Sameness as fairness in education

To me, sameness as fairness in education would ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to a superior education; all students are given the opportunity to succeed.  Sameness as fairness in education is not an education system based on one-size fits-all tests, it is not ‘teach only the English language because that is the only “right” language’, it is not ‘conform to the American culture because it is the only right culture’.  Sameness as fairness would be evaluating students on what they have accomplished, not on what goal they have not yet reached.  Students have different capabilities and skills which will help them achieve their individual goals, those goals need to be highlighted, respected and built upon and evaluated on. 

Fairness does not mean treating each child the same; it is giving each child the opportunities to achieve the same goals, knowing each child’s goals are different, and to reach their individual potentials.  Fairness is accepting each student’s home language and values, allowing them to learn in that language and find a way to incorporate it into the English language.  By treating all students the same in the classroom, you are holding back some and at the same time you are allowing others to fail because you do not take into consideration that the level that some reach may be their highest potential, but for others they are capable of more.

All of the readings this week touched on aspects of sameness as fairness in education.  It is often taken for granted that all students will be taught in school.  Looking at the concept of sameness as fairness stresses that all students cannot learn the same way, that students need to be treated as individuals and taught as individuals.  We do not want to lose our individuality just to become educated.  We want to draw on our personal experiences and cultures to connect with the world around us, that is the fairness that should be in education.  The sameness in education is the chance to succeed being available to all students.

Do we really know if students are learning?

“After all these years of common schooling, we still have no real way of knowing if students are learning.”  How do we know if our students are learning?

In this day of standardized state tests and teaching to the test, this is a difficult question.  One could consider NCLB and the reports of all the failing schools and say that ‘we know our students are not learning, otherwise we wouldn’t have schools failing’.  But we have to consider the standardized tests that are being used to measure student’s learning.  Tests measure the ‘measurable’.  For some learners, it is what is considered the immeasurable that is key to their learning, is it successful, how they came up with “it” that should count.  They connect the dots a bit differently, but they have a method and a reason that should be acknowledged and counted as learning.  I think we do have a way of knowing if students are learning, but I don’t think it should be the standardized tests that show us this.  Teachers spend their time teaching to the test, students pack in the information in order to pass the test  They do not learn the information in a way in which they will retain things after the test. 

“Creativity is as important in education as literacy” according to Ken Robinson.  Robinson also states that we are educating people right out of creativity.  It is a child’s creativity that can tell us if they are learning.  As teachers, we need to question our students, begin discussions between them, listen to them, play games with them, then we will know they are learning.  In a perfect world that we would all like to be teaching in, we could take into consideration the students that have stress anxiety, they know the information, but when a test is placed in front of them with a time constraint placed on it, they lose the ability to recall the information.  Just as the student in Luna’s article, when she was given the extended time for exams, her confidence in her ability to recall what she knew returned.  If we are able to take the time constraints and testing pressures away from students, if we took the time to see their creativity and to see how they arrive at an answer, we could see that they are learning.  We need to realize that the same assessments are not suitable for all learners. If we are using the same assessment for all students, the results will show that some students are not learning, when it is really the wrong type of assessment is being used.  Teachers need to have more control over assessing students in order to see if their students are learning.  In chapter 17 of Adolescent Literacy, the author talks about “assessment on a daily basis” (pg. 263).  As a good educator, we need to look at our students work, their response, their critical thinking, keep anecdotal notes on students, know their interests and challenge them with open ended questions.  Through these things, we can know if our students are learning.

Teaching today

The job of teachers today are seen as easy, so much time off, off for the whole summer, great pay.  No, that’s not why I want to be a teacher.  I want to teach to make a difference in the lives of students, to give them the skills they need to be successful, to help them see what they are capable of accomplishing.  I want to teach children to read, help them to become literate members of our society. 

Today has become an age of ‘teaching to the test’.  In the classroom today teachers are limited in the time that they have, limited in the tools and resources available due to budget cuts.  Bringing new ideas and creativity to the classroom is seen as not teaching to the test.  Teachers need to be able to connect to students, to give them the skills so they can navigate the world, find a way to absorb new information in a way that it will stay with them even after ‘the test’.  Due to budget constraints, many schools are losing field trips, art and music classes and extracurricular activities.  All of which are ways that a teacher might be able to connect with that hard to reach student. 

A teacher needs to consider the abilities of the child, the environment, relationships between home and school as well as curriculum standards when teaching.  Teaching is not just teaching children information out of a textbook, it is giving them the opportunity to explore their physical surroundings and let their interests guide them.  Children have a creative spirit which needs to be encouraged and nurtured.  To do that they need to have the room and the opportunity to explore and allow the student’s interests to lead the activities.  Investigation, experimentation and hands on activities are key to teaching, they lead to motivated students.  Motivated students lead to students that want to learn, it can lead to students passing ‘the test’. 

Respect for teachers has diminished. Why? Due to neoliberalism – teachers are now seen as incapable of teaching, as causing students and schools to fail.  I think the job of a teacher has gotten harder with things like NCLB, if a student fails, it is because of the teacher, not because the teacher has lost the time and tools necessary to teach the skills that students need.  To have all students passing by 2014 is unrealistic if teachers keep teaching to the test.  What good is it if a student passes, but retains nothing after the test?  Teachers have lost the power to make decisions on what students learn and how they learn it.  Parents used to respect teachers, the community used to respect teachers, but as schools are closed when they are labeled ‘failing’ the only ones blamed are the teachers. 

