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.