An Authentic English Language Arts Curriculum

Finding Your Way in a Standards-Driven Context

Arthur T. Costigan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351167147
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides ways of thinking for preservice and new teachers to transition from the theory behind curricular design to engaged teaching and learning in the classroom. It offers a comprehensive framework for the creation and implementation of one's own authentic and effective ELA curriculum. In addition to strategies for preservice teachers to develop their own pedagogies, lessons, and teaching techniques, Costigan also demonstrates how to design tools for teaching in the current testing- and standards-driven context of the educational reform movement. Containing real-life examples of reading and writing instruction, this book empowers preservice teachers to translate the concepts of curriculum design to actual ELA classroom practices that will engage students.

1

THE ENGLISH ORIENTATION

Your English Orientation

This book is different from many others in that it does not just present techniques, pedagogies, and activities, but rather talks about an orientation, an approach, a “way in,” to teaching English. Just as you have an orientation to a certain type of music, or a specific culture’s food (think classic French, Thai, Sichuan, or Tex Mex), you also have a certain vocabulary or discourse (a way of speaking and thinking), and you have an orientation to English. Of course, you also have a sexual orientation and a gender orientation which color the core of your life and your relationships. Some of us have scientific or mathematical orientations, others have artistic orientations, and others have an orientation to athletics. In fact, you probably have several orientations and don’t have several others, just as I don’t really have a mathematical orientation or a basketball playing orientation. I argue that your English orientation is also an important part of your life. You would not be reading this book unless you had an orientation to reading and writing and to sharing it with other human beings, your current or future students.

Orientation can be defined as “the direction you are facing,” or “alignment with what is important to you,” or “facing the right way.” Orientation literally means “facing East.” The Orient is where the sun rises, and many cultures pray facing eastward. An orientation is the way you approach the important issues and phenomena that you are focused on, or concerned with, or slanted towards, or in favor of. So too, you have become an English teacher, or are in the process of becoming an English teacher, because in all likelihood you already have an orientation, inclination, and instinct towards the use of, and study of, English. You read novels, or write poems, or keep a diary, and you enjoy deep conversations with your friends and colleagues about books, movies, music, and important human issues. You are a writer, a reader, a speaker, and a conversationalist, and you want to share this orientation or focus or way of living with your students. I know this because over 17 years I’ve asked each potential student applying to one of the four ELA education programs I direct: (1) Why do you want to be a teacher? and, (2) why do you want to be an English teacher? Almost every candidate without exception states that they want: (1) To pass on their love of literature and/or writing; and (2) to make a difference in the lives of young people.

Another perhaps simpler way of looking at this is that, while this book looks at the outside skin of the building of ELA (what teachers and students do), it’s more authentic focus is the complicated structures on the inside (the groundwork, support, and scaffolding) of how teachers think about what they do in the ELA classroom. Let’s move on two examples which I have brought together from the several types of lessons I’ve often observed. One lesson leans towards what my mentor John Mayher classifies as commonsense (traditional) practices, and the second heavily favors uncommonsense (we’ll get to the names) practices (Mayher, 1991).

Two Teachers, Two Classrooms, Two Curricula

Let’s imagine two teaching scenarios for two different teachers whom we’ll call Maria and Derrick. Both are novice second year English ELA teachers teaching in a school we’ll call Hamilton High. I think both of these teachers can tell us much about two basic approaches to the teaching of English.

