyramid, the tasks increase in complexity (notice I did not say “rigor”).
“At the base of the pyramid is knowledge. Next up is comprehension. After that come application, analysis, synthesis, and then at the top, evaluation.
“I couldn’t help myself. I raised my hand to ask a question.
“Isn’t giving this assessment without giving the students the background—the context for the speech—kind of like expecting them to come in on the Bloom’s taxonomy chart at comprehension, without making sure they first have the knowledge?”
“Then something interesting happened. The trainer looked like I had zapped her with a stun gun for a second. She actually physically jerked. Then she recovered, and said we could discuss that after the training. (We didn’t.)”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We were given similar treatment in 2010-12 for our CC training. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
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Do these trainers need to do some close reading of George Orwell?
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The ed deformers are reading it as a policy manual, Richard.
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George didn’t exactly mean it as a how-to piece! 🙂
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You can’t do Bloom’s pyramid without taking care of Maslow’s, certainly in a lower SES school.
As a Classical philologist by training and a Latin teacher by profession, I am all about close reading and textual exegesis. However, I cannot see the value of reading anything without context, whether it’s the Aeneid or the back of a cereal box. I also don’t see the value of teaching complex texts without having built up to them appropriately. This is why we don’t read the Aeneid in Latin I.
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Well said!
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Biggest Bunch of Hooey, EVER!
Would physicians tolerate such malpractice, nonsense and dismanteling of their profession? Lawyers, engineers, you name it? Why in carnation are teachers jumping like lemmings?
Close Reading is ColemansCloseReadingCrap!
Children don’t learn that way and we should not even try or bother with it!
We mumble and grumble but we need to: Hang up our caulk, turn off our Smart Boards, shut down our computers, tear up JunkScienceData, stop testing, and continue our BestPractices in Teaching or call out sick for NationalBlueFlu!
We have been drawing the line in the sand so often, that we now have one big mess of scratched sand. They know they can do this to us because we have taught them how. People treat us this way because we allow them.
Just because the Richest Man in the Americas bought an Edsel, a Yugo, bushels of Lemons or invested his fortune in Pet Rocks …. It does not change our profession, psychology, children, parents, teaching or our compass of Right & Wrong.
We must get a Grip! Stop running scared, and For God’s Sake…stop trying to convince and teach everyone how it should be done. They don’t care! They care about making $$ using our kids and our willingness to jump over the hills like lemmings.
We MUST STAND UP & Not Compromise!
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This is an invasion of our public schools by very powerful profiteers. Stay fierce and fearless, the price they pay for invading.
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“We MUST STAND UP & Not Compromise!”
Off with the GAGAer’s __________!!!!
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“However, theirs started with the trainer telling them that no “negativity” would be tolerated, and that it wasn’t a question-and-answer session. In essence, they were told to sit down and shut up and not bring up concerns…”
In other words, you better open up your trap for us and we’ll force this stuff in. No excuses. This isn’t learning, this is one group of people enforcing their authority on others. This is a model of education our leaders are instilling in thought and deed? No. No. No.
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There must be a script for these “trainings” (Sit up. Roll over. Good boy) that is being disseminated nationwide by the Deformers. I hear this from teacher after teacher, all around the country.
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Had this happen at our monthly faculty meeting yesterday where the principal told us that SGPs, PBIS, PLCs, NEE (evaluation system), etc. . . were going to be strictly followed next year and they weren’t going away. And those who weren’t “down” with it needed to see him, which means give him a heads up on who he will try to get rid of. Lot’s of head shaking in that room, up and down by the GAGAers and side to side by the more experienced and intelligent staff. It was one of those “my (actually the new suup’s) way or the highway”.
I really need to contact the retirement system to figure exactly where I’m at in terms of retiring.
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Emmy, the “no negativity dictum” could not be more ridiculous. I hear this same report repeatedly from LAUSD teachers. My own personal experience with CC training was a few months ago when my community Democratic Club did a “training for the public” by the science teacher trainer who was paid to promote CC and one of our BoE members who is a veterinarian and specializes in teaching animal husbandry at a local community college.
Recognizing early on that the presentation was a setup to show only how “wonderful” CC is, and how “lucky we are to have it as the new curriculum in our district”….I asked to be on the program to talk to issues that do not fit their script. I was refused and told I could make public comment at the presentation. After suffering through 2 hours of absolutley false and ludicrous info, I asked to speak in public comment. I identified myself by name and as a lifetime educator in the area of public policy, and tried to speak to the issue of the vast number of US educators who question both the untested material and the many standardized tests.
Within moments the speakers and Prez of the group shouted me down and asked me to leave the room saying I was sent by the Tea Party to disrupt the meeting….nothing could be further from the truth.
The Prez actually escorted me out of the room. Afterwards, as word got around the community which knew me well as a Progressive Dem activist and an educator, I did get some apologies, but the damage had been done. If this is an exemplar of how resisters to CC are treated, and I see here that it is, we are rushing headlong into a dictator nation. This is as alarming as the CC material is minimalist and poorly conceived.
For this alone no one should take Obama and his minion Duncan seriously.
Ellen Lubic
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Ellen, I assume that critical thinking is to be encouraged so long as everyone agrees. Dissent is not welcome.
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A challenge: Someone should find some obscure authentic text from some virtually unknown culture concerning some unknown historic event to be used instead for professional development.
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Don’t have a cell phone of any type but I did figure out that I might have to get one with internet to have something to do on those days we’re being “professionally developed”. I get in trouble if I read a book or grade papers.
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Attended a K/1 readers workshop training last summer. The trainer told us that we should not ask our students what they knew about polar bears, for example, if the book in question was about polar bears. Her explanation was that a discussion would ingrain wrong information and negate the new. How absurd!
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I thought that was called schema activation or activating prior knowledge. Hmm. What do I know, I’ve only been a lowly teacher for 15 years.
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In my professional opinion: retired reading teacher, it will not matter what a trainer or teacher or anyone says about prior knowledge, This knowledge is in our brain and we will automatically access this information while reading. Really, anyone with common sense would know this. Oh I guess I am expecting some common sense!
