The entire process of creating an instructional sequence has been an....interesting experiment. It's hard for me. I've mentioned before that I tend to look at things globally and then have a hard time with details, and that is definitely showing up right now.
The biggest challenge at the moment is, when I go through all of the lesson plans I've created so far and try to match them up with the standards I picked out and the learning targets I wrote forever ago at the beginning of this unit-planning process, it isn't really working. When I started, I had a vision of all these standards that worked wonderfully together and I was a bit short-sighted about the details of what the lesson plans teaching to those standards would look like. And now, I have all these lesson plans that I really like that don't particularly fit with that global idea I started out with, but I think they're good and create a good core for my instructional sequence. So I'm torn between going back to revise my short-sighted but idealistic group of standards and learning targets I started out with to fit my new lesson plans, or if that violates that idea of backwards-lesson-planning that I really do think is important.
In other news, I see interesting things happening between my principles and practices when it comes to the language standards. Here's a fact: I really hate teaching grammar. It's not that I don't know it, because I do. I just think it's over-emphasized and I really dislike how much our culture values Standard American English over any other dialect a student might speak, like African-American Vernacular English or Hawaiian Pidgin, both of which I think are awesome. Language is a huge part of culture and ultimately identity, and this may just be my former Linguistics Emphasis (and present Descriptivist) talking, but I think this is especially important in showing respect for diversity and the individual identities of my students. If someone can communicate effectively, I don't really care if they can speak Standard American English, but the standards tell me I have to care. Unfortunately, academia and the workforce usually do care very much, so I need to teach my students to function in Standard American, but I'd really like to show them that their own way of speaking is valuable too. At the moment, my lesson plans are skirting the issue and focusing on writing style. Any thoughts on this, classmates?
Dory,
ReplyDeleteI can totally understand your challenge of making your lesson plans match your learning targets and standards. I definitely think it's okay to revise the learning targets, or add new ones, throughout the process. At this point, it seems like you might have to decide which aspects of your unit plan seem to be the most effective. Are all of your lesson plans in sync with one another? Would it be easy to write new targets that fulfill all of those lesson plans? Or would it be best to stick with the targets you have and revise your lesson plans to meet those targets? Either decision will probably be capable of an awesome unit as long as you can align those components. I wish I had the answer for you, but I'm sure you are much more qualified to make that decision :).
I loved your thoughts on teaching grammar while preserving the various dialects within students. I also think it's very important to encourage every student to embrace their culture, but like you said: the workforce expects employees to be at least proficient in Standard American English. I am also wondering how to balance the two. I will have to think on it...let me know if you come up with anything!
Is is one of those things where you allow the dialect in some writing and activities but require that they prove the American English Standard with other activites? Or even that they use some of their dialect within a paper? I had some hawaiian residents my first year as an RA in Chaffee, Jeremy and Luke. These guys both took the same English 101 class and asked their teacher about utilizing their dialect throughtout some of their written work. She agreed with the requirment of adding margine or footnotes within the document. It was pretty wonderful. I remember helping them proofread a couple papers, there as one that they had to write involving what they saw while walking on the greenbelt and because they were able to use their dialect, they were able to closer relate to this walk and beautify it to a a whole new level. It may not happen with all dialects, but it worked for them.
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