"Background Information
Reflection
and inquiry are imperative forces that drive an educator’s understandings about
their students, their teaching practices, and their personal identity as a
teacher. As of June 2013, I have officially completed my first year as an
intensive reading teacher in an urban public middle school in Duval County, FL.
My process of teacher inquiry and the construction of an action research
project for my classroom are based upon the reflections I have gathered from
the past year combined with new knowledge encountered through independent
professional development and coursework.
In
the 2012-2013 school year, I taught intensive reading in grades 6 and 7. My
classes consisted of approximately 20 students who were scheduled to my class
every day for a 90 minute class period. The racial backgrounds of my classes
were 83% African American, 8% Hispanic, and 8% White. As an entire school
(calculated in June of 2012), 59% of students were African American, 9% were
Hispanic, 5% were of mixed race, 3% were Asian, and 24% were white. All of my
students came from a background of poverty, measured by all students qualifying
for free/reduced lunch. As of 2012, approximately 77% of the entire student
body lived in poverty. Students were mandated to be scheduled into my class
because they scored a level 1 on their 2012 FCAT in reading.
While
reflecting upon the school year and planning for the upcoming year, the process
of teacher inquiry has served as a powerful lens of personal examination. I
began my course of reflection by considering my most crucial challenges of the
school year that are ripe with potential for inquiry. At the beginning of the
school year, I drafted a vision for my classroom that detailed goals for myself
and my students and outlined the major traits we needed to foster in order to
accomplish these goals. I realized that my classroom experience did not
translate into the vision I created for the school year in a variety of ways.
Throughout
the course of the year, I struggled with challenging behaviors that my students
exhibited on a daily basis in my classroom. It appeared that each class became
dominated by certain types of behaviors that challenged me to continually try
out different methods and seek new solutions. As an educator, I recognize that
each child is an individual with immense power, and we have the ability to
shape the educational experience of this child forever. While studying various
incidents and challenges posed by individual students, I came to realize that
each scenario held true to a common thread. Most of the challenges posed by
students in my classroom were related to low levels of engagement in reading. As
stated by Dana and Yendol-Hoppey (2009), there is often a common theme that
connects our fascinations about our teaching practice. Throughout the course, I
realized that my students often exhibited low levels of engagement in the
reading process measured by their independent reading practice, active reading
in class exercises, and their interest levels shown. Each incident I reflected
upon could have potentially never occurred or could have been improved based on
the students’ level of engagement in literacy.
Reflecting
upon the past school year, I noticed that I rarely gave my students
opportunities to work collaboratively in groups or partners. Based upon my
current knowledge, I know that my students would have highly benefitted from
these strategies in the classroom. During the school year I noticed through
observation that my students were intensely talkative and had a real desire to
talk about what they were working on or learning about. The majority of my
students came from a cultural background that values collectivism, yet all year
I had pushed my students to become more individualistic in many ways. For
example, through my frequent insistence on demonstrating knowledge
independently, I inadvertently discouraged students from utilizing their
cultural assets in the classroom. This communicated a message to students that
I did not understand or value their cultural background. Also, I could have
engaged students through group literacy strategies such as shared reading and
collaborative projects. Students showed interest in holding classroom
discussions, and I incorporated a Socratic Seminar at the end of the year which
demonstrated the great potential of this strategy in my classroom. In order to
engage students in literacy, students need to feel that their culture is valued
and teachers need to use strategies and techniques to incorporate these
cultural assets.
Another
major area that I reflected upon from the past year was the context of my
classroom. My students came into my class on the first day expressing how
disappointed they were to have been placed in intensive reading. In my school
community, there is a negative perception of the class and the students that
are enrolled in it. Throughout the year, my students would explain to me that
their other teachers made judgments about their intelligence based on their
placement in the class. These attitudes have demonstrated that it will be
essential to flip the script on how it feels to be in reading class and
dramatically alter my students affect for reading.