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Mart, YOU may access the prior knowledge, but how can a teenager understand the Gettysburg Address without knowing anything about Lincoln or the Civil War? Suppose they arrived from another country last week or last year? Shouldn’t they learn the context of what they are reading to gain understanding of the words?
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ColemanCloseReadingCrap is trying to legitimize something so wrong! CCSS Fanatics are dedicated to holding their breath until H— freezes over because they hear Katchink$, Katchink$ in everyone’s pockets.
Idea: have elementary school kids perform CCloseReadingC using English direction translations for putting a bike together from scratch, without telling them what they are building. No prior knowledge, no pictures or photos, prior skills or end product info. Only…poorly translated directions in English of bikes from China.
Make any sense?
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OK class lets start our close reading . . .
. The guardian of the land of an heir who is under age shall take from it only reasonable revenues, customary dues, and feudal services. He shall do this without destruction or damage to men or property. If we have given the guardianship of the land to a sheriff, or to any person answerable to us for the revenues, and he commits destruction or damage, we will exact compensation from him, and the land shall be entrusted to two worthy and prudent men of the same ‘fee’, who shall be answerable to us for the revenues, or to the person to whom we have assigned them. If we have given or sold to anyone the guardianship of such land, and he causes destruction or damage, he shall lose the guardianship of it, and it shall be handed over to two worthy and prudent men of the same ‘fee’, who shall be similarly answerable to us.
To obtain the general consent of the realm for the assessment of an ‘aid’ – except in the three cases specified above – or a ‘scutage’, we will cause the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons to be summoned individually by letter. To those who hold lands directly of us we will cause a general summons to be issued, through the sheriffs and other officials, to come together on a fixed day (of which at least forty days notice shall be given) and at a fixed place. In all letters of summons, the cause of the summons will be stated. When a summons has been issued, the business appointed for the day shall go forward in accordance with the resolution of those present, even if not all those who were summoned have appeared.
. If any one hold of us in fee-farm, or in socage, or in burkage, and hold land of another by military service, we shall not, by reason of that fee-farm, or socage, or burkage, have the wardship of his heir or of his land which is held in fee from another. Nor shall we have the wardship of that fee-farm, or socage, or burkage unless that fee-farm owe military service. We shall not, by reason of some petit-serjeanty which some one holds of us through the service of giving us knives or arrows or the like, have the wardship of his heir or of the land which he holds of another by military service.
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In steps David Coleman:
1) In your opinion, what was the authors secondary intent in
paragraph 3, lines 1 -4?
a) The importance of burkage rights over socage domains
b) The insistence on military service to defend burkage rights
c) The use of wardship compensation to assuage socage inconsistencies
d) paying homage to the under credited work of fee-farmers
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And you’re a 13 year old special needs student from Haiti who’s family was lost in the 2010 earthquake and this is only you’re second year in the US, and the Haitian Creole translation is stuck in the Pearson pipeline.
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In case you are as ignorant of world history as I am, the above excerpts are translations from the Magna Carta.
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Ah, ha, I thought it was the Magna Carta!
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great example
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You’re still awake?
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TAGrO! NY teacher, TAGrO!
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Don’t forget what Freud said, “there’s no such thing as a joke.”
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With mad test writing skills like this I should go to work for Pearson.
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I think there is something insidious about this “consult your elbow partner” business. I think it may subtly ingrain the idea that a sample size of 1 is ok for figuring out the answer to a question. “Well, golly gee, I thought the answer was X and my neighbor thought it was X so it must be X.” Whole class discussions tend to elicit the more subtle areas of question. Students learn a lot by hearing and thinking through alternative explanations, even if most of them are rejected. In short, there are more data points and possibly more conflict. Just like real life.
Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but I don’t think it is good to train students to seek out only the opinion of their closest neighbor.
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Think-pair-SHARE
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well said, Emmy
I get really, really sick of hearing people say that a teacher should always be “the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.”
These are all parts of the toolkit, good for some purposes, not for others. It takes the kind of discernment you show in this post, Emmy, to figure out when and why the approach makes sense and when and why it doesn’t.
The real evil comes when one of these cure-alls is made mandatory–put on the evaluation checklist, for example.
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We were given a pep talk about how Common Core was just “what good teachers have been doing all along” and it was made clear, without actually saying the words, that we should not be, under any circumstances, negative about this well-made, though misunderstood, program. Our trainer made it clear that what we’d heard about who had designed CCS was just wrong and that it was made by qualified educators, not people who had no training or actual experience in the classroom.
And then we got the actual training, after which it was clear that the whole opening speech was just a lie.
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The “intentional fallacy,” one of the cornerstones of the New Criticism of the 1930s and 1940s (“close reading” was another) has long been discarded by scholars of literature, especially those (like me) who approach literature through a cultural lens. The last thing we want appearing in our college classrooms are students who follow the close-reading approach of allowing the “text” to build its own world. Entertainment (and literature is entertainment) is part of the world, not detached from it.
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Without naming names I can see how this method of reading has produced a sense of “truth” in some news and political advocates. Read out of context and make up your own definitions, realities, and perceptions of historical truth. Never mind that those are completely inaccurate and misguided. “It is so because I say it is so. It must have been true. I know better than the person I am accusing. I know why people’s lives are as they are. It says so right here, according to me!”. Hmmm.
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Thanks for reminding readers of the blog that the theoretical ideas behind Coleman’s resurrection of vintage close reading circa 1930s and 1940s have been discredited, long since, and not only for literary works but also in the arts more generally.
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Exactly. The “intentional fallacy” contends that it is only what is evident in the work itself that matters. What the writer may have meant is irrelevant. This is what CCSS picks up on. For a cultural-studies scholar like me, that contention borders on the ludicrous. (I’ve written on the weakness of the “intentional fallacy.” If anyone is interested, the article can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/888431/Intentionalism_On_the_Assumption_of_Authority_in_Literature).
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Thanks for that link Aaron!
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This happens all the time in K-12 education, Aaron. An idea originates in some part of academia. It filters down like fallout through the general culture. Some self-appointed edupundit half hears it, half understands it, and proclaims it, in a weirdly devolved version, as gospel just brought down from the mountaintop.