In Adolescent Literacy, Kylene Beers spoke about students making adequate progress.  What is adequate progress?  Who really is decides what adequate progress is?  The story of Derek, who had jump 160 points in the TAKS test, but yet missed the standard by 20 points shows how messed up the system is.  When a student can make progress of 160 points, that should not be labeled as failing, it should be labeled a great job.  Instead, it shut the student down.  “I tried my best, but my best wasn’t good enough – so why bother!”  When they do the best they can, they are sometimes told that their best isn’t good enough, they won’t bother to try again.  That is not the fault of the teacher, it is they system that the teacher is forced to abide by.  When schools succumb to pre-packaged curriculums to try to get their students to have passing test scores, and they still fail, is it the fault of the teacher or the pre-packaged program.  Does that program come with a money back guarantee?  Education doesn’t.

The job of a teacher is one of the most difficult jobs, (aside from being a parent) especially when there are forces working against what they are trying to do.  Teachers are not just responsible for teaching the students, they are teaching the parents and supporting the communities in which their students live.  Instead of teachers being limited by guidelines, they need to be supported financially and ethically in the job they have chosen.  If teaching were such an easy job – wouldn’t everyone want to do it?  To be a teacher isn’t just being literate and knowledgeable in an area, you need more than expertise is an area, you need to be a model, you need to continue learning and expanding, to be a nurturer and a challenger, take each moment and make it a teachable moment.  Teaching is a difficult and rewarding experience.

Role of multiple literacies

The ranges of literacies that youths engage in are not always visible in their schools.  Teachers need to move from telling students that these other literacy practices are wrong to acknowledging or incorporating them into the practice of literacy in school.  We need to draw on their informal learning.  The literacy skills that students develop outside the classroom are equally important to the formal practices in school.  Allowing students to keep their home language and culture is essential to their learning a second language.  “Some of their out-of-school literacy practices are tied to religion and instigated by parental wishes; others are a collaborative nature, involving a network of people beyond the family” (Haneda, pg. 339).  The support network from home and community is essential to the success of students.  They need to be comfortable and have an understanding of concepts in their first language before they can feel comfortable transferring that concept to the second language.  When teachers can bring a personal relevance for students in to lessons by using community resources, it sends the message to the students that their first language, home language is central to learning.  It moves away from the old concept that there is one right way and one wrong way.  It really connects the home and the school, lessons confusion, “deepens the respect for and appreciation of, students’ home languages and cultures and attempts to make students’ experiences in both home and school coherent and mutually reinforcing” (pg 343). 

The concept of multiple literacies increases the connection for home and school in regard to learning and literacy.  By building respect and connections between cultures, students will not feel forced to give up their home culture or language.  I think that will make a big difference in students’ ability to learn.  I also think this builds on the “mixed salad” theory of the cultures of the United States. 

What makes us literate?

Ed Hirsch stated that “literacy is far more than a skill and that it requires large amounts of specific information” (pg 2). It is believed that the background information one holds is the key to their literacy.  The higher level of background information one has, the higher level of comprehension the reader will achieve when reading something such as a newspaper.  I think that to be literate, you do need to be able to look beyond the initial meaning of words; a reader needs to understand the context of the words and the implied meaning. 

Hirsch created a list of things that an American should know to be considered literate.  I will honestly say that after going through the list, I do not think Hirsch would consider me to be literate.  Some things on the list I knew, some things I have heard before, but could not explain, and still other things I have not heard of before.  Should that make me illiterate?  I don’t believe it should.  Many of the things listed might be considered old school, no longer touched on in schools today.  Teachers are so busy teaching to the test, they only have a small window of time to touch on things like “water off a ducks back” or “haste makes waste”.   It made me think of a class I took a few years ago when I was returning to school, a Middle East History class.  I was the oldest in the class; most of the other students were fresh out of high school.  They were able to apply their knowledge of current events from high school history classes to this Middle East history class.  Looking at it now, I can say I did not feel very literate at that point.

I started to come up with a list of things that are worth knowing, trying to touch on many different areas and realized that first, who is really in the position to decide what you need to know?  Who is an expert across the board to know everything about everything?  Second, what might have been considered essential to know say 50 years ago, or even in 1988, might not be held at the same level of importance today.  With advancements in science and technology along with changes in politics, if you think about the long list that Hirsch created and add on a new, updated list of what is worth knowing today, it would be an endless list, always changing with advancements of the new age.  I think what you need to know to be literate changes with where you live and the generation in which you live, even with how literate you want to be. 

I will end with a list of some things I feel are worth knowing, in no special order:  past presidents, geography, North, South, East and West, seasons, planets, states and capitals, languages and cultures, Pearl Harbor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Big Apple, Noah and the Ark, Rosa Parks, slavery, abolition, nursery rhymes, duct tape, parts of speech, taxes, hybrid, inflation, recession, Obama, Obama care, Sarah Palin, Sadam, Bin Laden, slang, Wi-Fi, Wiki, HDTV, Apple, IPods/IPads, Elvis, Bill Gates, Shakespeare, Barnum & Bailey, Atari, X-Box, Wii, Johnny Cash, USB, laptop, notebook, periodic table, oceans, countries, mph, percentages, rates, laws, speed limits, Donald Trump, the Grand Canyon, poison ivy, sunscreen, energy efficient, holistic, aromatherapy, chemo, ADHD, AIDS, cancer, prevention, caffeine, synthetic…..