RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

Katie,

I think MOST of the girls in the younger grades still strive to be "good girls." It may change as they get older, but in my first grade teaching experience, most of my girls try really hard to do the right thing. Some of those girls are really smart "good" girls, and some use their "good" girl image to cover up what they lack. Copying was a problem in my classroom this year as well. I couldn't seem to get the point across that copying was wrong and didn't showcase their own work. I did find that many of my "copiers" were the students that struggled with the work and just wanted to get the right answer. I think most girls do have a desire to be classy and helpful in society today. Our students are deeply shaped by the life they lead (like you said), and we need to be aware of where our students come from and what might go on after leaving school. Students can't learn their best if they are thinking about what happened to them the night before.
~Jamie Brackett

Katie,
I really enjoyed reading your post. You brought up several really important points that made me reflect even deeper about these two chapters. You are very true in saying that we mimic what we see. A lot of times after I meet my students’ parents or sit down and have a conference with them I understand more about why my students act and respond the way they do. They are simply following by example. It is amazing how a “good girl” image in school does bring along with it power and certain privileges. I was a “good girl” in school and received the chance to do extra things for my teachers which I loved. We are all longing to be accepted. The point you made about how it seems that that society’s image of the “good girl” is being changed into becoming the “bad girl” really stuck out to me. I think in many cases sadly enough this is true. I do think that media and T.V. play a major role in this. We teach such a technology driven society that our students are constantly surrounded by images of “good girls” gone “bad.” It is the cool thing now to get a little wild or to rebel against authority figures. I never really thought about how hard it is for young children to decipher when it is ok to copy and not copy. I am sure it can really confuse them at times. As teachers we have to set a good example for our students to follow and encourage them to give us their best even if that is a C. We all want approval and praise, so we need to work hard at providing our students with those things. Maybe if we do that they want look elsewhere for the wrong kind of praise.

I had a child in my classroom this year that was always copying from someone to get the right answer. I would pull him to work with him one-on-one and when he was working with me, he could do the work, however, when he went back to his seat the copying would begin again. He even went so far as to have his father do his homework for him several times, in his dad's handwriting. Once I called them on that, his dad quit writing the answers for him, but clearly was telling him the answers. I would ask him how he got certain answers and he didn't know. I think that for this family it took less time to give answers than to work on how to get the answers. The child had some definite ADHD tendancies, and I think his parents were at their wits end. I tried and tried to explain that doing your best is all I ask for, and it is frustrating when this kind of thing happens.
-Elizabeth Norwood

Our literacy discourses are shaped and formed by whom we interact with. What we do as children does impact our literacy discourses. I remember seeing my older cousins reading novels and big books when I was so little and not even able to quite read a picture book. I wanted to be just like them. I would grab up a book and “pretend read” as I call it. I would act like I knew what the words said on each page by simply looking at the book’s pictures and/or cover if it didn’t have any pictures. I didn’t know that I was improving my sense of story or doing anything that would help me in the future.

And don’t we all look up to our parents. If we are female we want to be just like our mothers. If we are male we want to be just like our fathers. I also remember wanting to wear high heels like my mom. I wanted to wear make-up like her as well. I wanted to read a magazine like her. These influences on feminism and even masculinity affect who we are and thus our performance in things such as reading.

I also wondered what happened to Laurie in the rest of her school career. I really wonder about the affects of her ADD medicine. It just seemed to me that things got really bad after she was put on her medicine. She seemed so withdrawn and shy. She was quiet and it seemed almost like she was self-conscious. I thought she seemed self-conscious because she didn’t want to answer questions in class anymore. She was different. In fact it was this change in mood that also seemed to affect her academic performance. She seemed to give up and not try as hard on her assignments after she was on her medicine. This seemed to escalade her downward spiral in her academic performance.

I notice in my own classroom a lot of students trying so hard to be “good.” Like Hicks said these are usually the students that can’t impress their teacher with their academics. Therefore these kids use their behavior to impress their teacher and earn their praise for good behavior.

Katie,
You are so right about your families being part of our literacy history. My mother taught me to read. While reading Chapter Three one moment popped into my head. My mother stayed home with my brother and I before we started school. Everyday she would work with me trying to get me to read. She had no formal education outside of high school, but she read to us every day and night. I remember one day she had been trying to teach me the words it and is. I must have not learned them becuase I got a spanking and was sent to my room (she was probably frustrated). While laying in my bed I remember the advertisement "Coke is it" I could see the words on the television screen and repeated it over and over as I lie there being punished. That is how I learned to read it and is. My mom did teach me that reading was important. Even now, she reads everyday.
I do think that I was one of those good girls in school, although I was the one that would put her library book inside a textbook so that you would think I was listening to you and following along. I also have taught "Bad" girls as well as many ggod girls. I think that they both contribute aspects to the classroom that would be missed without them.
Amy Reep

In your post you wrote about how girl girls are turning into bad girls, and I thought about that statement for a few minutes before I read on. We live in a society of media influence vs. family life. Everywhere we go girls see imagines in Hollywood of “role models” who many of us don’t view as true definition of a role model in our eyes. So despite all the other challenges children face, girls are challenged with their self image, and when they come into our classrooms they bring this with them. How do we as teachers teach these girls the right way vs. the Hollywood way? We can’t hand raise our students the way we wish we could, we can only teach them the way to live with what we are given. Good verses Bad we are all in it for the children and I’m glad that you are too. Hopefully we can be the “parents” our students look up to, when their parents aren’t able to foot the bill!
Meredith

Your comments on copying immediately caught my attention. I teach Kindergarten and I am always telling my students not to copy to do their own work. I make a point of even when the child gets something wrong sitting down with them and working through it until they can do it by themselves. Copying has never been a huge issue in my classroom so maybe I haven't given it that much thought but when I read what you wrote about what is right to copy and what is wrong to copy it made sense. Every day in my Kindergarten classroom my students copy letters or sentences, pictures, or other things off of the board where I have written them. They are also expected to do so neatly and their work should closely resemble mine, yet when they copy off of another students work they are punished. I never thought about how confusing that could be for a small child. I do know that next year I will spend a good bit more time working with my students on what they are "supposed" to copy because they need to learn the correct way to write it and what I want them to show me. I also think I need to put more empahsis on effort and not as much on correct and in-correct and maybe that would illeviate some of the problems.

I thought about what you said about are there girls that want to be "bad girls" in class. I thought about my kindergarten class. Two girls stand out in my mind. Both of these girls desired to be "good girls", but they really didn't mind getting in trouble. They fed off of each other, and couldn't stay out of each others business. Both of these girls wanted to be in charge, and had trouble following rules. I often wondered how they behaved at home. Pam Aubuchon