There is value to teachers of the young of the metaphor of a work as a world, for kids need to grok that when encountering literature, they actually have to take the trip–fall down that rabbit hole, go through that wardrobe–and have an experience, an experience that will then have significance (and not identical significance to every reader). But the idea that texts exist independently of context is just patently absurd (and even dangerous). That notion flies in the face of a century of literary scholarship and criticism.
This one will also get your blood boiling:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.5. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
This Common Core standard [sic] flies in the face of a century of work in hermeneutics in its assumption (big assumption!) that an author’s choices are a proper object of study. This extremely controversial, minority position is taken for granted in the standard [sic]. E. D. Hirsch stood almost alone, throughout much of the past century, in his defense of the author’s choices, or intentions, as proper objects of scholarly attention. During that time, many scholars and critics, perhaps most professional literary people, contended that the author’s choices, or intentions, were irrelevant or irrecoverable or both and that we must attend, instead,
• to the text itself (Ransom, Tate, Empson, Brooks, Warren, Wimsatt, Beardsley, and others of the New Critical school; Propp, Jakobson, Stith Thompson, Levi-Strauss, and other Formalists and Structuralists);
• to the reader’s construction of the text (in their various ways, Barthes, Fish, Rosenblatt, Derrida, and other Reader Response, Postmodernist, and Deconstructionist critics); or
• to historically determined responses to the text and differences in these over time (Heidegger, Gademer, Foucault, Greenblatt, and other Historicist and new Historicist critics).
There are many ways in and out of literary works.
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I say “dangerous” because reading can’t stop there–with the enthrallment. A good reader, a critical reader, will question that enthrallment, will break the spell. One suspends disbelief, yes, but not, one hopes, FOREVER, for that would mean the entire suspension of one’s faculties, critical, emotional, and creative.
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Not only does it boil my blood, but it confuses me no end! They want close readings, independent of influence… yet want to study influence as well?
There are many doors. We shouldn’t lock some and leave others ajar… especially when they can all lead to the same places….
I love your paragraph with reference to Heinlein, Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis…. You make the connectivity point better than any number of explanations could.
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If one started calling out the confusions in the amateurish new Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] in ELA, one would be at it from dawn to doomsday.
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Aaron, I liked your essay enough that I have saved a copy so that I can share it around, though I don’t think it possible to rehabilitate Skinner. I, too, share your view (and Hirsch’s) that if we throw over the notion of intention, we risk throwing out, with it, the whole notion of art as communication, as cultural transmission. The Ancient Mariner wants you to hear HIS story, insists upon that. The reports of the death of the author were, indeed, greatly exaggerated. However, all that said, I think, as well, and I am sure that you will agree, that it’s valuable for us, as readers, to poke at that author and intentions that we’ve posited in our reading, in our rereading.
Often, in rereading my own work, I’m surprised at the one or ones I glimpse there, behind it all. And as I sit down to write, who is the “author” there? We are all of many parts and roles and conditionings, layers upon layers, worlds within worlds. At times when we write it seems that we are simply transcribing (that’s almost always when the writing is best, of course), and at others we are very much aware of consciously assembling an experience for the reader–laying a trap, casting a spell, tossing the reader off a cliff into something dark and disturbing–whatever. And at times the autoclitic or peformative aspect of the speech is definitely foregrounded, both when we are writing and in a text we are reading.
I read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, for example, and it seems to me that I am reading someone intent, foremost, on my having an authentic encounter with someone like him, encountering a mad genius of many parts content, often, with simply displaying those parts in all their dazzling self-contradiction. God or gnat? Well, both, in superimposition, like Schrodinger’s cat, and much more besides, and he’s aware of that and having a good laugh at us and himself whenever we presume to attain a bourgeois clarity, though he has experienced that other clarity, the Eleusinian one, atop the mountain, and shares some of what that is like, too, or claims to–even that he laughs at, as a model to us of what is, finally, it seems to me, a stance he wants to show us how to take or a dance to dance. The author I posit, there, is one who demands that I be him reading him but in his irreducible entirety, not at all in the way of the narrow propagandist, not at all at all.
How much more removed, we are, from the vantage not of a writer but of a reader, in all our complexities, with all our unexamined interpellations of everything, at great distance in time and place from that author we think we are conversing with? For example, when I was a lot younger, Plato seemed, to me, clear as Bach Cantata, but now that I am older, much of what is there seems to me extremely alien and perhaps irrecoverable, and that may be true of the Bach, too. So, I thought of myself in Hirsch’s camp on this stuff long before I met the man and came to admire him close up, but I also read critics of other schools to my great instruction and delight. There are many, many ways in and out of poems and tales, and it’s possible to read by many lights.
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Hirsch feels as strongly as he does about this, I think, because he understands that our basic condition is that my mind is over here and yours is over there, and this cultural transmission was created to bridge that gap–by Jove and all the gods that ever were–and we damned well better remember that.
I agree.
Still, we don’t even know ourselves, so it’s some presumption to think that we know the Other who is, after all, not some specimen of Lepidoptera labeled, pinned to a card, archived, and cataloged.
The ed deformers, bless their simple little walnut-like hearts, don’t understand that.
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This has been a most rewarding post to follow, the insights and examples offered are worth archiving and studying.
Robert, your Bach Cantata example leads me to remark that, today, we typically teach analysis of *baroque* music using *classical* harmonic theory that wasn’t within Bach’s frame of reference when he combined linear melodies in contrapuntal relationships. “Chords” and “Harmony” itself were derived from studying these relationships after the fact. Physics aside, music “theory” is really just a common language developed to explain what made the “best” music “best.”
I was born and schooled in the US and American-accredited schools abroad, but my entire teaching education and career have taken place within Ontario, Canada, a province. We are the same size as several average states, and we have fewer school boards than almost any 10 counties you could pick at random in say, New Jersey. In the early 90s an almost entirely educator-led endeavor resulted in a “Common Curriculum.” It was (is) excellent, alas no one understood it! Early implementation efforts failed and were met with resistance, but pedagogs generally came around when they saw the content. The education-oriented NDP government infamously made other decisions that alienated absolutely everyone and got the boot. A neo-liberal slash & burn anti-teacher, anti-public era of “accountability” and ensued. The neo-liberals (they’re known as the Conservative party, but imo would still land left of most GOP today) alienated everyone and got the boot. I took part in the largest teacher strike in North American history that contributed to their downfall, a fact in which I take great pride, but I also credit them with “plain languaging” the Common (now known simply as “Ontario”) Curriculum and thereby removing the main source of resistance. Total testing madness was averted: the legacy EQAO assessment was restricted to 3 times in elementary, includes portfolio and other assessment strategies.
