Every child knows where they are academically. No matter how well a teacher does at providing text at his/her level or differentiating group’s students always know where they are. Like Laurie I have taught many students who feel the frustration of not performing on grade level. Laurie chose to use the “good girl” approach and mask her inabilities in school with the ability to be good. Many students follow this same path in the classroom. “Flying under the raider” with being good and passed on, while others choose to act out to compensate for their struggles within the classroom.
Laurie had many challenges to face not only at school, but also the ones at home. “She took events with some grounding in her lived experiences and rewrote them, casting herself and others in scenarios that were partly fictional.” (p.90) Even though Laurie struggled much of her first and second grade school years in writing, she learned to write about what she wanted in life. She had a defense to write about the fantasies that she wished to live.
“While Laurie wrote fantasies in which she was a valued and accepted friend, threaded into these were also reflections on the complexity of school relations for academically vulnerable girl.” (p. 87) She was a low emergent writer using repetitive sentences, but her writing of a fantasy world Laurie wished to lived made me think about Ch. 3 when Hicks wrote about how books can make you travel to new places. For Laurie she was able to use this strategy in her writing. She wrote about what she wished to have within her home life.
Laurie was fortunate to eventually find a teacher who worked outside the box. She had different strategies to use with Laurie. This is an important lesson for all teachers to look outside of our own discourses and help children with any strategy possible. There is no one carbon copy model to teach. Sometimes we just need to get out of our own comfort zone to reach children.
Kara S
Comments (3)
Kara, I thought it neat that the book implied that girls often compensated for low literacy ability with the "being good" strategy while boys did the opposite and acted out. However, I think eventually, as in Laurie's case, a child can only maintain that facade for so long before become frustrated to the point of acting out. It's sad that students feel the need to do this, and it's hard to try to mask the fact that you have your high groups and low groups. Like you, I feel that students know their abilities, most of the time more than we do, they may not know how to voice or cope with their struggles or weaknesses (often trying to hide them from everyone in the classroom) unless we reach out to help them with individualized instruction, which is often out of the comfort zones of many teachers, but it is necessary in order to meet the needs of each diverse learner within our classroom whether good or bad, low or high. Laurie clearly had a wonderful sense of story - very creative! She could vocalize it, but her frustration later occurred when she couldn't quite place it the right way on paper, which led her to copy other students and quieten her important voice that needed to be shared among the classroom. I truly feel that if something is important to a student, just like Laurie's fantasies, teachers should not diminish it but use it to help a student's literacy development continue to grow.
Posted by Melissa Riley | June 24, 2011 11:37 PM
Posted on June 24, 2011 23:37
Kara,
I too felt that Laurie was indeed fortunate to have a second-grade teacher who could think outside of the box. Laurie had an avenue to truly express her complex life and to attempt to make it what she longed for, through fantasy and an elusive happy ending. I think you are right however, that there is not one model to teach form. I know hoe effective Writer's Workshop is for many students but I know that it does not reach everyone. Laurie needed this experience and so much more. Maybe if she had had teachers willing to come out of their comfort zone throughout her school career she could have balanced her competing identities and been more successful at school.
Posted by Karen Massey-Cerda | June 25, 2011 12:11 AM
Posted on June 25, 2011 00:11
It is true that students are aware of where they are at academically. This can be a hard pill to swallow for a student. It is a terrible feeling to know that you are behind your peers. This can make a student feel academically inferior, which can have extremely negative effects on their educational experience. I like how you pointed out that teachers need to look outside of our own discourses. I know that I need to become more aware of my students’ individual discourses. This knowledge can help me develop a better understanding of them, which in turn will help choose appropriate means of instruction. It may be difficult to push your own discourses to the side but change is never easy. This makes me think of the saying, “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” This is why I think that you are exactly right when you said that we need to get out of our own comfort zone to reach our children.
Posted by Stacy Durham | June 25, 2011 12:22 AM
Posted on June 25, 2011 00:22