As an educator, I'm beaten. What I do isn't good enough for Stu or Jack Hayes.
Yesterday we were told we should not be using novels in teh middle school. Kids should only be reading non-fiction! I don't remember the rationale that was offered. Frankly, I don't care.
I'll let Greg Stmbo take my two days. It will mean I spend less time hearing what I'm doing wrong from Jack Hayes and Stu Silberman....I used to love my job in Fayette County Schools. No longer.
Well, I let that simmer for a while and finally got the chance to follow up the other day.
FCPS Director of Student Achievement Support, Jack Hayes responded to KSN&C inquiries saying, "We absolutely want our middle school kids reading novels, and poems, and plays, and short stories." He explained,
The conversation that has been going on is around our curriculum standards. They’re no longer developed around [the] genre of reading, but around “big ideas” that clearly require us to teach from not only those literary formats, but also technical pieces, informational pieces, blogs, online journals, persuasive pieces, etc. It’s not just about novels, but about a world of reading that we’re preparing our kids for.I can't tell you how happy it makes me to know that KSN&C (and maybe a few other blogs) might contribute content for middle schoolers. Although now that I think of it, he didn't really specify KSN&C. But I'm sure that's what he meant.
But, I digress.
Hayes continued,
As you know, we spend a lot of our time in classrooms, and the topic has come up that in some of our schools we seem to be very heavily weighted toward teaching novels (almost exclusively). In those cases we’ve opened the conversations about long-range curriculum planning: are we just going to teach reading from novels, or at some point teach from the countless other forms of texts kids will come across...So in Hayes's mind, it's a matter degree. Some novels - fine. But all novels - not fine.
Hayes suggests that the mix of genres "will better prepare [students] for success in high school, college and beyond." To support his argument, Hayes reminds us that "very few of us actually read novels on the job, but most of us read constantly on the job."
Hayes chalks it up to a misunderstanding.As you know, change isn’t always easy, and in many cases that conversation has been difficult for folks who love teaching novels, and who actually went into teaching with that in mind. It was okay when I first started teaching, because we didn’t have standards that suggested (or required) otherwise. But like it or not the standards are here, and are forcing us to do better by our kids as far as preparing them for high school, college and the world of work. So, no, we aren’t discouraging any of our middle schools from using novels to teach reading, but we are encouraging them to use many, many other things alongside them.
I regret that someone (or some folks) misinterpreted that conversation, but I suspect it’s more about feeling challenged to shrink my novel list from ten titles to five so that I can pick up some of the other things I need to be teaching from.
6 comments:
Richard, I was there. Mr. Hayes is not telling the truth. We were told something totally different.
Will Mr. Hayes be sending the clarifcation to the school teachers?
I continue to say, "I'm beaten." And I stand by that.
I wonder if the educator feels there are those at KDE or wherever who are attempting to gumb down the curriculum?
And, Richard, are you serious about using this blog in class?
I did not ask and do not know if Jack plans any kind of internal written clarification - but he is on the record here.
And, yes, we do use stories from the blog to promote class discussions with some regularity. (The blog was originally designed as a vehicle for my students at UK and Georgetown, before conversion into its current form early in 2007.) I understand that a couple of other professors might use it on occasion as well.
I typically think of the blog as a repository of news stories surrounding the issues of the day. The commentary is identifiable as commentary and my students are encouraged to think for themselves. My purpose in class is pretty much the same as it is here - to provide information, be as thought-provoking as possible and encourage critical thinking.
The stories I select for class are invariably related to topics future teachers are affected by. Last week, for example, we discussed the Texas textbook situation and how the adoption process works. We have talked about test scores, sexting, the Montgomery County book issue, teachers behaving badly, national curriculum standards, NCLB reauthorization, student assignment plans, teacher effectiveness, working with parents, and more. When Commissioner Terry Holliday visited our class earlier in the year, he and EKU President Doug Whitlock seemed to feel like the students engaged these topics very well, which was very confirming for me. And I don't think they were just being polite. I believe critical thinking to be an essential skill and worry that it may be discouraged in the field due to the pressures administrators feel from high-stakes assessment.
KSN&C is a good way, in my opinion, to connect pre-service teachers, to some of the realities of the work in the field.
Thanks for the comments.
Thank you for mentioning critical thinking and your concerns about it being discouraged. I could not agree with you more....
The old school teachers that want to teach novels are used to then just testing on memorization of that novel.
What should be done is teaching a standard (a concept) by using a novel and then testing that concept using different texts or novels.
There is no good coming from testing who wore what in chapter 10.
The debate about literacy will rage on. And so it should. Should kids be exposed to poetry, novels, diary entries, films or other, more, popular forms of writing?
I don't think a FCPS school director Mr. Hayes is a literacy specialist, nor do I think he is much interested in the life of the mind, so I immediately overlooked his words on the subject. For Mr. Hayes, it is about numbers, about test scores.
The bigger question is, for me, what kind of writing should children in Kentucky be exposed to? I would love for English instructors, not College of Education people, to weigh in the subject. Any out there?
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