There is nothing standardizing about the Ontario Curriculum, but it presents high standards that professional educators must meet to teach in Ontario. It’s designed to permit constant experimentation and evolution—but that requires a system that supports remediation and ongoing revision.
Beyond sharing the word “Common” and some ideological history I don’t know how many more parallels can be drawn to your federal effort targeting fifty states and hundreds of thousands of school boards—a somewhat bigger challenge to be sure. When it comes to the curriculum itself, I still firmly believe at some point American educators will see the baby in the bath water, and the public will once again recognize who should properly take it from there. The most deplorable aspect of the corporate assault on the public perhaps is that it replaces creative, analytical, synthesizing discourse, such as that taking place here, with repetitive, defensive, time-wasting demagoguery.
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Thank you, Richard. I will have a look at those standards. Fascinating what you say about the development of music theory after the fact. I had a very different sort of education, there. Theory from the ground up, as though the composition of music were some sort of deductive process. But I survived it because music was itself a strong enough current to sweep me through, fortunately, and I still play. I’m wondering if you have read Paul Lockhart’s beautiful “A Mathematician’s Lament,” here:
Click to access LockhartsLament.pdf
“The most deplorable aspect of the corporate assault on the public perhaps is that it replaces creative, analytical, synthesizing discourse, such as that taking place here, with repetitive, defensive, time-wasting demagoguery.” That’s the bit, Richard, that I just cannot forgive. Ours is a country full of brilliant scholars, researchers, teachers–gifted people with amazing ideas the like of which would never occur to these self-appointed corporate committees–and instead of harnessing, crowd-sourcing, those gifts, we’re to have this amateurish, top-down mandated bullet list of standards driving everything toward–toward what?–ever more summative testing. It’s a recipe for mediocrity being sold as a way to improve outcomes.
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Thanks for the article, Robert, I haven’t read it, but I’ve saved it and will soon. I’d better elaborate a bit on what I said, though. Because I was in a fairly rare position in the 60s of having 2 working parents (both teachers, their parents also educated, WASP) I had pianos and percussion since the cradle, private lessons since grade 4, and in PA in 60s a music program at public school starting grade 4. I played trombone, usually first chair if I didn’t get demoted for being a smartass—and right through high school if I didn’t have a sheet of music in front of me, forget it! Couldn’t play a note.
My mom had a guitar and a book of folk songs with chord patterns above the words, and I figured out On Top of Old Smoky by age 9. At 14 at a community picnic I was sitting around watching a bunch of older kids play blues and I could see a pattern and I was thinking it looked easier than it sounded when one of them handed me a guitar and said what can you do, kid? I wanted to puke, but instead, somehow, I played blues! All through high school after school, away from school I scratched vinyl records to shreds picking up licks by ear. If you put a sheet of music in front if me, forget it, I choked. Couldn’t play a note.
I took classical guitar lessons on my own dime at 18 and finally learned to read guitar music, just so I could take the music class at college. The teacher was a Hammond B-3 rocker turned classical cellist/Africa-trecking blues ethnomusicologist—Trevor Payne, McGill U, Montreal—teaching beginning theory. Trevor taught us 12-bar form and I IV V notation, we listened to Bo Diddley and Taj Mahal for a few minutes each class and then started writing and jamming 5-note solos. *He* taught theory as a language describing what people were already doing. I learned I vi IV V sounded like Sha Na Na, and soon I could hear those changes even if Mozart had written them with a quill pen.
Both my formal and informal learning converged, but it was that perfect storm of prior opportunity, support network, and intrinsic motivation *in the presence of a gifted teacher* that brought about the insight.
The other thing he did was play for us and with us. I mixed in blues in my middle school music classes and sat in with every section (except flute. I can’t play a note!). I’ll never pretend I was ever the rock star classroom teacher Trevor Payne is, but I used what I could of his techniques my own way, adapted to my situation. Not everyone can be the front person. You also need people with solid meter to just lay it down. In bands you could always tell the “jobbers” who listened to the tape the morning of the gig and learned the chords just well enough to get through from those who wore out the vinyl since they were 14.
Please forgive the long self-absorbed story. I thought it supports both the assertion there are many, many ways, and letting those who both love what they do and love to share what they know about it be the ones to figure out how to do that. Let’s try that for a change.
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Thank you, Richard, for that moving, beautiful story. What a great way to end my evening’s work!
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And it says a lot of you, Richard, that you honor your teacher. Those who do that are the ones who took something powerful from the encounter.
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Bad trainers are bad trainers. Just the word “trainer” as opposed to professional “developer” says a lot. However – the Gettysburg example appears to be a three-day lesson for students (yes, an infamous “module”) that includes practical guidance including:
“The expectations of the CCSS call on teachers to instruct around complex text so students read closely to accomplish essential skills, such as make inferences, determine themes, and analyze development of ideas.” (full set of guidance for these below).
Call me old fashioned but a three-day lesson that includes instruction – with context, an array of activities including previewing, reading, discussing with peers, graphic organizers, notes per section, some aspects of PQRST, and others is a pretty thorough and a heck of a lot better than “read the passage and answer these questions.”
And, as the legitimate complaints about Common Core (beyond Gates money, non-educator authors, used for high stakes accountability, and more) – looks like California brought in real teachers and the piloted and field tested and offers these for various uses (pre-assessments (which would be an unfair SLO-like New York adventure) or formative assessment after instruction).
http://collaborate.caedpartners.org/display/SAI/CORE+ELA+Performance+Assessment++Modules
These ELA Performance Assessment Modules were developed by cross-district design teams during the Summer of 2012, piloted during the 2012-13 school year, and revised based on feedback from the Pilot. They are directly aligned to both the Common Core State Standards and the SMARTER Balanced assessment specifications, and can be used in a variety of means–as diagnostic pre-assessments, as mid-instruction formative assessments, or as mini summative benchmark assessments.
