After reading this chapter of Jago's book I found myself thinking about the teaching methods discussed in the chapter and which methods I agreed with and which methods I disagreed with. I strongly disagreed with her statement on page 148 where she says "Unfortunately, too often exit exams punish students for the failings of their schools." While I agree that standardized state tests are unfair to students, I don' t think the blame should be placed on the schools. I think the blame should be placed on the system at large. For one thing, teachers don't know exactly what will be on standardized tests so how can they be expected to prepare students for a test in which they don't even know the content? Also, money is another issue because some schools have more money than other schools do which is neither the fault of the students nor the teachers. I think Jago should really look at the larger issues before being so quick to assign blame to the schools.
However, while I disagreed with this point, I strongly agreed with the teaching methods she presented in this chapter. I agree that high school students should understand literary analysis and I plan on teaching my future students this important skill. Furthermore, I also see the value in allowing students to have a choice on what questions they should be assessed on. I also like the idea of grading understanding of a novel separate from writing skills. I think this method of testing and grading will strongly benefit students.
Overall, I think this book allowed me to think critically about my own theories regarding teaching and the way in which I plan to run my classroom in the future. While I disagreed with a lot of Jago's points, I also learned a lot from some of her other points which to me, made this book a worthwhile read.
I completely glanced right over that sentence about blaming the schools, and I totally agree with you. There are so many things wrong with our factory-like system to begin with, it's so far beyond just a school's failures when they have so many legislations to follow that do nothing positive for the system.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I think we've talked about this a million times, but we can't talk about it enough. THE GOVERMENT SHOULD NEVER CONTROL THE SCHOOL SYSTEM UNLESS THEY'RE WILL TO TEACH THEMSELVES! State officals cannot blame schools, or teachers for that matter, because there is so much that goes into teaching that they will never realize.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with what both you and Mat have said already. I think that too often it is everyone else's fault except the student. I feel that sometimes that there are other factors that can be changed and others that cannot, and placing blame doesn't belong to one solitary place.
ReplyDeleteI agree with whats being said here, but I'd also like to bring up Julie's point about grading students on comprehension and writing skills separately. I think that this would be hard for us to do as english teachers, but it would give students added confidence in their comprehension skills and encourage them when they are on the right track, rather than having them be discouraged by all the red editing marks on the page.
ReplyDeleteI like that you thought about teaching your students literary analysis. I also agreed that classrooms really need to teach this. I was never taught this in high school, but instead our creative projects were to make diagrams that didn't involve much critical thinking.
ReplyDeleteI am glad reading this book gave you the opportunity to reflect on your future teaching.
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