Adolescent Literacy: Chapters 4 & 15

A few thoughts about these two chapters…

I feel that in both of these chapters, my main thoughts/ideas/concerns stemmed from thinking about my teachers and their strategies and techniques they used to teach their students.

I think that many of our student’s issues about understanding and inquiry has resulted from the “curriculum obesity crisis” we as teachers are faced with; our students can not focus their attention on the concept that we have introduced before it is time to move to the next one. I feel that many of my teachers that I had when I was in school would switch so quickly that I got lost in the shuffle of concepts, especially if it was in a subject that I struggled in as a student. Why can’t our curriculum be linked and connected among the teaching subject areas. For example, as an art teacher, I have had students tell me that there is no math or science in art, because “this is an art class”. This process of thought disturbs me.

Another issue that I have been thinking about is how do we convince students that learning from their struggles and challenges in our subject areas is beneficial to their development? This quote from Chapter 4 made me think harder about this question, “move beyond the idea that all students must study the same thing at the same time” (p 37). If we can help our students make the connection with the material being taught to their personal interests it will benefit them as individuals, not just fitting in our curriculum to prepare for their tests. Building INQUIRY== MOTIVATION & UNDERSTANDING. I believe that teachers need to change along with their students in order to meet this generations needs.