Module Overview
Purpose and Usage:
This assessment module is a performance activity to assess how well students can examine complex text and then demonstrate their understanding through writing. All modules were developed by practitioners for practitioners. Since the reading expectations are rigorous, some might find the text selections challenging. Please note, however, that the text exemplars that are used as the basis for each module are taken directly from Appendix B of the Common Core State Standards for targeted grades.
The expectations of the CCSS call on teachers to instruct around complex text so students read closely to accomplish essential skills, such as make inferences, determine themes, and analyze development of ideas. They do so using textual evidence from a targeted complex text. Much like teachers engage students in the writing process to create optimal written products, teachers would likewise plan and conduct a series of comprehensive lessons to help students meet these rigorous reading standards. These lessons would align to specific reading standards, include a myriad of instructional strategies and formative assessments (e.g., read silently, discuss, listen to, take notes, engage in discussion with peers, write informally and formally, etc.), and center on text-dependent activities and tasks to illicit deep understanding of targeted texts. This assessment module does not replace a formalized series of lessons around complex text as just described, but rather provides a “dipstick” to get a sense of how well students read complex text independently and proficiently. The results are meant to inform teachers about future instruction.
Teachers should use their professional judgment and their district’s recommended guidelines to administer this module as a pre-assessment or formative assessment in order to gather information about a student’s ability to read complex text carefully and construct an organized writing piece that is grounded in evidence from the text. Some teachers might decide to use two modules – one as a preassessment and another as a formative assessment to check for understanding during the formalized instructional process around complex text.
We encourage teachers to administer this assessment with colleagues and discuss results together to ascertain next steps in an instructional plan. Teachers can employ additional instructional strategies beyond what is included in this module when administering the assessment. However, discuss with colleagues which ones you choose to use so you are conducting this assessment under similar conditions.
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Trainer is the accepted term for someone who goes around delivering modules for professional development. I used to be part of the NEA Safe Schools for GLBT Students cadre, and we were always called trainers. Nothing is supposed to be implied by this, but I would prefer to be called “educator.” As we all know, there is a vast difference between training and education!
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Good post. Our CCSS training in November had sympathetic trainers from our ISD. They talked about the performance tasks for 8th grade ELA and then shrugged when asked how these would be evaluated. (Videotaped speeches after a finite period of research and preparation.)
Close reading without background information is pointless. It’s the background information that makes the reading rich and relevant. CCSS emphasizes skills but not knowledge. Policymakers live under the illusion that no one needs to actually know facts any more. Just skills for colleges and careers. Everyone can’t look up everything all the time. And by the way, watch the average kid do a research assignment. They don’t know how to seek out information that isn’t simple trivia and give up if Wikipedia isn’t helpful
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Excellent critique. Without background knowledge learning is very difficult. Its almost impossible for young students to filter out the nonsense and misinformation and opinion-stated-as-fact they find in online searches.
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1.1.2 Use prior and background knowledge as context for new learning. American Association of School Librarians Standards for the 21st Century Learner.
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Common Core (to the tune of The Loco-Motion)
http://www.examiner.com/article/common-core-to-the-tune-of-the-loco-motion?cid=db_articles
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We shouldn’t be surprised that teaching context is prohibited, since it’s prohibited to discuss the context in which our students’ academic difficulties exist.
Now, shut up, get back to work and continue with those scripted lessons from Pearson.
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Disturb the universe. Teaching Shakespeare through soliloquies to get the “arc” of the story as is being promoted in NY is simply obscene. And nonsensical. Teaching Shakespeare without background knowledge of any kind makes no sense. Our students deserve better than what the “vendors” are selling us. Keep calm and teach on.
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The language has changed a bit in all that time, huh? But the way to deal with that is not to pull out a soliloquy and do an explication de texte with one’s 9th graders. That’s a totally stupid way to go about things.
If kids see performances of these, first, and preferably the real thing, live, then much that they might have stumbled on will come plain, though much will, go through them like neutrinos with no interaction at all.
I think the best approach is this:
See the play in its Elizabethan glory, LIVE if at all possible.
See a total modernization of the same, in a modern setting, with modern characters and contemporary speech.
Memorize and act out parts.
Discuss, discuss.
THEN look at passages closely, the really good bits.
Memorize more.
And don’t use the versions that appear in basal lit texts from the big publishers. Those have been completely bowdlerized. The Romeo and Juliets in those, for example, have been so hacked up that only about 2/3rds of the play is left in each case.
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“O teach me how I should forget to think.”
–William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.
Perhaps he was talking about teaching to the Common Core.
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Michael Fiorillo: though I be but a lowly KrazyTA, I think that Microsoft Word auto-disconnect took some of the edge off of the first part of your first sentence.
I am guessing, of course, but I think you were trying to write “We shouldn’t be surprised that teaching is prohibited” — after all, CCSS is meant to be not only teacher-proof but teacher-less, avoiding any and all possibility that an education delivery specialist will deviate from the approved context-less content.
After all, if the leaders of the “new civil rights movement” of our time aren’t careful, you might actually have people putting stock in such silly ideas as, well, here’s an example from Frederick Douglass:
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
And to be Rheeally honest, how in the world would such nonsense translate into college-and-career ready?
Get a grip, get a grip…
😎
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I’m sorry, but this is our fault as teachers for buying into the “depth over breadth” and “process over content” garbage we’ve been fed for the last twenty years. We’ve been led to believe that knowing content isn’t important, which paved the way for these vacuous “reforms.” We should have known better: process and content need balance, not tilting one way or the other.
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Sad but true.
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WELL SAID, JIM!!! ABSOLUTELY!!!
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Quite true.
I’ve been to seminars on teaching foreign language and the meme that seems to dominate is “teach less (grammar and vocabulary) so students understand more”. The ol depth not breadth. Well I teach breadth and depth and the students will learn what they will, plain and simple but at least they will have been exposed to more and not less.
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While I largely agree with you, that’s not what is behind this runaway train.
CCSS is about money, power and control, and it’s ever-increasing accumulation by the Overclass. If the errors of “process over content” had never been made, the education privateers would still be attacking the public schools and their teachers.
