Pedagogical Dilemma

6/30/2016

Through the end of last year and over the school holidays, I have been ruminating over an area of cognitive dissonance that our teams collaborative goal to raise reading achievement buts uncomfortably up against.

I want to believe that I am powerful and necessary as a teacher. That the very personal act of connecting with a student and actually causing new learning is an act of humanity, of caring in action. I want to believe that I CAN do this and even more that I NEED to do this for the good of the student.

However, last year, I had an intake of New Entrants (5 years old) that comprised a large group who had very low levels of developmental skills. Oral language was around 2 years below norms. They had no fine motor control, and almost no understanding of books or the concepts of print.

I wasn't the only one. The other NE teachers had a similar experience. Try as I might I struggled over 6 months to build the missing foundations for these students. I worked collaboratively with my colleagues to regroup students and try to create a more developmentally appropriate programme.

At the end, these children really hadn't moved anywhere towards the national standards, which now just seemed cruel and inappropriate. They were fairly oblivious to letters, didn't know any HFW and had no 1:1 pointing. In all ways they were still operating at the pre-reading level. On the flip side they had settled into the routines of school and formed friendships, they sat well on the mat, came to group teaching and played well with their peers.

Academically though, I finished the year feeling that I had failed these students, but also angry at a national standard that doesn't recognize just how varied student learning pathways were. I felt that these children were not developmentally ready for the early reading and writing programme of school. They need 2 years more in the sand, construction and the dress-up boxes.

On the other hand I felt there was a huge professional and pedagogical danger of just blaming developmental readiness. Doesn't it give us the perfect excuse for a student's failure to achieve. This is just victim blaming and at the end of the day, they are only 5, and I am the experienced and trained educator, so the responsibility for their progress or not is all mine. The research above has spurred me to accept my responsibility to engage in deliberate acts of teaching that cause learning.

2 Comments

Gypsy

6/29/2016 07:50:39 pm

I've read this over about five or six times now and there are so many things that trouble me about what you've said. And I'd so love to have a conversation about it. But then I realised that I can sum it up in a simple sentence. No matter how 'right', or how well meaning you do the wrong thing, it's still the wrong thing. I'm aware that you have little choice in the pedagogy you have to use and the time line that national standards puts you on- it's a rock and a hard place. You've been given a hacksaw to hammer a nail though and until that changes the progress will be slow and frustrating- for all involved (except the policy makers).
I don't entirely agree with the research you have quoted- I haven't read the study but on the face of it it appears to be another where they have studied how children learn in school and made what they could of it. It's on a par to me with observing Tigers in a zoo and believing you know about their behaviour in the wild. If we look at how children learn- something they do so effectively, effortlessly, and joyfully before they hit school it looks nothing like what happens once they are in school- and what happens in school lacks the effectiveness, the efficiency (for learning not teaching), and often times sucks most if not all of the joy from learning.
You may be an experienced and trained educator- your students are experienced natural learners they have been doing it since before birth. Perhaps you need to look not at your teaching as a deliberate act that 'causes' learning- but look at their learning before you and meet them where they are and how they learn- hint- it's not how you teach.
That said I am so glad to have found your blog it's a valuable resource- and a delight to find someone taking the precious time to reflect and share. NE teachers are a rare and wonderful breed I much preferred middle and upper primary. Those wonderful small humans you work with en masse are delightful and amazing and utterly exhausting and I only ever relief taught in NE classrooms- but it certainly made me wonder how you do that for 196 half days each year!
I am no longer a teacher in a school. I hope to never be as long as we are living in Western Australia. They are doing the wrong thing to an even younger bunch of children- who are even less ready and it's even less appropriate. Physio's and OT's are already seeing the physical damage this system is having. It will take much longer to see the damage being done to the brain architecture teachers are shaping... and when they do the 'blame' will fall to parents, diet, screentime, social media... not on the system of education where I think a large proportion will lie.
My very best wishes to you as you continue on I am eternally grateful that we have wonderful teachers like you in the system- and I only hope that the system will change to allow you to do the right things in the right way some day sooner rather than later.
https://medium.com/modern-learning/we-re-trying-to-do-the-wrong-thing-right-in-schools-210ce8f85d35#.ls5x8w4mu

Gypsy

6/29/2016 08:13:27 pm

One more thing- this blog may interest you https://cheekykids.wordpress.com/ and her article here: http://www.educationreview.co.nz/magazine/june-2015/hitting-the-ground-running-meeting-the-national-standards-at-age-5/#.V3SNdqK_bGB
And if you are interested in thinking about how children really learn then: http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com.au/
That was three things... sorry. :-)

Pedagogical Dilemma

Leave a Reply.

Renee Stewart

Archives

Categories