CI 5321 Post 5: Student Culture

This week, we talked about how distance education manifests in different parts of the world. Along with this, our texts covered culture and how it affects distance education. When we think about culture, we typically think about religious or ethnic culture, but the truth is that any group of people develops a culture. Whether it's Chinese culture, LGBTQ+ culture, sorority/ frat culture, or rock climbers' culture, all of these groups of people have developed their own rules, beliefs, practices, etc. as a singular  entity. While students' ethnic and religious culture certainly has an effect on how an online class looks - whether it be as concrete as religious days that prevent the students from completing work, or as abstract as students bringing pieces of their beliefs and practices into the virtual classroom - but the culture I would like to focus on is the one that every single student of mine will be a part of, student culture.

I would like to focus on the broad topic of student culture because no matter where I go, no matter who I teach, all of my students will take part in this culture in one way or another. I will have to tailor my classes to the individuals that take part in them, but there will always be a base template of practices that I can form from keeping in mind the culture of my students.

One of the greatest pieces of student culture that will have explicit effects on a teacher is the fact that students tend to be really busy. Whether they tutor, participate in sports, partake in clubs, volunteer, or even just keep up with a social life, students often have little time to finish homework. With this in mind, if I were to run an online course, I would be sure to give my students lots of reminders about due dates, as it might be difficult for them to keep up with everything. I would also try to be as flexible as I could with assignments. As someone who was in hockey, band, NHS, and knowledge bowl as a high school student, I know that sometimes events overlap and leave some days with little to no time to do homework. I would give students assignments pretty early so they could prepare for these busy days by completing their work early.

Another aspect of student culture that is important to keep in mind as a distance educator in a secondary school is how students at that age are trying to discover who they are as an individual. With this in mind, I would like to give my students ample opportunities to research the things they're interested in. I would also want to provide them a lot of space to speak with and bounce ideas off of each other. Peer interaction is an essential part of discovering oneself, and this practice has to be intentional in an online space.

CI 5321 Post 4: Support for K-12 Online Learners

Online learning can be convenient or easier in some ways, but it also can be tricky. I've been taking online classes since I was in high school, so this is nothing new to me. Over the years, almost anytime I've mentioned that I'm taking online classes, I've gotten similar responses. A lot of people react by saying that it must be difficult or that they could never do it. This has always amazed me because I've found online classes to be convenient and often times easier than F2F classes. However, I am pretty organized and disciplined when it comes to academics, and I think that's a huge factor into my success. For some students who are not used to holding themselves accountable, online classes could be pretty tricky.

Organization and self-motivation are skills that most high school (and pre-high school) students struggle with. As a future secondary teacher who could, one day, be teaching an online course, it is important for me to think about the supports I could put in place to help out my future students.

first of all,  would probably do a lot more hand-holding than I would do for a college course. For example, not only would I be clear about expectations and deadlines, I would also make sure I remind students several times before those deadlines arrive. It is important for online students to take responsibility for their own learning, but I think this would be an acceptable crutch for secondary students.

Another aspect that contributes to online students' success is how confident they are with technology. To aid with this, I would create specific, step-by-step videos on how to use certain technological tools throughout the course. I would also make sure my students know where to reach out - whether it would be to me or to other tech help - if they come across technological issues.

I will end with a quote from "Insights From Research on Distance Education Learners, Learning, and Learner Support?" by Richard E. West. He says that "Cavanaugh [a researcher] concluded that when the online instruction is designed well, K-12 students appeared to have as good of a chance for success as they would in a F2F class" (page 140). I think this proves that our students can be successful in any context, as long as they have the right supports.

CI 5321 Post 3: F2F vs. Online Learning

This week, I found and read an article for my podcast assignment entitled "Distance Learning and the Future of Education" by Steven Cohen, a professor at Columbia University. In my podcast, I briefly talk about how the article speaks on how online learning can make education available across the globe and how hybrid classes are the most efficient form of education. However, due to the strict time limit on the podcast of less than five minutes, I was barely able to scratch the surface on what I truly thought about this article. Specifically, I want to speak more about my reactions to Cohen's belief that technology will never completely replace face-to-face learning.