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true that
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They talked about close reading at the board meeting on Monday. Evy questioned what it was Emily knew it was shit and started to contribute but then decided to not embarrass them and take away from their CC is the greatest thing to ever happen to education presentation
Sent from my iPhone
>
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I strongly encourage everyone to do a “close reading” of Jere Hochman’s posting as it frames the discussion in a manner that allows for serious analysis of the challenges we face in integrating sensible elements of the Common Core and instruction informed by sound assessment. I appreciate how he describes in detail the process by which the CC pre-assessment module was designed, as well as the author’s guidelines for administering it and using the results to inform future teaching. You’ll see that the LAUSD trainer’s approach and understanding of the pre-assessment module- including his/her understanding of the role of “context” in the reading process — is inconsistent with the design and intent of the assessment module. He doesn’t excuse or ignore inept CC “training” sessions and misguided “trainers”, but a the same time he doesn’t join the silly and counter-productive rants against anything remotely connected to standards, assessment, “reform”, etc.
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Andrew,
Could you please describe or transcribe just one “sensible element” of the ELA Common Core. Keep it simple and concrete and do your best to explain why you think that is sensible. And most importantly could you explain how it ensures college and career readiness.Thanks.
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Your silence is deafening Ratner. Too busy hurling insults at Diane to or simply out of gas?
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“. . . he doesn’t join the silly and counter-productive rants against anything remotely connected to standards, assessment, “reform”, etc.”
Heaven forbid he would join the “silly and counter-productive” side. That “silly and counter-productive side is actually the side that has logic and rational bases for the criticisms of standards, standardized testing and pseudo-reform based on attempting to “numerize” and “scientize” the very human and infinite varieties of the teaching and learning processes.
Call me “silly” but don’t call me “counter-productive” when it is those, like yourself that use falsehoods, errors and invalidities in spewing forth your “idiologies” (purposely misspelled) that harm many innocent students and by extension their teachers and schools.
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The Overlords have spoken. How dare you people indulge in silly, nonproductive rants! Report to Room 101 for rectification immediately!
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I’d have to rectalfy them, Robert!
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Does anyone think that teachers lose credibility because we can’t seem to agree on what works best in the classroom for most kids? After 100 years of trial and error, developmental research, cognitive learning theory, brain research, etc. we still don’t know? We can’t even agree on the best practice for a mechanical skill like learning the multiplication tables. I know that are jobs are complicated by the very diverse populations we serve, but seriously have we learned that little in the past 100 years? Not pointing fingers or blaming anyone, but I just don’t get it. We cant even model the success of our best?
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there was an effort to build the What Works Clearinghouse to do thi to define what would be protocols and procedures such as the medical field has. It was politicized with “beliefs” and ideologies; it happens when something like Reading First is introduced and then the other 49% will jump on it and say “it doesn’t work” and Abt Associates turns out a report it doesn’t work and some of the states (the federal policy gets mediated through states) had some successes with the additional focus and funds…. So no matter what is brought in as “truth” there will be another “side” that captures the political system and implementation to throw it out and put in their own. Today we are experiencing it as the Chamber of Commerce has the political weight and the corporations have the funds and the lobbyists to write any legislation they want and force you to do it or they will put a robot (or a TFA) in your place. So this is much worse than the “wars” of the 60s and 70s …. Momma Cheney was in on the social studies wars back some time before the Iraq war.
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Do you see a solution? I can understand debating best practices for more subjective areas, but I just don’t understand why we cant generally agree on the best methodologies for the more structured and objective subjects like math and science. It certainly doesn’t help our cause that we give the impression that we, as teachers, cant agree on What Works.
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There is no WAY, NY teacher. There are ways, useful for this, useful for that. When people have only a hammer, they treat everything as if it were a nail. Clearly, attending to a text is useful. Thinking that one can attend ONLY to the text is just idiotic.
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Since MANY WAYS work, could we not at least debunk the worst practices and eliminate the from our tool kit ?
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For me, NY, the question is always, better or worse for what? But I think that we should be able to agree on a few things–grammar and vocabulary are not acquired via explicit instruction; running in the other direction whenever you encounter the word “metacognitive” in a lesson plan is generally wise; treating a text as nothing more than an opportunity for hunting for examples of literary tropes is counterproductive; writing five-paragraph themes in distinct “modes” is a terrible way to learn to write; having kids read difficult texts for which they haven’t the relevant context without providing that context is just nuts. Basically, you can take the bullet list of CC$$ in ELA as a pretty good indicator of what NOT to do–as a pretty good instantiation of hackneyed misconceptions about how to teach English.
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And one would have thought that after a decade of NCLB, we would have figured out that this standards-and-summative-testing approach narrows and distorts curricula and pedagogy, leads to no improvement in outcomes, and should be placed on the ash heap with the failed ed deforms (behavioral objectives, anyone) of yesteryear.
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Looks like a generation of ELA students are going to be stuck with some of the worst practices possible. As 2old2teach just put it. “the machinations of people with more power than sense.”
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The thing is, we do know, and we’ve known for some time.
Intriguing to me that Daniel Willingham is cited elsewhere in this thread. I first cited him in 2009 debunking Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which was offered by Christensen, Horn & Johnson in their manual for dismantling public education (Disrupting Class, 2008) essentially as proof that elearning modules can replace teachers. (Incidentally they also argue that 100 years of educators leading has achieved nothing. My question for all who make this claim is, what planet did that actually happen on, and how is the data relevant on the one we inhabit?)
But Gardner was never totally on, and already off that theory himself as early as 1992 when he explained “Why even the best students in the best schools don’t understand”
Subject by subject he reveals how only experts master the subject matter, while many (most) of the the most highly “educated” fail to make the connections they’ve invested years in education presumably to be able to make. He said it affected all disciplines and documented its impact on each, developing terminology where necessary. “Most people remain five-year-olds or Aristotelians even though they studied physics,” says Gardner (1992, pg. 7), and gives examples from astronomy and other sciences.
Gardner has demonstrated the utter and complete failure of the tell and test model to build the kind of critical thinking skills required to connect the dots once we leave the classroom—24 years ago. Where are the policy wonks? Aren’t they the ones loudly blaming parents and teachers? Where do they get the nerve?
