Wilhelm Chapters 1 and 2

The reading made a lot of sense in terms of student-centered teaching as opposed to teacher-centered teaching.  The author related some personal experiences that influenced their opinions on teaching. For example, they related the satisfaction they felt when they assigned a project that was within what Vygotsky would call their ZAD, or Zone of Actual Development, and the students turned in wonderful projects.  But the author went on to say that in retrospect, such satisfaction was not well warranted because in all actuality, the students did not actually learn anything.  They were only asked to do something that they already knew how to do.  Instead of teaching within a student's ZAD, a teacher needs to aim lessons at the ZPD, or Zone of Proximal Development.  This is the cognitive level where a student is able to do something with outside help.  The term scaffolding is used to define this teacher-student relationship within the ZPD, as the student is able to build their knowledge higher with the help of a teacher, and as soon as that new knowledge is acquired and mastered, they are able to build their knowledge higher with further scaffolding supports from their teacher.  This is how learning happens - the teacher pushes the student slightly out of their comfort zone until the student is comfortable, then pushes them some more.  The trick about teaching within the ZPD is to be sure to not exceed it - this will only lead to frustration.  The author used the example of teaching the Shakespearean play "Twelfth Night" to a group of high school students who were not equipped with the foundational knowledge on old English and reading plays to be able to successfully read and understand the play.  Rather than scaffolding the students, the author inadvertently pushed them too far ahead, and were therefore unable to learn.  Instead of learning, the students resorted to cliffnotes and films.
The issue of teaching reading was raised in chapter 2.  In elementary education in the United States, students are taught to read phonically, but not symbolically.  The focus seems to be on the letters that form the words, and not so much what the language as a whole is illustrating.  This style of teaching reading is acceptable when you take into account the ages and reading level of elementary students, but the problem exists when these students enter middle and high schools.  They have not been taught the skills necessary to analyze the text for broader meaning and symbolism.  The response of teachers has been historically to teach students what they should be getting out of the text, followed by a meaningless regurgitation of what the teacher said coming from the students.  What should happen in secondary schools instead is the teaching of how to read between the lines for broader meaning and themes within a text.  This is done with scaffolding.  For example, when teaching an ironic poem, the teacher started with ironic comics to help students develop skills in detecting and understanding irony before reading the poem.
I definitely feel as though the main theme in this reading that stood out to me and how I want to teach is that idea of scaffolding.  I remember being in school and reading the cliffnotes after the first inkling of frustration over a text.  I feel like this gives me the desire to avoid that level of frustration with my own students to the best of my ability.  I think a major struggle in cognitive theories as they are applied in teaching is the process of converting theory into practice.  A teacher can understand the text-book definitions of Vygotsky's theories, but I think it would take a lot of practice, trial and error before a teacher is able to begin to define a class's Zone of Proximal development.  This is compounded by the problem of classroom diversity - chances are, different students will be at different ZPD's.  How do teachers best gather what their students' literacies are? How can these literacies be translated into a teacher's scaffolding?  These are questions I hope to explore further throughout this course and probably throughout my career.

Literacy Profile

Calla Hardiman

SED 507

Literacy Profile

One non-academic literacy that I have is in the realm of flood and disaster recovery.  After my first semester as an undergrad at UMass Amherst, I decided I really did not like it there and wanted to take a semester off. I joined the Americorps on a whim with my roommate (who would later become my husband).  We joined the Americorps VISTA and moved out to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to do disaster relief and recovery after the city experienced a record-breaking flood.  The floodwaters had risen close to thirty feet, inundating the first two floors of almost every house and business in Cedar Rapids.

            When I first arrived, I had absolutely no prior knowledge about disaster relief.  I underwent a brief orientation about safety and health hazards, and then was immediately released to the field to learn first hand by trial and error the various steps in disaster relief.  My first experience in the field was a house that had been flooded up to the second floor, and none of the family’s personal articles or furniture had been moved or touched.  The refrigerator was still full of leftovers, condiments, and floodwater.  The bookshelves were crammed with soggy moldy books, and there were toys, stuffed animals, family photos, clothes, couches, blankets and electronics strewn about and soaking wet.  I was handed a laundry hamper and told to “muck” the house.  I did not know what that meant, so I looked to see whatever other people were doing.  Apparently, “mucking” meant filling the hamper with debris, walking it out of the house, and dumping it onto the sidewalk for “the claw”  (a large mechanical claw that picked debris up and put it into a garbage truck) to pick up later.  After doing this for a while I developed a system to best get rid of as much debris as possible.  I used a shovel to fill my hamper with debris before carrying it out.

            After I had mucking down and the house was finally empty of debris, furniture, appliances and carpeting, I was told to help “gut” the house.  I was given a crowbar and told to remove all plaster, drywall, cabinets, countertops, nails and ceilings until the house was just foundation and studs.  After doing this for a while, I figured out the best system to take down the walls and ceilings using a crowbar and really developed a knack for it.  Then the house was to be swept clean.  If the studs were rotted, I learned to replace them with new studs, and I learned how to do mold treatment on studs that remained in place. 

            The third step in disaster recovery I was to lean was “rebuilding,” which was the most complicated step in a lot of ways because it involved multiple steps.  I learned how to hang drywall, mix “mud,”  which is another word for joint compound, apply the mud over the screws and seam lines, sand the mud once dry (and re-mud and re-sand at least 2 times), and eventually paint. After mudding and sanding came painting, and sometimes plastering.  I was one of the few VISTAs that was trained in Venetian plastering, so I ended up doing this in a lot of houses.

            After my first month on the job, our Americorps VISTA got a new influx of volunteers, and I was selected to train them in how to muck, gut and rebuild.  It amazed me how in such a short period of time, I mastered the disaster relief and recovery skills enough to train and oversee new VISTAs. 

            Another important job I had in the flood recovery program was garage demolition.  Myself and a group of four other VISTAs were known as the go-to people for garage demolition, and we did quite a few garages.  Because garages do not have foundations, they float in floods and get snagged on things.  So my team and I developed the best way to demolish garages that had floated into treetops (and one that landed on top of a minivan), which was ultimately done by attaching a chain or rope around the center beam of the  inner structure of the garage beneath the roof, and to use a saws-all to cut all other support beams out of the way (which requires balance when atop a tree or minivan).  After attaching the cord to the center-beam, the five of us would hold onto the cord and pull it down.  Then we would shovel the debris into the road for the claw.

            My literacy in flood recovery had a great impact on the rest of my life. Not only am I able to muck, gut and rebuild, but I also know I am capable of training and leading other people.  The Americorps was the first place where I was ever really in a leadership role, and this has translated into my life in countless ways, and has even influenced my desire to teach one day.  I know that having had this experience will come in handy when I teach simply because I felt so able to learn, capable to work, and confident to lead all from this experience.