Michelle Suggs- Module 2

Michelle Suggs

Module 2

February 16, 2022

I enjoyed most of this week’s reading even though it was a lot of information. It took me back about 25 years to many of my college classes. First, let me make a confession- I thought last week’s readings were based on Standard 1; after reading other people’s blogs, I realized that I read the instructions incorrectly, and I was supposed to select the standard that I believed best fit the reading. For this week’s reading, I saw several standards and components as part of the chapters, such as Standard 6.1 seems to align best with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of self-mastery and learning evolving naturally due to their own curiosity. However, overall, I would have to say that Standard 1.4 best fits this Module 2 reading. This standard and component involves demonstrating knowledge of the historical and evidence-based foundations related to the role of the reading/literacy specialist. Now, I know most of this week’s reading concerned the history of education as a whole going back more than 2,000 years, but the authors of Lenses on Reading did make this knowledge relevant to reading instruction.

I am now teaching self-contained SPED, but for most of my career, I taught ELA/English along with other general education academic subjects. I believe that some things simply have to be taught with the “drill and kill” method- repetition. A common theme in schools these days is that if students do not get the information the first time, the teacher needs to figure out another way to teach the same information. Although, that is the case at times, I tend to disagree with this method. I tend to agree with Plato and Aristotle’s Mental Discipline Theory. The mind is a muscle that needs to be exercised. If you go to the gym…I clearly do not…and work your bicep muscles on Monday, but you do not see a change on Tuesday, there is no reason to go back to the drawing board; you need to go back and repeat what you did on Monday. With discipline and consistency, you will see a change, which is the evidence that learning, and not just memorization, has taken plan. My first teaching position was high school English class. I had to teach a unit on American poets, and it started with Emily Dickinson. I read several of her poems and had no idea what they were about. This was before Google and everything being at your fingertips on the Internet. While I was in college, this new thing called the International Super Highway was invented; now the early Internet was amazing, but it was no Google. What did I do? I reread the poems, and I reread them again. The more I read, the more I understood- the more I understand what she was trying to say or at least what I assumed she was trying to say. Just a side note- I was teaching “Young Goodman Brown,” and I was telling my students all about the symbolism in the short story. A student raised his hand and said, “Ms. Suggs, how do you know that is what the author meant by the white handkerchief and everything else?” I responded that I really had no idea. I was kind of making it up based on what I knew about symbolic things in literature, and I was applying it to this story. He just looked at me and said, “Okay.” So, I taught what I assumed Emily Dickinson was trying to say to her readers well over a century later.

I remember when graphic organizers became a big deal! Who knew they dated back to ancient times as well. Associationism basically groups items together in your mind to help with learning and recall. While in my kitchen, I still have to think back to the Gallon Man I had my 5th graders make when I cannot recall how many quarts are in a gallon or how many cups are in a quart. Any type of mind trick for learning or memory helps. I have taught my daughter to make up crazy sentences when leaning new vocabulary words. For example, if she is trying to learn the word “candor,” which means to be honest or frank, I would have her make up a crazy sentence such as this: CAN Frank be any more honest? Therefore, when she sees the word, she will immediately see the first three letters and remember the silly sentence. Of course, teachers have been using memory tricks for as long as I can remember. As Aristotle suggested, I teach my students what to do when they finish with their breakfast trays, which is contiguity- what actions go together. Pick up all trash from where you were eating and put it on your try. Then, throw the tray away and wipe your table. Finally, go to the bathroom and wash and dry your hands. It is a routine that is established and it all occurs during one time- breakfast and even again at lunch. Even in adult life, we use mind tricks, such as similarity. We group things in categories. When I have several errands, I will group what I need to do according to the most logical driving pattern. If I am going to Albany, I do not want to do an errand in west Albany and then head back east when I am not finished with everything I needed to do across town. The final association that Aristotle identified is contrast. While teaching sign language to my students, we often learn opposite words. This helps them remember the signs. For example, the word “good” is signed with your hand palm up on the other hand. The word “bad” is signed the same way with the same motion, but you flip your palm over as if to slap your palm on your other hand. Morning and night are the same way. You make a “horizon” with one arm and more the other arm either coming up or going down from morning or evening.

One critic of the Mental Discipline Theory was John Locke. He basically believed that people are born without any internal or innate knowledge; they are born with a Blank Tablet, and all learning is a consequence of the individual’s interaction with the environment. I can also see this in some of my current students. Students with special needs generally do not do things as “typical” children do. They possibly have a hard time understanding things that are not or cannot be explicitly taught. They don’t have the skillset to “read between the lines” or understand social cues. For these reasons, Locke believed that educators should focus less on innate knowledge and more on external influences.

The first major challenge to both the Mental Discipline Theory and Associationism was the Unfoldment Theory, which centers learning around the individual’s interest and curiosity. Due to this theory, many people began to advocate cultivating feeling and passion through the development of a natural unfolding of personal interests. Jean-Jacques Rousseau supported this type of learning, and he argued in his novel Emile that educators should follow children’s leads regarding what they want to learn and intervene very little. I have had friends/family who raised their children this way; however, it did not seem to work that well to me. They created children who thought the world revolved around them, and they had an all out tantrum when it did not. Even in the classroom, this concept is far from today’s teaching. We are now given curriculum maps, and administrators expect one ELA class to be on the same page as all other ELA classes in that same grade level. If children do not get what is taught, they become more and more behind as the teacher has to move on. We certainly cannot just let students learn about things that interest them, but we can certainly add variety and choice into our lessons.

Johan Pestalozzi extended this theory some to include informal instruction from adults. He focused on child-centered learning, but one of core ideas is having an educational environment that is warm and nurturing. A positive climate and engaging physical environment are designed to stimulate children’s natural curiosity. I do think that the environment and climate of the room makes a huge difference in student success. I do believe that environment makes a huge difference. This goes back to my blog last weeks when I discussed relationships. It is difficult to develop relationships in a cold, non-nurturing environment. 

In Module 1, we discussed how teachers come to the classroom with theories, even if they are not aware of them. I see from this week's reading that many of my "theories" about teaching reading and all academic subjects date back over 2,000 years!