This comment contains excerpts from a blog post of mine on Gardner’s extra-MI curricular activities in the early 90s.
http://bit.ly/H0wLrn2Lrn
I’ve listed other references there, some with links. The Gardner referenced also includes
Gardner, Howard (1995/2011), The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and how Schools Should Teach, 21st Anniversary edition (2011) NY: Basic Books, 322 pages. [Read online]
Gardner, Howard (1992) The unschooled mind: why even the best students in the best schools do not understand, [PDF]
Gardner, Howard (1992b) Assessment in Context: The Alternative to Standardized Testing in Changing Assessments Alternative Views of Aptitude, Achievement and Instruction, Bernard R. Gifford,
Mary Catherine O’Connor, editors, Volume 30, 1992, pp 77-119.
Once again: We know how to drive, and we’ve spent the most time in the car, under it, and reading the manual. When will politicians give educators the keys? Do you mind if we drop you off and come back later…? …we don’t need back seat drivers. Please sit up front and help navigate or get off at the next stop.
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quote: “The teacher writes:
“When we discussed the sample Gettysburg assessment, several teachers pointed out that the assessment offers no background on the Gettysburg Address. Students are not to be given any information about the speech, even if they are relatively new to the country. Many of us in LAUSD have students in our regular English classes who have only been in the United States a year or two, and they most likely do not know our history.”
——————–
This has been part of the “reading wars” for many decades. I remember one time it went through with a discussion well: “Should a third grade child be asked to read about an igloo if he had never seen one” and the responses cut on both sides…. one person would say NO , NEVER; and the other side would say “you build background; that is the purpose (or one of the purposes for reading at least) to learn about other people’s worlds, viewpoints experiences.” This war continued; it went on through social studies wars (momma Cheney etc.) … On this blog Robert Shepherd (in a comment) wrote one of the best explanations of the current reading war. I have used it in several discussions. He cites the work of Palinscar and clearly tells how things changed with the Palinscar et al studies…. These wars never stop : the math wars “New Math” 70s; TERC Math 90s; “throw out this math war today: up with everything that’s down and down with everything that’s up.” Then on top of it we add computers that freeze up in the middle of the lesson and tests that are designed to sort kids into egg crates called quartiles and quntiles. It is absurd.
But, please go back and seek out the explanation of the reading strategy that Palinscar et al brought out as explained so elegantly by Robert Shepherd on a previous comment on this blog. Thank you Bob!!!!!!!!
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Thank you, Jean. Here’s that post:
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Is it any wonder that some edicts from outside of the education profession have taken hold on the whole process?
We can’t even discuss this tragic event on a blog and reach a civil consensus. Are we really about “one upping” another with little jabs and condescension? It is beyond looking at politics, education, or society. It seems to about extolling personal philosophies and casting aspersions on those who disagree.
If there are solutions, then points of agreement need to be found.
Let’s find out how to best serve the children!
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Negativity = critical thinking. No “negativity” allowed. Funny how a program to teach critical thinking but then forbids critical thinking directed at it. That is the great 1984-esque irony of the way the common core is rolled out.
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This piece by Daniel Willingham illustrates the inability to comprehend a text without the prerequisite vocabulary and background knowledge:
Click to access CogSci.pdf
The Common Core’s undue obsession with close-reading devoid of context, though, isn’t surprising given that it’s tied inextricably to PARCC, and reading comprehension questions on standardized tests offer no background knowledge.
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That very fact, Dufrense, that the tests present passages out of any context whatsoever, should be a HUGE red flag regarding the entire enterprise of the assessment as conceived. I am very happy that you raised this important point.
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Read “Breaking Bloom” by Michael J. Booker for an interesting view on Bloom’s Taxonomy.
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I think it largely explains the tendency for test scores to fall along socioeconomic lines. Students from more affluent homes generally enjoy exposure to wider vocabulary and background knowledge-building experiences.
Another beef I have with ELA tests–PARCC or otherwise–is a problem you’ve noted on this site before–the lack of assessment on actual course content. I teach English III, the focus of which is American literature. Yet my students’ performance on the state’s end-of-course test hinges in no way whatsoever on them having even a cursory understanding of or a connection to works in the American canon. Judging from the test prep materials I receive in the spring, along with remarks the students make in the weeks following the test, the closest the test gets to having any connection to American literature is including a biographical passage on a famous author or a brief piece from a writer that’s outside their primary genre–say, a speech made by a famous novelist.
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You’re a heretic Dufrense. Don’t you know that valuing content knowledge is so 20th Century. Get with the program, haven’t you heard about the web and the internets? Instant access to knowledge – deep understanding just a mouse click away. Besides PARCC tests will be using MC items to measure your students ability to make subjective judgements, apply abstract skills, translate twisted syntax, and read the minds of authors. Your teaching evaluation will be based on your ability to convey un-teachable skills. Time to end your love affair with knowledge, facts, concepts, and learning.
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You’re right, NY teacher. I hope I won’t be forced to recant my statement or face the penalty of 50 more sessions of “Understanding CCSS ELA Instructional Shifts.” 🙂
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It would be a proper penance for an educational heretic such as yourself. Unimagined madness reigns down upon us.
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What, you’r tired of being professionally CCSS developed???
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Dufrense. Please report to Room 101 for rectification immediately.
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They seem to be fitting some sort of contraption on my head that appears to have a rat in it. Oh, crap, it does!
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LOL
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Once I was taking a writing course that featured a US Poet Laureate as a guest speaker. He was a grand speaker and told us about many experiences.
He told us that he attended a university class incognito to see how some professors taught his poetry. An assignment callng for students to describe the purpose and reasons for one of his poems. He participated in the assignment. The professor examined all work submitted. He was told that he didn’t understand the true meaning of the poem…which he had written. So much for that assignment.
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Absurdity re-defined.
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It shows how pointless this endeavor was/is. It is a waste of time and energy. There are no correct answers. No teacher can grade such a lesson with accuracy …obviously.
