Relevency in the Korean English classroom

"They're developing habits of engaging-- ways of becoming involved and invested in literate tasks that are significant to them, not because they were born to love reading and writing but because of the ways the literate activity connects to other things in life that matter to them." (Bomer, 3)

The portraits illustrated in Randy Bomer's Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classroom show students using skills from the English classroom while doing tasks they care about. Through my Adolescent Literacy class, I've continued developing my philosophy of teaching, and this is one of the points of my philosophy: what we teach in the English classroom should be always be relevant in student lives.

I've started working on an ongoing project for my future students in my Conversational English (language) classroom related to this philosophy. I want my students to be able to analyze their own spoken conversational English over a period of time and have more opportunities to speak English than the average English classroom in South Korea allows for. The project will be open for students to make a vlog or podcast and possibly with a written blog component. Students will be able to choose their own themes for the blog and their own topics to write about, but should use the grammar and some relevant vocabulary in class. Because I'll know my students' blog themes, I can also gear my content towards those topics as much as the school's curriculum will allow.

Much of the English learned in Korean classrooms are not useful to students, or are outdated and irrelevant. I want to work hard to make the curriculum as significant to them as possible, because without relevancy, we'll all be wasting time and energy and my students won't be retaining what they're learning.

How they were written

A technique I really appreciate and would like to use someday is one brought up in Katie Wood Ray's inquiry study, Exploring Inquiry as a Teaching Stance in the Writing Workshop. A teacher in her study, Emily, presents op-ed articles to her fifth graders, who figure out how they were written, and then emulate the writing in their own op-ed piece. This process seemed familiar, and I recognized it as how we determined in our Adolescent Literacy class how to write a report on our case studies.

When I was in high school, I remember my sophomore English teacher posing the question for our journal warm-ups: "Why do we read literature?" Even though English classes had always been my favorite, I wasn't really sure. I ended up answering that the purpose was to see how great authors wrote and try to improve on our own writing through their techniques. My opinions have of course changed on why we read literature, but I'm a little disappointed in past-me for reducing literature to simply learning writing techniques.

That being said, I definitely think there is strong value in looking to literature and especially non-fiction works for answers to the question, "How do I structure what I want to say in the most effective way possible?" Ideally, as teachers we could send our students through and beyond high school with a toolbox of methods for writing what they want to say most effectively, but even better if we could send them out with the methods for deciphering what formats and techniques they can glean from any piece of writing.

Questioning Questioning

In Bomer's Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms, I found his suggestions for inviting thoughtful and energetic conversations useful. For my reader's reference and mine, they are the following:

• Open with a broad invitation to readers to say what they are thinking.
• Give it (being the agenda setter) to the readers.
• Engage ourselves in participant talk rather than always procedural instructions.
• Listen and maintain awareness of the students' point of view. 
• Eliminate the evaluation part of the initiation-response-evaluation talk pattern common in schools.
• Build ideas together.
• Invite and sponsor connections.
• Keep asking why.
• Pull on differences to draw them out.
• make trouble and get students comfortable with it.
  (Bomer 137-139)

While Bomer's notes were useful, I found one of his criticisms of common teaching methods to be lacking. He recommends "just not asking questions to which you already know the answer" and instead "just state whatever it is about which [you are] clearly wanting to remind them" (Bomer 137). I've noticed that high school and college students tend to also criticize this kind of questioning because "Why ask questions you already know the answers to?" 

Unless I'm missing something, I think that Bomer and these students are forgetting an important skill questioning provides: application. If we're only telling or reminding our students what we want them to know as Bomer suggests, we're only transmitting our knowledge to ears that may or may not be listening. Skillful questioning allows for factual questions to be answered and thus, an application of a skill or knowledge and formative assessment. I believe that skillful questioning can also help students learn to make inferences, a skill which they can later be scaffolded to be able to use on their own with more complicated texts as their responsibilities as a reader increases. 

Conversations are very important to have in class, especially alongside teaching students how to have these kinds of applicable conversation skills in other contexts. However, I don't think that "asking questions to which you already know the answer" should be so easily dismissed. 

Social Relevancy

Today's reading from Bomer's textbook, "Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms" reminded me of a discussion in my UTeach class about relevancy of texts. The major point taken from that discussion was:

If a text can't be related in some way to today's society, you should probably choose another text.

Bomer suggests that we call in other texts to relate to what we are teaching and to use the real world to relate to texts. While it's nice to read texts for fun, I think that the true purpose of literature and in turn, writing literature, should be to make some form of a social comment. I would like my students to be reading texts that are relevant to current social issues, so they can have something useful to form opinions on. 

We're blessed to be living in a democratic society and no matter how imperfect ours is, we are privileged to have the freedom of voice, and it is our job as educators to empower our students to contribute to our democratic society with the use of socially relevant texts.

