Fecho Ch. 10-12

In Chapter 10, Fecho discusses the power of a question. When I first found out that I was going to be teaching English at Central, I thought insightful questions would be at the heart of my lessons. I was disappointed to find out, however, that as Fecho points out, many schools “have perverted the concept of the essential question” (88). Every common planning that I was in, I cringed at the questions that were considered essential questions and “higher order thinking” questions. Because the pacing guides are aligned to multiple-choice exams like the FCAT, I think the whole curriculum actually discouraged students from posing their own thought-provoking questions or coming up with unconventional answers that couldn’t be found in letters A, B, C, or D. This year, because I do not have a pacing guide to follow, I have incorporated some of my own questions into my lessons and have found that students have a lot of trouble thinking outside of the box and considering situations from various angles. They seem to have never really been asked to do this, and to me, this is a sign of an education that has failed them because they have not learned how to think on their own, at least in an academic setting.

Fecho’s discussion of our dialogical selves in the next chapter made me think that I have not done enough to encourage students’ to bring their many contexts into the classroom. Fecho explains, “When the wobble in our lives becomes too great to be withstood, it needs to be understood” (101).  I know that my students are experiencing a lot of wobble in their lives, and I feel as though the general approach towards this knowledge throughout the school has been to, “teach in spite of the wobble”.  I agree that students should receive the same quality education as their wealthier peers, but I also think that we should incorporate some of our students’ struggles into the curriculum. As Fecho shows with his discussion of his student Isaac, reading and writing can be an outlet for students who are struggling with their identity. I think in an age in which informational texts and textual evidence are being pushed so heavily, teachers are discouraged from having students bring personal experience into their writing. Textual evidence and personal experience are not mutually exclusive, however, and I think the two can complement each other well in writing, because they can lead to a deeper understanding of a text that is linked to the many contexts with which a person interacts.

In Chapter 12, Fecho laments the fact that teachers are essentially being removed from the classroom, much like workers have become estranged from the process of work in many industrial workplaces and offices. He explains, “By advocating instruction focused on discrete and narrow skills and stressing factual recall over meaning making, schools present a concept of learning that restricts students in their use of imagination, creativity, and insight” (105). This statement very much aligns with my experience as an accountability teacher at Central. I was constantly reminded by reading coaches and the ETO to teach the benchmark and not the literature, and it seemed very counterintuitive. First of all, I never knew what a benchmark was in high school, and I don’t think I needed to. I’m sure my teachers were teaching to the Massachusetts state standards, but students did not have to be aware of this to learn. Instead, my teachers taught good literature. Because of the high quality of this literature, we discussed everything that would be covered by benchmarks in depth throughout the year. Secondly, teachers and students alike were much more engaged when discussion of literature was at the heart of the class rather than multiple meaning words. I remember a dynamic English class when my teacher drew her own representation of East Egg and West Egg on the board to explain the symbolism of both places. The literature that we read encompassed all of the elements of the “state standards” and we were simply studying them all together in the context of a well-written novel. Because teachers are supposed to take such a formulaic approach to their lessons, it stifles their passion and creativity, and I think that students’ lack of capacity to think outside of the box and ask questions is a reflection of the robotic nature of teaching in many schools.