Also,
in relation to the context of my school, I observed my students engagement
levels in reading drop significantly during the time period of FCAT
preparation. Last year, I was unaware of how the cultural differences between
my students and I affected the learning process. During this time, I could have
used culturally relevant strategies to help prepare students for FCAT success
and also to balance out the intense preparation that occurred. Utilizing these
strategies would have increased my students’ engagement and could have created
a more accessible learning environment. According to Dana & Yendol-Hoppey
(2009), “Many teachers in states where pressure from high-stakes testing seems
to dominate the culture of the district and schools wonder, ‘How can we make
learning relevant and motivating in a context where testing seems to dominate
curriculum and scheduling?’” (p. 55). This statement summarizes my thinking
upon reflection on the FCAT preparation in my classroom last year.
Literature Related To My Topic
While exploring and
reflecting upon my teaching practice, I have determined that the most crucial
areas for development are related to the creation and implementation of culturally
responsive teaching strategies. If I explore and improve my practice in the
realm of classroom culture and responsive teaching strategies, other challenges
I have experienced such as classroom management and behaviors should be
relieved. Many of my challenges I have experienced in my classroom lead back to
a common thread of classroom culture and teaching strategies. I need to be able
to utilize my students cultural assets as crucial pillars on which I can build
instruction and teaching.
The majority of my
students come from a background that celebrates a collectivist culture. Collectivist
value systems emphasize interdependence, interpersonal social relationships,
community and family roles, proximal modes of communication, cooperation, and
place relationships over substance in conversation (Tileston & Darling,
2008, p. 32). This information illustrates the importance of changing my
teaching practices to align with and respond to my students’ culture.
One teaching strategy
that can be used to create a culturally responsive classroom for my students is
the process of collaborative learning[1].
As previously stated, my students’ talkative nature is related to their
collectivist cultural background. According to Brown (2003), “Recognizing this communication
characteristic can help urban teachers develop instructional activities that
build on these verbal interactions instead of being disrupted by them” (p. 281).
This realization has led me to explore the process of collaboration in the
classroom. Not only does the use of collaboration in the classroom facilitate
student relationships, but it also has the potential to increase student
achievement. The process of collaboration in the classroom has been noted to
increase student achievement by as much as 28 points (Tileston & Darling,
2008, pg. 60).
The use of classroom
discussion is a founding collaborative tool that can be used to facilitate
student learning. Discussion can take many forms in the classroom and can be
structured formally or informally. However, this strategy has the power to
harness the best in my students, especially considering my students cultural
collectivist background. Hadjioannou (2007) studied a Florida classroom in
which discussion was highly valued by the teacher and students as an
instructional tool. In this classroom, Hadjioannou (2007) witnesses a classroom
where, “participants were doubtlessly more likely to take substantial social
risks, offer tentative contributions, and state controversial opinions” (p.
385). In a supportive and nurturing classroom environment, the use of
discussion increases students’ engagement and participation in formulating new
knowledge. Discussion is collaborative in nature, as Hadjioannou (2007) notes,
“the classroom participants often engaged in verbal behavior that acknowledged
other participants, complimented their knowledge and their contributions, or
assisted them in making their contributions more complete and effective” (p.
393). Therefore, the use of classroom discussion incorporates students’
cultural values and pushes them to work collaboratively to further understand
and construct their own meaning from classroom learning.
However, students must
be taught strategies and methods for engaging in classroom discussions with
clear expectations. Reading and literacy are social processes that have a
certain set of academic norms for participation. Daniels (2011) states that,
“If they do not know how to engage with an academic discipline, they lose their
ability to control their own participation because they are not able to do what
their teachers ask or expect” (p. 3). Students need social strategies for
participating in reading, and the process of teaching collaborative discussions
can facilitate the acquisition of these strategies. When students have learned
strategies necessary to participate in reading and literacy in positive ways,
they are much more likely to be engaged in a reading classroom.
Aside from classroom
discussions, students can work collaboratively throughout the learning process.