At the same time, I would like my students to have opportunities to read just for fun, like the dessert books I mentioned in my last post. While I think that it's important for texts to be socially relevant, I don't want to destroy a student's interest in reading by only forcing them to read texts of my choosing. Maybe there's a way to guide them to choose texts on their own that can help them develop their own social commentary. 

Dessert Books

I loved reading Encouraging Independent Reading with Ambience: The Book Bistro in Middle and Secondary School Classes because if my teachers had implemented something similar to the Book Bistro, I know I wouldn't have lost the joy of reading.

Only once was I given the option of what book to read in a classroom setting. My sophomore English teacher, already a lovable and popular teacher, offered our class the choice between two Shakespeare plays, Othello and Twelfth Night. We chose Othello and in general, I did enjoy reading Othello. I can't say whether or not I would've enjoyed Twelfth Night more and if our choice was a good one, since I still haven't read the latter, but the fact that we were given a sense of agency in our learning always stuck with me.

Giving students agency in their education can lead to an enjoyment of texts. Vladimir Nabokov talks about three facets of being a great writer (and a great reader): magic, story, and lesson. These facets as agents can be enchanter, storyteller, and teacher. As teachers, we tend to stay in the lesson sphere. What is this text really trying to tell us? What can we take away from this text? Why the hell am I teaching or reading this piece? 

I think once students have a chance to choose their own books and are even given time in class to read independently, they will be able to enjoy a book for its magic and story. I believe once they can enjoy these two, the lesson will follow. I envy my future students; I want to give them time in class once a week to read what my UTeach professor calls a "dessert book," something enjoyable to the student that they can pick out on their own.

An issue students raised in a survey in Encouraging Independent Reading with Ambience was the lack of time and motivation to read independently at home. I don't think that allowing students to choose what book they want to read will solve this completely; sometimes the time just doesn't exist. By giving them time in class at least once a week (or even daily and incorporating their books into a warm-up journal) to read independently with no pressure and in a relaxed setting (allow them to eat a snack, put on some quiet music), I think we as teachers can further encourage the enjoyment of books. 

Purpose of Literacy

Last semester, I took a rhetoric course here at UT. The main concept for the course that our professor reminded us of throughout the semester was that the purpose of rhetoric is for individuals to contribute to a democratic society. I'll never forget this important concept because as soon as I heard it, it began to shape who I was as a teacher and continues to shape my opinions about teaching strategies and theories.

Keeping this purpose in mind as usual, I read Bomer&Bomer's "For a Better World," Chapter 2. One of the most important lines I appreciated while reading is the idea that "discourse creates thinking." Bomer&Bomer list some very useful concepts for critical reading that I believe come out in discourse after reading:

• Groups
• Power
• Taking things for granted (Naturalization) 
• Fairness/Justice
• Voice/Silence
• Multiple perspectives (different sides of stories)
• Representation (showing what people are like)
• Race
• Class
• Money
• Labor
• Language
• Intimate relationships and families
• Relationships to nature
• Violence and Peace
• Individualism/Collectivism

As I continue teaching in a local classroom and when I venture out into the world to become a teacher on my own, I want to remember these categories to help my students think about what they're reading in a way that I hope will help them gain empathy. Through discourse about these topics-- discourse I believe also including reading-- I hope that their empathy will one day persuade them to think and write and act in the most compassionate way towards other people and benefit our democratic society as a whole.

I think the meaning of being "American" is tossed around a lot and is the subject of controversy that often leads to hatred. I imagine, ideally, that America should be just what School House Rock sings, "The Great American Melting Pot!" I think if we can grow empathy in our students then sound them out into the world to make persuasive discourse, America could truly one day be a happy little song's optimistic view of it as a diverse but harmonious country, all working together to make one delicious soup.

Practical language

"Myth 1: English must obey the rules of grammar" Zuidema - Linguistic Prejudice

If we're going to teach our students that their vernacular of English is "correct English," we should also teach them the importance of establishing an academic language. I agree with Zuidema's debunked myths, including one of them which evokes the question: What even is "Standard English?" Rather than trying to teach students what the district's board of education or a teacher thinks "Standard English" is, for my own class experience I would like to teach them "Academic English." Their own personal vernaculars should be shown value, though not at the expense of their academic literacy.

I would like to see my students do a project on comparing media-portrayed vernaculars and regional dialects to people they know in real life who speak that way. I'd like the results of their projects to be an understanding that the media often portrays accents to be associated with certain values or qualities in a person, but that's not necessarily true all the time. People also don't always speak the same way in every situation, and that should be something they discover in their research as well. I'd also be interested in their opinions about why certain accents were chosen for certain characters in films and critique that choice.



Even though we want our students to become aware of linguistic prejudice, I think we also need to continue teaching them an academic literacy for practical purposes. However, I wonder to what extent we can realistically teach them that their vernacular is "okay" while enforcing an academic language in essays that can erase their individual voices.