Before I get to each teacher’s story however, I need to point out that these lessons are in the context of these teachers’ typically busy, if not hectic, day. Maria and Derrick teach five “pupil periods” (that is, class sections) per day, and these are divided between two different class preparations, or “preps”—say, in a fall semester, two freshman class sections, and three senior class sections. However, it really isn’t just two “preps” per day, along with the two accompanying lesson plans, because many individual classes will contain students who have special needs, thus each lesson plan will have to have several adaptations, or have “differentiation,” for these students. For example, one or several students might have Individual Educational Programs (IEPs) and need Special Education services. Alternatively, the class may contain English Language Learners (ELLs) or other students with special needs. Additionally, it may not be just teaching “two sophomore ELA classes,” as one class section might be Advanced Placement (AP) and one might be remedial. And this diversity can get rather absurd: The most difficult class I ever taught, the last period of the day, was a remedial English class whose students were placed in my class because they had consistently failed the state math test—go figure. So, each ELA lesson doesn’t just “get taught,” it needs to be differentiated for different students with different learning styles, abilities, and needs. And, as any teacher can tell you, even two “on level” classes (however that is defined) that should be the same, may actually have quite different classroom personalities, sometimes markedly so. In fact, I’ve never taught, in high school or college, two of the same type of classes on the same level that have had the same class personality.

It is also worth noting that the two lessons described below occur during an eight-period day: Five are teaching periods with two “preps,” but there is also one period to prepare lesson plans and materials, called a “prep” period. Another is a “professional period,” which is really a “building assignment” such as monitoring a hallway or working in the attendance office. The third non-teaching period is 40 minutes for lunch. A day chopped up into roughly 42-minute sections is rushed. Additionally, in each of these five short 42-minute lessons, a teacher in an urban district may have up to 34 students (or more) per class, which at five periods per day, comes to 170 students per day (or more). (Think of reading 170 student assignments or homeworks per day!) All this is the result of the factory model of education, which was intentionally created in the 1920s to process masses of students as a result of the then novelty of compulsory or mandatory education. Today’s middle and high schools are still designed to move as many students as possible on an assembly line from Math, to Science, to Phys Ed, to the lunch room, and so forth, much like a Model T Ford moved on an assembly line in 1922.

I bring this up because this is the reality of teaching today. It’s a rushed, complicated, exhausting, and almost impossible task, one that society does not seem to appreciate, and one that educational reformers certainly don’t understand. I am giving this description of the realities of teaching because we should not forget that it is in this context that our discussion of the ELA curriculum takes place. I never forget, in the writing of this book, that this is the context in which we teach and our students learn. Turning now to Maria and Derrick, let us focus on how these new second year novice teachers go about producing a lesson.

Maria’s Story

Maria Sanchez has just arrived in the teachers’ lounge and is just sitting down at 8:10 a.m. on a Monday morning and getting comfortable with a cup of coffee before her busy day. Just as she takes the lid off her coffee take out cup, there’s a knock on the door of the room. In comes a young man holding a note and a manila folder, He asks for Ms. Sanchez. Maria says, “That’s me,” and the student hands her the note and the folder. The note is from the Assistant Principal (AP) and tells her she is to do a class coverage for a teacher’s absence, something that is required of teachers to do several times a semester. Maria sighs and the young man leaves. In the folder are copies of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” Maria is a bit concerned that the teacher has not left a lesson plan, as she was supposed to do. Maria only has enough copies of poem for the class. She says to herself, “OK, I can do this. I was a major in English in college, I had a course in Romantic Poetry where we covered this, I’m getting my master’s in Education and I’ve been provisionally and initially certified, so I know something about how to teach poetry. She re-familiarizes herself with this well-known poem and reads,

1. I met a traveller from an antique land,

2. Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

3. Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

4. Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

5. And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

6. Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

7. Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

8. The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

9. And on the pedestal, these words appear:

10. My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

11. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

12. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

13. Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

14. The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The bell rings and Maria is off to Room 222 to an unknown class of Juniors to somehow engage them with this poem.

Maria arrives a bit out of breath as the students are entering the class. Using her best “teacher voice” she tells the students to settle down and that she will be reporting back to Ms. Simpson (the regular teacher) about how they behaved. And she will be collecting their writing that day and it will be graded. Fortunately, the students settle down and Maria hands out the poem.

“We’re going to read today a Romantic poem, does anyone know what that is?” The class is silent. “OK, then, these are poems which were written in an era when feelings were considered very important, so the poet want us to feel things in the poem. Let’s begin by reviewing any vocabulary words that we don’t know. Can each of you circle words that are strange to you in the poem, because this was written hundreds of years ago.” Fortunately for her, Maria thinks, the students do the task, and she thinks that this must be a “good” class of students, willing to do what they are asked.

