Fecho Ch. 7-9

In Chapter 7, Fecho argues that “as teachers we need to call our practice into question and seek ways to invite and sustain dialogue with our students” (65). I was torn as I read about his argument and experiences as a teacher in this chapter. On the one hand, I think that teachers should always be adjusting their instructional strategies to meet the needs of their students. On the other hand, students are going to be on their own to learn and master material after high school, so I wonder how much hand-holding I should do. I agree that an interactive, dialogical classroom is more stimulating for most students and when done consistently, would increase learning gains. In my experience, though, succeeding in college requires independent learning, and the classes are mostly lectures. I think that high school classes should at least be a mix of working as a whole group and in small groups to work through material and having students work through material on their own, even if it is a struggle. I have found that many of my 17 and 18-year-old students do not take responsibility for their own learning. I try to make my lessons engaging and give feedback during class, but I don’t know what changes I could make for my students to become more responsible for their work. This is something that troubles me everyday when I think about their futures, and I think that maybe I need to be more open with them about this concern.

Fecho discusses the idea that context, and therefore meaning, is always shifting in classrooms in Chapter 8. To account for this reality, Fecho describes how he started using flip-chart paper to generate ideas about texts for his classes. He would post each piece of paper around the room, and when a new class came in, he would make sure the work from the previous classes was covered. However, after the class had come up with their own ideas, he would unveil the ideas of other classes. I really like this idea because it gives students the opportunity to discuss and evaluate the ideas of their peers. In addition, seeing other ideas that they may not have thought of may lead them to generate even more ideas. Even the visual of a room filled with ideas will provide them with more stimulation to think from different perspectives. In this way, Fecho is embracing the idea of shifting contexts and is using it to deepen his students’ thinking. Also, I think students often get the sense that a task is too much work or too difficult to complete in a class period, and showing them that another class has already completed the work and has done it well will motivate them to achieve as well.

Fecho’s personal anecdote that he uses to help explain his discussion of small-C culture in Chapter 9 reminded me of some of the struggles of my students in learning a new language. He recalls that he could not read the phrase “Jerry, how you talk!” in a story in first grade because the structure of the phrase was foreign to him. He was from a working class background, and this was how people from the upper-middle class spoke. My students speak African American Vernacular English, and I have encountered some gaps in my instruction of Spanish as a result of our different linguistic backgrounds. Some of the differences are in vocabulary, and I have noticed that this is very culturally-tied. For example, I am currently doing a unit on directions and how to get around a city. One of the vocabulary words is “el metro” and students keep telling me that it is the bus, because in Miami, especially in their neighborhoods, they have only ever experienced taking the Metro bus. So during an activity in which students were asked to read a map of the metro in Mexico City and write down how to get to certain stops, I realized that they not only had trouble with the vocabulary, they had trouble reading the map. This was a struggle that I did not foresee because until I came to Miami, I had always used the metro to get around in the cities in which I had lived. In addition, when grading tests, I have also found problems with students’ translations that I initially attribute to their lack of understanding of the Spanish vocabulary but then realize that most students are making the same mistake, so this must be a difference in the English that they speak. For example, I was grading a quiz on shopping, and several of my students translated the past tense of “buy” as “brought”. So they were writing that they “brought a new shirt”. After consulting with the students to clarify the meaning, I realized that they say “I brought” to mean “I bought” in their dialect. This shows how the students’ cultural and linguistic background affects their interpretation of the material that they are learning, and I agree with Fecho that it is something that should be considered much more heavily by teachers.