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The notion of close reading with no background knowledge building is so absurd that I can only surmise that it is yet another tactic to downgrade teachers on their evaluations henceforth propelling the privatization of schools. My nephew is a computer guru. He knows so much about the design and making of various computers. He could talk about something on two levels with me. One where he gives me the background information so that I can better understand what he is telling me or the other… where he just talks what comes natural to him and then I am completely lost and have no basis on which to build understanding. The latter is what Coleman has deemed appropriate for our nation’s students. It is either out of stupidity or is strategic planning to gain momentum for privatization (or both).
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It is strategic planning for sure. Tests that are test-prep proof. Keeps their main talking point alive.
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Another unwritten rule (well, it may be written somewhere and kept secret like the tests themselves) for reading passages on standardized tests is that they must be soporific.
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Mellow Yellow???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64mb_hUOb4g
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2) In the opinion of your elbow partner, which does he believe to be Donavan’s main inspiration for this 60’s classic?
“Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze
Electrical banana
Is bound to be the very next phase”
a) psilocybin
b) banana splits
c) electro-magnetic fields
d) panama red
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LOL
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Scaffolding:
“14”: the 14th letter of the alphabet, M = marijuana, but, you teases, you already knew that!
And isn’t it spelled “cloze” with a z?
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Jean (above) wrote about context and the reading wars. She refers to a powerful piece by Robert Shepherd (several comments in this blog).
From that blog
Shepherd added this additional thought:
“One could implement the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts perfectly and have students entirely miss what reading literature is about. They would not come away from their literature classes with the understanding that when they read a literary work well, they enter into an imaginative world and have an experience there, in all its concreteness and specificity, and it is then THAT experience that has significance, that matters, that has “meaning.”
The key word in that sentence for me is “could.” Just like the posts above, the (bad) trainer told the teachers to essentially stick to the script – literally and figuratively.
It’s not either-or! One could implement ccss and have students miss the literature – but they don’t have to. Sure, at the onset of a new literature program or curriculum teachers pretty much stick to the approach but quickly figure out how to break away and be flexible while addressing the same skills or topics.
We’ve always taught literature and simultaneously taught elements of fiction, had students the theme or messages that they heard, wondered why the author included a character, pointed out figurative language, had students go back and find examples of foreshadowing, asked students to find relevance in the world today from the novel, had students compare the novel to another similar topic or another work by the same author AND maintained the richness of the novel simply and wonderfully as just that – a novel.
So regardless if a trainer shakes her head – go back home and use scaffolding and provide context. Teach the critical reading elements cited in the ccss AND don’t lose the richness of the novel.
The problem is not the standards or the modules not ready for prime time: it’s their abuse to force to have teachers’ sole focus be on the letter of the law (standards) for the sole purpose of passing tests. And, I would look very closely not only at who wrote the standards and who paid for them (which is problematic) but who agreed to RTTT application content and evaluation plans which are the root cause of this mess.
Take the “annual” out of nclb testing, stop labeling of teachers and putting scores on them, and stop evaluating teachers using a single high stakes test and we’re not having this conversation.
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Let me just say that Coleen Bondy’s piece, to which Dr. Ravitch links, above, is superb.
Particularly interesting in this is the two teachers conspiring together about how they might be able to continue to sneak in a little real teaching DESPITE the Common Core pedagogy and curricula.
Oh, and BTW, “the standards do not tell you what or how you should teach.” Heh. Heh. Just follow your orders. Arbeit macht Frei.
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What does a teacher do if a child asks a question. Like when did this happen, why did this happen, and what is an address? is the teacher suppose to tell the child nothing? I get the feeling that common core is set up to eliminate the teacher. Boy is that a huge mistake. The teacher student bond is the most important part of the classroom, just as the Mother, father, child bond is the most important part of the home. Without it, it’s cold, unfriendly, confusing, depressing, and inhuman . Kind of like corporations today.
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I have a singer/songwriter friend who has a wonderful song about a kid, asking his dad, to tell him again about the stuff under the city, under the ground. It evokes that bond you are talking about Julie. What teachers can most be for their students is models of what it is to be a learner, so that kids say, I don’t know what that is, yet, but I want some of it!!!
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Some things in this blog post do not add up for me. Bondy writes:
“I gave the assessment to my honors class because I really liked one line from Schneier’s piece:
“…My department chair balked at giving this assessment, however, because of an age-inappropriate line in Schneier’s piece: “We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom.”
It’s really not our place to tell 13-year-olds t…”
I thought the assessment was mandated– how could she choose to give it to only one class?
Did her dept chair choose not to give it to any of his/her own classes?
I have no 13-year-olds in any of my grade 9 classes… why are these freshmen so young?
Oh, and could it be that the articles were interesting because they, indeed, did not talk down to students in a pedantic (i.e., telling people that they should or shouldn’t do) style?
Can someone clear up these points for me?
For what it’s worth, I believe scaffolding should ALWAYS be a part of instruction and that inventive vocabulary (not using a dictionary) is about as useful as inventive spelling– that is, it not only doesn’t help but actually does grave harm to literacy skills. Still, this blog post veered way off that path, in my view.
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Some things in this blog post do not add up for me. Bondy writes:
“I gave the assessment to my honors class because I really liked one line from Schneier’s piece:
“…My department chair balked at giving this assessment, however, because of an age-inappropriate line in Schneier’s piece: “We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom.”
It’s really not our place to tell 13-year-olds t…”
I thought the assessment was mandated– how could she choose to give it to only one class?
Did her dept chair choose not to give it to any of his/her own classes?
I have no 13-year-olds in any of my grade 9 classes… why are these freshmen so young?
Oh, and could it be that the articles were interesting because they, indeed, did not talk down to students in a pedantic (i.e., telling people that they should or shouldn’t do) style?
Can someone clear up these points for me?
For what it’s worth, I believe scaffolding should ALWAYS be a part of instruction and that inventive vocabulary (not using a dictionary) is about as useful as inventive spelling– that is, it not only doesn’t help but actually does grave harm to literacy skills. Still, this blog post veered way off that path, in my view.
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“Close Reading” is the big buzz word in my district as well, but it’s approached differently than LAUSD must be approaching it.
Not to say that my department (ELA) and I aren’t sick of the term and having a Math/Science/etc teacher trying to tell English teachers how to do close reads [/sarcasm]
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