Feel good teaching

Most of the UTeach program here at UT seems to be geared towards a "feel good" teaching methodology, which is just a term I use to refer to the importance of making students feel good about themselves. It is very important that students feel comfortable in their learning environments in order to grow academically and it is also important that students are confident in their skills. However, I think there is a certain extent to which we need to push students (gently) out of their comfort zones in the appropriate context and with appropriate guidance in order to succeed academically.

If we focus too much on letting our students be comfortable with their skills, I have to wonder how they'll have the opportunities to learn new skills. Gloria Ladinson-Billings addresses this in her article, But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. She says if culturally relevant teaching is the goal, teachers should "attend to students' academic needs, not merly making them 'feel good'" and can challenge students by "drawing on issues and ideas they [find] to be meaningful." I think that it's possible to make give students opportunities to "feel good" with more simple warm-ups (like my cooperating teacher does), while fostering a progressive learning environment during the majority of class time.

Teachers and Authors are Perfect Writers

For many students, it seems like their teachers and the authors of the novels read in class are perfect writers and readers. How could they believe any differently, when teachers only present their own reading interpretations cultivated over the years and authors only publish their works edited by professional editors? 

In "Conversing with Miguel" by Elaine Rubenstein-Avila, a young Mexican-American student retells his enjoyment of a writing workshop. Miguel tells Rubenstein he learned that, "even my teacher don't write all pretty the first time" as they struggled through the writing process together in the workshop. That process included writing another draft, showing it to the other students in class for corrections, then turning it in to the teacher for feedback, according to Miguel. 

Going through the writing process with his teacher in the workshop is an important way for Miguel and students like him to feel more comfortable with making mistakes and becoming a better writer. In another class of mine, Teaching Secondary School, we're reading "The Literature Workshop" by Sheridan Blau. Blau makes a point alongside the one Rubenstein discovered through Miguel, in that teachers demonstrating their struggles and failures in the writing and reading process encourage students to work through writing and reading as a process. 

"When do students see their teachers struggling to make sense of a 

difficult text or producing a reading that proceeds gradually, moving 

from mere confusion, to a sense of gist, to a reading that is tentatively complete 

but that will still give way to a more perceptive and adequate interpretation?" 

Not only is demonstrating the process important for literacy development, but Blau also recommends working with other students in groups is effective in reaching more "pretty" interpretations of text. Students like Miguel who struggle with certain English words would be able to receive help from native English speakers in groups. Group work can also be an opportunity for Moll(et. all)'s "funds for knowledge" to be useful depending on the text being discussed. Blau calls for diversity in groups in order to get different interpretations from a text and be able to thoughtfully discuss it until an appropriate interpretation is reached. Even on a lower reading level and for more superficial meanings of texts, group work can be especially helpful for struggling learners of English to do what Vygotsky calls the "zone of proximal development," where, according to Blau, is "where they are able to together more than any of them can do by themselves." 

"New" Literacy

When we first talked about literacy in this class, I was skeptical to believe that literacy could refer to anything other than "general" reading and writing. We learned that activities like tagging, blogging, or even tweeting could be vessels of literacy. I think "art" had been swept into the list our table made of means of literacy for adolescents, which gave me a possibly inaccurate image of what we were changing our concept of literacy to be.

While I'm still learning what literacy is in today's classrooms, I had assumed that first day that literacy was now supposed to mean any form of expression, even without reading or writing. I'll talk more on this in my literacy inquiry paper, but the interview I conducted helped to better define what this new literacy could be. My interviewee is a Korean native speaker and English learner. After asking how he bests expresses himself, he responded that he does so with music. I felt disappointed at first, since I wanted him to say something better related to writing and reading. Of course, one reads music in order to play it, but is it the same thing? Does it count as literacy?

This excerpt from our class textbook by Randy Bomer, Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms at first clarified whether or not music would count, then just ended up confusing me.

I said: "This is English class, so you know this class is about reading and writing-- let's call it literacy. English class, you knwo from your experience in school, is all about literacy. But you use literacy in other places besides English class, too. For one thing, you know you use literacy in other classes. You read and write stuff in social studies. In biology, you might read a diagram that shows how a plant uses sunlight, how energy and nutrients flow through the plant. In algebra, even if all you're doing is getting ready to solve an equation, you read it-- you see what patterns you recognize in it, how it's similar or different to other problems you have seen. That's literacy, too, looking at something and making meaning of it." 

If looking at something and making meaning of it is literacy, then playing music should qualify as literacy if the "meaning" is interpreted as notes to play on the instrument. However, when reading sheet music to discover meaning, is what notes to play good enough to qualify music for literacy? Should music count as literacy if it does? Should anything without words, like algebra in the above example, be able to qualify for literacy? I understand the point of it is to make students feel valuable and knowledgable in the classroom, but is it productive enough towards the purpose of achieving a standard of academic literacy?