Collaborative learning involves the process of students working together in a
group to achieve various academic goals. Completing academic work and achieving
learning goals as a collective classroom group also assists with the creation
of a culturally responsive classroom. As students work together, they gain new
understandings about the material and become more engaged because they are
working within their own cultural value system.
Collaborative learning
also leads to higher achievement and gains in reading comprehension for
struggling readers. According to a study by Edmonds et al. (2009), “On a
standardized measure of comprehension, cooperative grouping was the more
effective model,” and “The effects of reciprocal teaching on comprehension were
moderate to high” (p. 289). Various methods of cooperative work can lead to
student achievement through increased social engagement in the learning
process. Cooperative learning also
improves students’ higher order thinking skills, learning gains, and general
engagement in and affect towards school. Based on a variety of studies
conducted, students working in a collaborative rather than individualistic or
competitive environment show increased long-term retention, increased intrinsic
motivation, higher expectations for success, increased creative thinking, and
display positive attitudes towards school and the task at hand (Johnson &
Johnson, 2009, p. 371).
The process of
reciprocal teaching has the potential to greatly increase student achievement
in reading and boost student self-efficacy in the academic environment. Reciprocal
teaching is a collaborative learning strategy where students work in groups to
read a passage together, while students take the roles of predictor, clarifier,
summarizer, and questioner. Students share the task of utilizing the reading
strategies associated with these names to gain crucial strategy practice and
gain a higher level of understanding from a text. Reciprocal teaching also
gives teachers a great opportunity to provide scaffolding for students as they
practice reading strategies. The teacher can become a mediator during group
discussions and provide feedback to students tailored to the needs of each
student or the whole group (Alfasi, 1998). Also, there are a variety of methods
that can be used to highly engage kinesthetic and visual learners through the
use of reciprocal teaching, especially hand gestures and props to represent
reading strategies (Oczkus, 2010). Reciprocal teaching can serve as one of the
most important methods of cooperative learning in my classroom throughout the
inquiry process. Studies show that reciprocal teaching strategies have led to
an improvement of 28 points in 4th grade reading (Carter, 2011). Reciprocal
teaching also fits into the developing definitions of literacy as a dynamic
interaction between the reader and a text (Carter, 2011).
As we move further into the 21st
century, our lives are continually becoming increasingly dominated by
technology. Students in my reading class demonstrate major challenges in
reading, yet text, email and absorb information from the internet quickly and
prolifically. Adams (2012) writes that, “One way to address these new
literacies – including virtual reality experiences, blogs and wikis, and online
discussions – is to infuse them into classroom instruction” (pg. 8). This
observation has led me to believe that technology is a literacy strength that
my students possess that is a function of 21st century culture.
Throughout the process of creating a culturally relevant classroom, integration
of technology into the literacy process is an important collaborative learning
tool. Students can create online posts related to classroom literature, respond
to other’s ideas, and communicate in a collaborative online classroom community
as well.
Students enrolled in intensive
reading classes frequently become disengaged from school because they believe
that they have no academic choice. Students also disengage from school because
they believe that they lack the intelligence to be successful. These statements
gathered from students in my classroom last year reflect the urgency with which
my students need to become engaged in reading and hooked on the notion that
they can be successful. When students view their peers as well as faculty
engaged in avid reading, it can become the culture of a classroom and even an
entire school building. Teachers can build a reading culture by creating a
collaborative space to build on knowledge of literature. For example, students
need to talk and interact with their peers about books they are reading as a
means of increasing their engagement with literacy. In a study conducted on the
reading culture at one middle school, Daniels and Steres (2008) noted that,
“These students, plus many others, decided what books to read because they
noticed what their peers were reading or because their teachers consistently
exposed them to new titles” (pg. 8). Discussion and collaboration during the
reading process leads to the formation of a reading culture. Also, students can
learn about books that relate to their lives and reflect their own culture
through the process of talking to their peers about books. "
[1]
Terms such as collaborative, collective, and cooperative learning are all used
to refer to the general process of a group of students working together towards
mastery of a set of academic goals in the classroom. No reference to a specific
instructional program is intended.
