This Week's Giant Golden Nugget (for 9/13/17)


At first glance, the readings for this week provided by the NCTE, Thomas, and Cadeiro-Kaplan all focus on varying topics. From teaching writing today, to pedagogy mindsets, to literacy ideologies, these pieces appear important but far removed. However, as I begin to hash out my thoughts through word, I'm starting to think that all of these "baby golden nuggets" interweave. Bare with me during this extended exploration, but I think  I'm putting together what could possibly be a "giant nugget" for the week.

In Cadeiro-Kaplan's piece, she focuses on the four common ideologies of literacy. But as readers make there way through descriptions of each, it is clear that "critical literacy" is what teachers should be focusing on implementing in classrooms because it would give students the ability (and skills) to participate in the societal conversation regarding social change (13). However, because schools aren't quite putting this ideology into practice yet, that leaves schools and educators at a disadvantage when trying to holistically equip students to be reconstructivists. And this idea leads into Thomas' point regarding the "growth mindset".

To put it simply, the "growth mindset" focuses on dedication & hard-work in order to develop abilities. However, this mindset: puts the blame on the individual, and ignores larger issues (i.e. poverty, racism, sexism etc) (Thomas 1). Essentially, Thomas suggests that educators need to focus on fixing the problem, rather than fixing the people (2). So when teachers do things like starting all students with 0 points as opposed to 100, we are taking steps towards changing the bigger system of "school" from"how much a student doesn't know" to "what a student learned, and how they've grown" (2). When teachers begin to be critics of the system of school and our world today, we figure out approaches towards educating the students of tomorrow.

I don't know about anyone else, but I was so excited to read how recently the NCTE page was updated (2016). Not only does this make me eager to be in classrooms as an educator, but I'm worked up about starting my teacher career stepping into a new era of education. It's almost like this is how I've imagined good schooling to be, but never truly received as a student (or could articulate on my own now). So, I guess my "giant nugget" is that is these three readings in a way do come together. In order to further understand one, you need to read the others as to begin to comprehend this cycle of conversation, criticism, and change (wow, that was a lot of "c"s, but I like the way it sounds!)

Does anyone else reconcile with this or no? Why or why not? Is it too much of a stretched idea?

Comments

  1. Alyssa SmithSeptember 13, 2017 at 7:38 AM

    Hi Janine,

    I agree completely that the growth mindset puts blame on the student instead of embracing what they've learned. I don't know about you, but when the writer suggested starting all students at 0 instead of at 100, my mind was kind of blown. Like you pointed out, it changes the dichotomy that's been set up from pointing out what they don't know to recognizing what they have learned. And I love this point: "When teachers begin to be critics of the system of school and our world today, we figure out approaches towards educating the students of tomorrow."

    I don't think there's anything wrong with hard work and determination, but I do think that buzzword of "grit" is problematic. Today, you really can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go from schooling to a great job with ease if you don't have a certain amount of privilege. From some reason, it makes me think of the billboards from values.com with John Wayne and GRIT in bold red and white letters. Have you or has anyone else in our group seen this ad? Anyway, great blog again!! :)

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    Replies
    1. Bethany Rose BarsoianSeptember 13, 2017 at 8:38 AM

      Hi Janine,

      I loved how you were able to tie together this week's readings and use them each as small stepping stones to an even bigger idea. I agree with Alyssa about the word "grit." Of course it would be lovely if all those who worked hard were rewarded accordingly for their efforts but most of us can see this isn't reality. People with more privilege can often afford to slack off a little more and have things still turn out pretty good for them while those with less privilege can work hard every day of their lives and still just be barely making it. The truth is that we all don't begin the "race" at the same point. The privileged have a sizeable head start over the folks that are not privileged so what appears as simple hard work is in fact also made up significantly of a big dose of good luck. Tim Wise is an anti-racist educator who presents on many of these very same ideas. Check him out on YouTube if you get a chance.

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