Blog Post #5: Planning for Critical Engagement and Social Justice

 Blog Post #5:  Planning for Critical Engagement and Social Justice

Essential Question:  How will I teach students to critically engage with the world—to question the status quo, to participate productively in digital culture, and to stand up for social justice?

In the classroom, I see many students doing what they think is critical engagement with the world, but what they’re actually doing is simply whining. Pointing out problems cannot be all we do about them. To achieve social justice, action must be taken. Change must happen.

            A simple way to persuade students to engage critically with what is around them is to show them everything that is happening in the world. Studying current events probably isn’t the immediate go-to idea when our students think about fun activities. Associated Press likely isn’t their online subscription priority. But there are things happening that affect their lives in very real ways. The students would do well to be informed today and for the rest of their lives. However, it may be that the news that is covered by the mainstream media just doesn’t interest a particular interest. Luckily, since we’re living in 2022, there are plenty of news sources that are catered specifically to unique interests. Getting kids to read news about any topic is a worthwhile investment. This approach agrees with the notion of giving students a choice of what they read. I don’t want to dictate what current events should be important to them. They must be the ones who decide what information is relevant to their lives. In this way, they can have real feelings about the matters that develop honestly from inside them instead of formulated just to get a grade.

            What then do we do with the feelings inspired by news that matters to them? Expert pedagogist Randy Bomer says that we must “transact with texts by participating in a network” (Bomer 254). Today’s society is connected via instant reactions by an audience. We should encourage our students to not only be a part of that audience but to interact with the creators as well as each other. This means writing op-eds and commenting on message boards. This will be an important task for them since they will be creating communication that can be seen by the public instead of just their ever-forgiving educators. It will hopefully keep them on-task and serious about their work.

            While interacting with the public over the internet is how modern life works, and students need to be prepared and understand such communication, it is risky just letting them be free to discover any disinformation they may happen across. Therefore, we must be vigilant in approving their choice of media they interact with. I wouldn’t let a student communicate with hate groups for credit. But we also have to keep an open mind that what one student sees as social justice may not align with our own ideas. But overall, this practice can be a great tool for inspiring students to engage toward social justice.

Works Cited:

Bomer, Randy. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. Heinemann, 2011.

Blog #4 Integrating Language Instruction into Authentic Reading and Writing

How do language and grammar enliven our writing?

The most important boon that grammar provides to our writing is that grammar makes things understandable. The most pressing issue I see with my sixth graders’ essays is that they use run on sentences all the time. Every time I assign a writing project, I get responses that read like they were written by the Micromachine Man. (Maybe I should explain that one – He was in a bunch of commercials in the 80s and talked really fast so that he could fit a ton of words into a thirty-second advertisement.) My students like to write without punctuation separating sentences as if their words were on a highway. Any comma or period would cause a word jam due to the constant pouring in of incoming next ideas. They don’t yet know how to emphasize impactful ideas using the negative space in the pauses around them.

When I was young, grammar came naturally to me. Math and science were like a vast tundra that my brain didn’t want to suffer through, shivering. But writing English was a walk in the park. Grasping onto lessons quickly, I was able to easily write in whatever format would please my instructor. However, this isn’t the kind of instruction I want to give my students. When Harry Noden suggests sharing grammatical lessons with our students, he isn’t saying that the students need to write exactly the way he does. Instead, he’s giving students tools that can improve their personal writing. If a student were to take to heart Noden’s grammar instruction, they would have a serious advantage over those students who studied traditional grammar style. Noden’s way leaves space for students to be creative. The students will be encouraged to keep their own voices when writing, but they’ll also be empowered to add things like absolutes, appositives, participles, and parallel structure. In this way, our students will end up more like master painters than precisely synchronized literary automatons. I’m not interested in sanitized writing that comes out rule-following but uninspired. But even Picasso had to start with figure drawing and still life practice.

How will I design ELA instruction that helps my students achieve these goals?

So how do I implement Noden-style strategies to solve my students’ problems with run on sentences? The answer came to me at the KATE conference. I believe the instructor was Ms. Fox who showed us how to teach grammar by having the students identify conventions and then practice the techniques themselves before we add more complex ways of doing things. I’ve already started this in my classroom. Whereas we were already telling them how to write correctly, I didn’t think we were giving the students enough chance to use the lessons in their own writing. Now English class has become more of a writing lab, and I think that is for the students’ benefit.

 

Works Cited:

Noden, Harry. Image Grammar Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process. Heinemann, 2011.