Living in the Gray

           I really enjoyed the readings for this week for a number of reasons. It's particularly fun and fascinating to talk about using artifacts in the classroom and REAL instruction. I know that personally I needed to have things taught to me in a way that I could use my senses to puzzle it out. I think that's why I never took to math. History, art, science, reading, and writing were all things that felt accessible to me where numbers never felt real and I would have to draw out the problem in order for it to make sense. We're English people though, so it comes as no surprise that we are capable of loving things that are figments of someone else's imagination. However, even in the most fantastical books, there is some type of connecting thread that binds a story to reality. It mirrors and even surpasses the limited scope of reality to find the humanity in any situation.

         I really fell in love with this book that was given to me as a gift last year. It's Shakespeare's Restless World: A Portrait of an Era in Twenty Objects, by Neil MacGregor,  an art historian who worked at the British Museum. His deep dives into the everyday objects of the Elizabethan period are just so decadent and they really vividly put the reader in the middle of that context. It was so good that I've been trying to read a similar book of his, A History of the World in 100 Objects, which so far has not been quite as good, but I think that has something to do with the span of time and number of objects he's covering. Objects of course do not have to be encased behind glass in a museum to be valuable. Every artifact has its own story and our students have plenty of artifacts to share, even if they don't necessarily see them as artifacts. "Eliciting stories about objects from students opens up their home experience and enables teachers to access communities that may not be visible within schools, " (Pahl and Roswell, 1). In order for students to value what is taught to them in schools, they have to see how that knowledge is connected to the outside world; to the place that breathes, and sighs, and sweats, and bleeds. Particularly for students that have had to leave the places they were born and start again, having these connections to the familiar is so important. "If the material world of objects is accessed in literacy learning, more experiences can flood in from outside to make sense of students' worlds as they compose and write, " (Pahl and Rosewell, 1). That's why I've always loved writing prompts that involve an object or an image. Sometimes teachers will tell their students what to write, but they don't actually give something to write about. This is easy enough to get around when your language skills are developed enough to think abstractly, but sometimes students need to just rely on what they can see to make meaning.

     I thought it was great when Stewart was talking about the usual fare that's offered for teens. You know the ones. They're, "some eye-level books on display that were all informational texts about STDs, drugs, and gang violence," (Stewart, 3) which is obviously what all adolescents are clawing at the bookshelves to get their hands on. It's easy to tell when there's an adult at work selecting things for students to read that they think kids should be reading. That will turn them away from books. You've got to give them what they want or else they won't be engaged in the material. As someone who has plenty of firsthand experience trying to upsell reading to a number of people, I think it's fair to say that you do have to know your audience and that means doing the research to understand what the areas of interest and exploration for each student are going to be. I know also that it may take time.

    When my brother was younger I tried to find things to read to him or things that he would want to read on his own, but there was a huge resistance that I was facing. I thought it was just a matter of finding the right book and I wanted him to have the same joyful experiences I remembered having at his age. When I found out he liked the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, I instantly bought the first three, but it never developed into a solid interest in reading. That taught me that there wasn't a secret formula. What's appropriate might vary from day to day. Stewart addresses this by talking about taking the first steps towards affirming students and that is a tone that gets set immediately. This includes very basic things like, "pronouncing their names correctly, even if doing so requires a lot of practice. This singular act can affirm their culture, language, and family heritage, " (Stewart, 6). There's also mention of greeting them in ways that are appropriate in the moment. If you're not sure exactly what that looks like, here's a brilliant example: 

 

In this viral video the teacher is telling the kids to decide what they need from her. Even when she didn't see what the girl in pink selected, she made sure to ask so she didn't do the wrong action when it would have been easier to rush her through. That's real. That's good teaching.  Getting back to the topic of reality, one of my favorite picture books is The Velveteen Rabbit. It's a real tearjerker but the rabbit is given some great advice from one of the older and wiser toys. The rocking horse tells him that the way to become real is when somebody loves you. He also warns that being real hurts and it's not always easy, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. It's not that the students we encounter aren't real and valid, but they may not necessarily feel that way because the educational system they're in tells them they're not good enough. Sometimes life itself tells them that they're not good enough. Our job is to make them see their uniqueness and beauty and awaken their belief.