 Cohen talks about how, especially in higher education, it is hard to find a class that isn't immersed in technology in one way or another. In a society where major technological advances happen so quickly and frequently, and where knowledge and skills in said technological advances are highly marketable or even necessary to survive, I think it is a good thing that classrooms are utilizing technology within their curriculum. Although, I have to say that the following quote made me a little sad as a teacher who centers classroom community: "While [students] enjoy and use live interaction with colleagues and teachers, it no longer holds the monopoly position it once held." I may want to constantly interact with my students face-to-face, but the truth is that many of them feel more comfortable interacting online.

However, Cohen also emphasizes that no matter how advanced technology becomes, the world will never be without a need for physical classroom spaces. He says, "It will augment live education, but will not eliminate it. Educators should not worry that robots will replace them." This is something that I truly believe in. A couple of years ago, I had this same conversation with my boyfriend. He claimed that there wasn't a job that would be safe from being taken over by artificial intelligence. I argued that teaching wouldn't be the same if it was run by AI, even if the AI was super advanced. I tried to explain to him the importance that building relationships with the students has on student learning. I said that students wouldn't take AI as seriously, or at least there wouldn't be the same motivation that comes with learning from your favorite teacher. My boyfriend is a techie and never really came over to my side in this argument, but the more I learn, the more I stand by what I said. I truly don't think any technological advancement could ever completely replace teachers.

CI 5321 Post 2: Collaboration

This week, we learned a lot about how collaboration is almost necessary to incorporate in order to create a successful online or distance course. I think this is a really important idea to note and pay attention to when instruction an online course, but also when teaching in general.

In my educational career, I have had the opportunity to take part in many online courses. It all started in high school with my College Composition course. This course consisted almost entirely of reading texts and responding to them by writing papers. Looking back, the only interaction I had with other students involving this course was that which I initiated myself. I would frequently speak with my friend who was taking the face-to-face version of the course. I believe these interactions helped me to understand the texts we were supposed to read. Other than from these short interactions with my friend, I feel like I barely learned anything from this course. I was able to practice my writing skills, but I don't remember learning anything new, at least not about composition.

When I think about my most interactive online course I've taken, it has to be my final Spanish course I had to take for my undergraduate career. This course was completely online, which made learning a language very difficult. However, one thing that helped me learn in this course was the required interactions with my peers. I know there were many opportunities to collaborate with my classmates, but the type of collaboration I remember the most was video-recorded conversations with my peers. Every other week or so, I would have to hold a relatively long conversation with different peers about the topics of the week. We would have to speak with each other about these topics for something like 15 or 20 minutes on YouTube Live, then send the recordings to our teacher. This was really helpful because I was able to collaborate with different people who were at a similar Spanish-speaking level as I was, and we were able to just hold a conversation and work together to figure things out.

I think peer collaboration is important in any learning context, as it allows the learners to lean on each other as they work their way up the wall of education. It also provides more motivation for the learners, as they have to depend on one another in order to complete their work. There is something to be said about how much students can fear disappointing their peers or letting them down.

CI 5321 Post 1: Initial Thoughts

Hello all! This is a blog page I started at the beginning of my ILP/ M.Ed. program, but I figured it would work for the six posts I have to make for my distance education class. To kind of mirror our Module 1 for this class, this first post will be mostly an introduction about me, some of my beliefs in teaching in general and how distance education plays into that, and what I think about this class so far.

First of all, (as you may already know) I just turned in my application for my Minnesota teaching license (Communication Arts and Literature 5-12) yesterday and I will complete my final master’s class this August. I am pretty excited to finally finish up with the bulk of my schooling – I say it this way because I can’t imagine that I am done with classes for the entirety of my life – and to finally move into what I consider actual adulthood. Not that I’m not an adult now, but it’s hard to think of myself as being on an equal playing field when I haven’t even begun my career yet.