The students come up with various words, such as, “trunkless,” “visage,” “colossal,” and so forth. Maria puts them on the board and has the students copy them in their notebook, telling the class, “Remember these vocabulary words might be on your next exam.” After spending about ten minutes reviewing the words, Maria begins the class proper. She starts reading the poem to the class line by line. Beginning with the first line, Maria states, “Remember a trunk is the main part of your body, and vast means enormous.” She begins to read, “I met a traveller from an antique land, / Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert.” She asks, “Can anyone translate this for us?” One student says, “I think it means that the poet met a guy when on vacation, and there was a statue of legs without a body just standing there in the desert.” Maria congratulates the young man on “getting it.” She continues this way through the entire poem, that is translating or interpreting each line, being sure to take time to summarize and explain after several lines have been “translated.” This takes most of the period. Maria is relieved that the students have the academic ability to “get” the poem and she will compliment Ms. Simpson when she next sees her.

The end of the class is approaching and Maria tries to wrap it up, “So, what do you think is the message or theme of this poem?” She continues, “A traveler, tourist if you will, hears a story about someone who says there is a broken statue in the desert with an inscription about how great this king is, but all there is remaining is his broken statue, or visage, which means appearance.” One student, obviously the academic leader in the class, raises his hand and says, “I think he is saying that fame doesn’t last.” Maria says, “Good, I think you’ve understood the poem . . .” It is now the end of the period and the bell rings. Maria says, as the students are rushing out of the room, “Thanks for your wonderful contributions today, I’ll be sure to tell Ms. Simpson what a wonderful class you have been.” Maria is happy that this might be a poem which is useful for the students on the state exam, which always requires an essay comparing two works of literature. However, Maria wonders what she would have done if the students were non-native speakers of English, or did not have a background in analyzing poetry, or were just disengaged from formal schooling, to “get” the theme of the poem. She feels fortunate today.

Derrick’s Story

Derrick has a similar schedule to Maria and gets his “coverage” just as he’s opening up his coffee—this always happens. Derrick, unfortunately, is unfamiliar with the poem. However, he reads it and he thinks he “gets” it enough to teach it. He runs to the English Department office and finds a pair of scissors. He is going to “scramble” the poem.

With very little time before the first bell of the day, he cuts up the poem and places the slips of paper containing the lines on the glass of the photocopier in random order. He pushes the button and prints out ten copies so that groups of from two to four students will each have one copy of the scrambled poem. Derrick’s thankful that the copying machine is working today. If Derrick had time, he could have cut up the poem’s lines into strips himself and put them in individual envelopes for groups of students. The scrambled poem now looks like this:

SAMPLE 1.1 Sample Assembled Poem

(Note that the lines are simply arranged in alphabetical order, something you can do easily on an Excel spreadsheet.) Derrick now hurries to Room 222, running a bit late, and opens the door to find a rowdy group of students, some walking about the room talking to each other, others socializing, others on their cell phones—totally against school rules. Derrick sighs at the difficult task in front of him and uses his “teacher voice” saying settle down and get to your seats. I have the seating chart here and I will get back to Ms. Simpson on how you behave today.”

The students settle down reluctantly. Derrick begins, “OK, I’m new here and don’t know any of you. Who can tell me who is the most important person in this room, you know, who is the best person here?” The students look a bit confused. “I mean who thinks he o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• An Authentic English Language Arts Curriculum
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The English Orientation
• 2 The Foundations of Practice: Where We Come From and Where We Are Now
• 3 English Language Arts: What Is It, How Is It Learned, and How Do You Teach It?
• 4 Expanding Our Understanding of Intermodality
• 5 The ELA Classroom in the Context of Contemporary Schooling: Educational Reform, Standards, and Assessment
• 6 Multiple Literacies as Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in English Language Arts
• Index