As I have been preparing for my license application and general career-related future a lot over the past year, I’ve come to a few central beliefs when it comes to teaching. Broadly, I believe in placing a lot of focus on building a classroom community, centering the individuals in my classes in everything we do, and creating a safe and welcoming environment for everyone, with specific emphasis on cultural responsiveness. In addition, I think a growth mind-set is extremely important to have, as no student is an empty vessel, nor is anyone as developed as they possibly can be.

All of these beliefs would bleed into any distance educational situation I’d be in. No matter what, I would get to know my students and include their interests in our class, try to get my students to see each other as a team, and provide culturally relevant materials, on top of other things. It doesn’t matter if we are in the same room or miles upon miles away; my core beliefs remain the same.

At first, I was a little nervous about this class, as I am also taking another May Term class and teaching full-time at the same time. However, after this first module, I think it will be doable. I am already exhausted and stretched for time, but the fact that these classes are only three weeks long give me confidence that I will be able to hang on through the duration of them.

What's W̶r̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶e̶ Going on in My Brain?

I loved reading "Imposter Poets" by Jessica Lopez Lyman, a section from "How Dare We! Write". Despite a few spelling and grammatical errors, this piece is a joy. It’s beautifully written and brings up a lot of good points about writing and trying to make it in the world of academia as a Woman of Color. I felt myself really connecting with every other sentence, and I truly wanted to teach about everything this writer talked about. Unfortunately, we had to cut down on some of the topics for time's sake. I want to use this space to talk about an important issue we should all think about. That topic is mental health.

I have a lot of personal experience with mental illness that I’m not willing to delve into on a highly-public space. This made the following passage jump out at me: "You are told this is a panic attack. You don't believe the experts. Anxiety is for rich people." As Lyman explained her struggles with anxiety, especially as a woman outside of the classification of "rich", it really spoke to me. I thought back to all of my struggles with mental illness, and how those struggles were exasperated by the lack of belief in them (a result of upbringing and social class). Then, I started to think about my future students. It occurred to me that we still haven’t really touched on this issue in any of our classes, at least not in any depth, and probably wouldn’t be by the end of this program. That is extremely concerning to me.

Mental health has always been a taboo topic in our society, especially in poorer communities and communities of color. There is now a greater push for educating the population and encouraging dialogue on these issues (see “MakeItOkay.org” for example), but the taboo still continues in certain circles. This denial of issues can make it extremely difficult for people, especially secondary students, to understand what is going on in their minds and how to properly deal with it.

As teachers, we will have countless students in our classes who will struggle with mental illness. We are not required (or qualified) to double as therapists, but we should educate ourselves on this issue so we know how to best support our students. I can speak from experience when saying untreated mental illness can lead to major life disruptions, and school is oftentimes the first priority to go out the window. If our students can’t find help with battling these issues, they will be less likely to succeed in your classroom. I continuously try to find resources to help me learn more about mental illness. I also plan on looking into school resources for dealing with mental health when, or even before, I decide on where I will teach next year.

I know this is a complicated issue that can be difficult to parse through. I also know I didn’t provide a lot of resources in this post. I want to put out there that I would be willing to share resources or talk about my experiences and thoughts on this issue with anyone who will reach out to me.

Let's Not Kill the Writer in Our Students

As an English major, I have looked over and given feedback on countless papers. As a student, I have received feedback on countless more. Through all of these experiences, I’ve always thought that grading papers was kind of messed up. I can understand trying to help students improve their writing skills, but why do we have to assign different levels of worth to students’ creative pieces?

Kelly Gallagher’s “Teaching Adolescent Writers” has given me some ideas on how to handle a distaste for assigning grades to papers. Early on in the chapter she writes, “Always telling students what is wrong with their papers is a recipe for killing off young writers” (Gallagher 144). This highlights one of my greatest fears as a teacher. I know that the way an educator teaches can make the difference between students hating or loving a subject. I don’t want to be responsible for “killing off” the writer in my students. For this reason, I found this chapter to be quite helpful in thinking about my own practices in writing assessment.

Throughout the chapter, Gallagher pushes the idea that student improvement comes from frequent, in-person conferences before the student finishes with their piece, rather than delivering a final, irreparable blow at the end of the process (Gallagher 148). I can remember numerous times when I’ve felt anxious about getting a paper back with a poor grade, not knowing what my teacher was looking for. If all of my teachers took Gallagher’s advice about meeting with students in the middle of the writing process, I would have been able to work collaboratively with my teachers to improve my papers and, more importantly, my writing skills. Instead of feeling anxious, I would have put more focus into what I wanted the final paper to look like. In my future career, I will definitely implement mid-process conferences with my students to help them improve their writing skills, rather than be discouraged by my comments and grade at the end of it.

Another big point Gallagher pushed that I’ll take with me into my career can be summed up by the following paragraph heading: “Read the paper through a craft lens” (Gallagher 145). It is so easy to get distracted by grammatical errors and by what is “wrong” with a paper, especially when we’ve grown up hearing narratives that push such things. (See my post from last week for more on this topic.) However, bogging students down with negative comments about their writing will only turn them away from wanting to write. While it is important to help students learn how to write with Standard English conventions, it’s almost more important that they are given room to make their writing into what they want it to be. Instead of telling students what’s wrong with their papers, we should ask them questions that will spark ideas and help them to move in the direction they want to go. I intend on making this my main focus as I work with my future students on their writing.

Source:

Gallagher, Kelly. “Using Assessment to Drive Better Student Writing.” Teaching Adolescent Writers, Hawker Brownlow Education, 2015, pp. 141–167.

Even Teaching Grammar Is Political

The piece that stood out the most to me this week was Jill Ewing Flynn’s “The Language of Power”. I have been thinking a lot about the implications of teaching grammar as if there is one proper way to write. These thoughts have stemmed from my upbringing and the information I’ve learned to get to where I am now.

Grammar had always been presented to me as an absolute. I remember briefly discussing dialects in a couple of classes, but they were always framed as being inferior to Standard English. Almost every piece of academic writing I’ve done has been corrected or commended because of my usage of Standard English. I had never been prompted to think about who had written the Standard English rules or why we were made to follow them.

I grew up believing there was a right and wrong way to write. This view came from the way teachers corrected us in class, my family corrected me at home, my role models talked poorly about people who didn’t speak using the same rules, and people in power used this same form of English. I was constantly drilled and expected to know how to speak in this way. Near the end of my k-12 schooling, I strongly believed there was one correct way to write.

Now, after learning more about the world, about writing, and about teaching, I’ve completely changed my mind. I now realize that the reason I believed there was a correct way to wright was because oppressive forces and people in power have spent years indoctrinating me to believe this. I’d been trained to believe that those who don’t speak like rich, white men will never be successful like they are. The worst part is that many schools, parents, and role models continue to teach this damaging narrative. It is so engrained into our minds – at least speaking for white folks – that most of us never even question it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told people that I majored in English only to hear them say something like, “Oh, I guess I’ll have to watch my grammar!” They always say it as a joke, but the truth is that they probably worry that I’ll catch them speaking “incorrectly” and will judge them as inferior because of it.

As a teacher, I worry about further pushing on this harmful. I am happy I was able to read about Mr. Ramsey and how he taught “the language of power” alongside his students’ own dialects, being careful not to put Standard English on a pedestal (Flynn 27). I hope to do something similar in my own classroom. I want to give my students the tools to help them succeed in our oppressive society while simultaneously giving them space to write in their own dialects. I believe a key to teaching this is to be honest with my students and tell them that context and audience matter.

Source:

·      Flynn, Jill Ewing. The Language of Power: Beyond the Grammar Workbook. National Council of Teachers of English, 2011.

-->